Episode 12: On Teacher Entrepreneurs

[MUSIC PLAYING] You're listening to Community Crafted Education, where we explore alternatives to conventional K-12 education and their potential impacts on society and culture. I'm Eric Wairn, director of the National Hybrid Schools Project. On this episode, we're joined by Shereen Radigan from Colossal Academy in Fort Lauderdale. We'll talk about teachers as business owners, the value of founders, and building generational wealth. All right, so we're here today with Shereen Radigan from Colossal Academy in Fort Lauderdale. Shereen, how are you? So good. Warm and sunny. I'm so glad to connect with you, Eric. Yeah, it's always great to see you. I was hoping to talk to you today about your school, Colossal Academy, but also not just about the school, which is great in its own right, but about kind of your story. Because I think there's an interesting back story or side story to you as a founder, which I think would be interesting for people to hear about. But maybe we start by letting you introduce yourself and just talk a little bit about yourself and what led you to start Colossal. Oh, well, you know, everything in life is nonlinear, even though we would love to build a beautiful line with a ruler and be like, this is where I'll be at point B. So my story is messy. It's complicated. Not even complicated. It's just that I wrote a lot of waves to get where I'm at. I am a fifth generation educator. We grew up on everything was centered on different breaks and different holidays. And so I grew up in the classroom after school. That's really the foundation of part of my identity, a lot of my identity. I'm also a mother of three magnificent children, one who's deaf and hard of hearing and autistic, my oldest. And then I have two other two other daughters. And I'm a wife. And we live intergenerational. It's a whole amazing-- [LAUGHS] A whole amazing conglomerate of fun over here. Yeah. So how would you start Colossal? What led to that? Yeah, you know, as an educator, it's a calling. I do really truly believe that education is sacred. As a teacher, the calling is sacred. And everything kept pulling me back to being a teacher. But as a fifth generation educator, everything in me was like, no, I'm going to read that. I'm going to be something that makes money one day, right? I'm going to go off and buy a house and do these crazy things that teachers just don't have access to, right? And so I went-- and some of the education, because that's the first launch, the launching point. I was there. There was a lot of things within the system, one in particular, violence that was just happening within the public education system that I didn't like. And so then I moved to private because, surely, at private school, everything is just fine. And it's riddled with a lot of things I just didn't agree with, right? It didn't align with my value system. And one of them was having access to nature. That was a huge piece. But the other piece was like the integrity. So where I worked, you might be able to scrape by with an A with a wink and a, you know, like you might get fired if you don't give the child a name. There's all these other politics that are going on there that money played a role in the performance on paper for students. And I didn't like that. But I did love that I had unlimited resources to do whatever I wanted, right? As far as projects. And I could just buy clay. And I could go things. And we could do these field trips. So I said, OK, it must be Montessori, that focuses on the wellness of a child, right? And so-- And it does. It does a lot of that. Like the self-directedness. I learned a lot there. But I was like, we really need to be outside. And Montessori in the middle school, which was in developed because Mary Montessori did pass away before that was developed. Promises to have a lot of outdoor education and nature and farm. And I said, that's what's missing for me. And so I launched in the middle of the pandemic. We were on a farm in a year, no running water, no electricity. We were just-- In South Florida. In South Florida. On this Jamaican-owned farm. And it was amazing. And thrilling and exciting. That was our launch. It was kind of like the Goldilocks effects. It's like, not quite yet. This isn't up. This is just right. So-- Yeah. So a lot of micro schools and hybrid schools have a commonality in their founders in that that's part of your story, right? Like I'm a teacher. I know kind of what I would like to do. But I can't do it because of various constraints, like all the ones that you just mentioned, right? Like physical space, the nature of the school, the cultural school, whatever. So they launch out on their own, and they start a new thing, right? But I think with you, there's a little more than that to it, too, right? It's not just I can do an interesting school. So many people will say, OK, I'm going to launch. I'll start this school as a teacher founder. And it'll go on. And then I'll get to do my cool, interesting model for however long I want to do it. And then either I'll hand it off, we'll close the school or whatever. But you had kind of an additional thought to all that. So can you talk about that a little bit? Once the systems and all these systems are cracked open, I was like, I can sell that. Oh, wait, what is accreditation? It's not actually anything. It's just a whole bunch of money that you throw at people to tell you that you've checked boxes. I could probably make my own accreditation board. Wait, once it was opened up to see what was under the hood of education in this country, I was like, I have to participate in more than being a classroom teacher. I can do systematic change. And I could build a system that people can use, that they can replicate. Because what I found as an entrepreneur is that it's a tremendous amount of work that we do. And I wanted to be able to bottle it and capture it, so that the work that I was doing could be used by future generations in my own. But also other people, because it doesn't make sense that we're all staying up until 4 in the morning, trying to get the Chroma Hex correct for that exact color of blue that I wanted exactly right. And you'll do that as an entrepreneur. We have other things we need to do. We need to be teaching. We need to be in the community that, like, having the structure of like how to take invoicing, how to do what should be in a handbook, what lesson should I use is so massive to create from scratch that it's almost doing a disservice to us to have to every single person build from scratch. And so I started to systematize. I didn't intend, that wasn't my intention always, but I was like, OK, this is where other people could use this. This is where other people could use this. And so I just started to package it all together so that other people could use the system that we were creating. Yeah, so we used this word entrepreneur. We started using that word more in this space. I feel like a lot of people interpret that as just like, I don't have a boss. I can do whatever I want, right? But I think I didn't-- which is maybe part of it, right? But I think it implies more than that, too, which is the idea that you're building something that can be sustained, right? You're going to build something that's going to last for a little while. And you want to nurture it and take care of it and grow it into whatever it's going to be either a bigger version of it, or more of it, or just a longer living version of it. So was there a moment where you realized, like, this is not just about me being able to create the kind of school I want, but this really could be kind of like a legacy for either for my kids or my community or both, right? Beyond just a new teaching model. Right. So for sure-- like I said, it was a fifth generation teacher. They didn't pass the farm down. I don't have any wealth. There's no wealth in our family, so that was one thing. It can't be that these tireless nights, when I pass, just goes away, right? Like, there needs to be codified for somebody else. And I also realized that the methodology itself, I'm an academic, Eric. That's why you and I get along because I am an entrepreneur, but I'm also an academic. And I really like research, and I love how-- I like to really understand the academy. And I think there's such an important role that it has in society. And so I'd like to participate in the academy. And part of what we've realized is that we do have a future forward model that can actually pull people through to the future. It's not an industrial model. It is a gig economy model. It is the AI model. It is the one that's going to prepare our young people for something beyond 2030, 2040. That's a bit-- that students are going to have relevant skills moving into the future. And so once I was realizing that I was building that, then we started codifying an actual methodology of learning. So that's been exciting from the nerd standpoint. I'm more of a geek than a nerd. But anyway, the standpoint-- I'm a math teacher, so we like space and stuff. So the other end of it is just like, OK, what is the model that what are kids going to need for the future? What are the skills that they're going to need? And I think we're all trying to figure it out as academics. There's only so much we can project and test. But I actually have a model that can actually test it, right? So-- and through and through, I'm a teacher. And I want as many kids to have access to a joyful learning environment as possible. Yeah, so you've talked about a bunch of-- of like realizations that happened over time for you as you're going through this whole journey with being a teacher and being colossal. Can you talk a little about the feeling you had when you realized, wait a minute, I own my work for the first time. You know, like I'm not just playing with you. - Yeah, that was really on. That was super early. I had four students, the one of the students' parents was a surgeon like we have to pod. I'm a brain surgeon. I cannot go into surgery with COVID. Can you teach our kids? And I'm like, yeah, cool, whatever. So we start learning and they're like, "Mystery could be like, we want to meet up. We were doing online at first. Can we meet up?" I was like, "What do you guys want to do?" And somebody was like, "I like the skateboard." I'm like, "Let me see if there's any programs for skateboarding." Oh, there is one. You guys want to meet on Friday and we could go skateboarding? Yeah, let's do it. I'm like, great. What else do you guys want to do? We want to start planting things. I'm like, "Okay." And it was really super early on that I just felt like I could offer whatever they're asking me for and that that feedback loop was super fast. They wanted drones on a Monday. They had them by Thursday. I secured a teacher and then the next Monday we were doing drones. And if that were in a traditional setting, it could be months, if not a year. Those kids have passed on. And the entire eighth grade has to do drones, right? And so the agility of it, the freedom that came with responsiveness and my bosses are my parents. And in some ways, my students, the responsibility I have is to them and not to a principal and not to a system and not to a test was just profound. And I got that aha moment really early on. And I think that that's what all teachers really want is deep connection and those like deep learning moments were able to reach the learner in any way possible. And that happened super early. And it just keeps happening as I'm questioned with like my why, why am I doing that? Then I get that answer again relatively quickly. - I mean, for any teachers listening, that, I mean, you know that feeling, right? Where you have this great idea and then you bump up against whatever wall you're bumping up against. But you now have found like, well, I don't bump up against hardly anything anymore, right? Time and resource constraints are it, right? Yeah, so this is great. So let's talk about your school as part of the local community, which is like a big purpose of this podcast is to say, well, this is all great. I'm glad these things are opening, but what's the ultimate value for the world of these? Right? So we know there's tons of research out there about how Americans, maybe not just Americans, but definitely Americans are down on all kinds of institutions, right? So we don't trust anybody anymore. We don't trust the government. We don't trust schools. We don't trust the newspaper. Whoever, right? I don't think that actually means that we don't trust institutions. I think people kind of need some kind of institutional grouping by their nature, right? We just want different ones or smaller ones or new ones, right? So can you talk a little bit about how colossal kind of strengthens your super local community? Sure. So part of the model is that we are community serving. You know, we think about Marzanos, textonomy or Bloom's textonomy, and the final product should be creation, like the highest level of learning is creating something. And so we've gone just a step farther and say, no, actually the highest level of learning is service. And so that if whatever you're doing serves people, that that is actually a deeper level of learning. And we try to do that within our local community. So as we speak this very moment, there's a preschool across the street from us. And our students have created a self, a student led initiative to, they call it tiny tots, and they go across the street and they read books, right? So that they're learning and what they're doing is have serviced other people. Not only does it fulfill them, but it's fulfilling other people as children community and connection. And so we try to as much as possible, let the outcome of our learning, our our subjects. It's not just PBL for a robot that you need, but what's the purpose of the robot? And so our students are highly entrepreneurial. We ask them three questions. People, planet and profit. How does this serve people? How can your organization serve people that you have happy people, right? You were paid well when we think about the planet, right? It's great. If you're making a t-shirt company, what diets are you using? Where is this waste going? Like we have to question that. Or else you're not going to have a company. If you don't have a planet, you don't have a company. And the last, not the least important, but that I'm saying right now is profit. We need to be profitable so that we can continue to generate more business. Or we can continue to generate more ideas or innovate our ideas. And I think that's what makes us profoundly human is that we can have an idea and bring it to light. And then the other piece that makes us human and separates us from the animal kingdom is that we can pass on knowledge and that that exchange between human and human knowledge, which is a huge part of what we do. We're not leaning into having a tech replace our teachers. We have live teachers. Our online school has live teachers. There's something that happens there that can't happen through a screen solely based on clicking the mouse and moving balls around. And so we know that connection, whether it be local or in the community or within our own, we're working with adolescents. It's madness, you guys. We are working with adolescents. So we're working on just positive communicate. Can you re-say that in a way that's not harmful to me, please? Or to your neighbor, right? So just working on language in and of itself within our schoolhouse, but that the schoolhouse is an active agent. It's not somewhere you stick the kids. You don't go put your kids there and then you pick them up. No, it has a role in society. And that's to advocate for crosswalks or go to ask for, go after elected officials to change a law or it's to put up a skate park. We have an active role as 10 year olds to be a part of society. Not somewhere you go put the kids, right? Well, we go work. That's just not how it's going to be in the future. And that's, we're trying to build the system. It's going to allow for that to be serving the community that students have active agency in the community that there's always a youth voice in the decisions that we make in society. And so there has to be that kind of relationship. - Yeah, great. So you mentioned a word that I think throws a lot of teacher founders, which is the word profit, right? Which is actually what enables you to pass on all this stuff and to do all of these things and to last for as long as you're able to last and to not have to constantly have your hand out and ask for people to take pity on you or whatever, right? Or to do projects that you might not otherwise do because you want to focus on your core stuff. And you can do that because you are providing services that people like and want and need, right? So can you talk a little bit about what you wish other parents and teachers understood about the business side of schools like this? - Sure, I mean, all private, public, whatever that looks like has to run off of money. Like, so our budget in Broward County is $19,000 per pupil. Our tuition is $15,300 and comparatively, we're doing so much more. We went on 32 field trips and spent the peers, right? And it's not that it's us or them. It's just how you utilizing the funds. I'm super responsible with the funds that I get. I'm also fully aware that these is people's money that they're giving me. I am a steward of this and I need to build something that is going to allow these students to stay here for many years. We started off only as a middle school and I said, no way, whatever go to high school. I'll never do that, I'll never do that. But then the demand was there for the parents to build a high school. So had I not had capital, I wouldn't have been able to rent another place and open another facility and have the high schoolers be separate and hire the teacher. And that profit is really just more for us to work with. It's extra paint in our, to be able to paint a canvas with. And I think as teachers, we've been for so long, so conditioned that this is an act of only of service. And that it all ends that we should be able to sacrifice ourself and what's happening is that we're burning out and that it can't be that way. It can't burn out our teachers and the people who are responsible to be with our children while we're going to do other things in our lives if education is not your role and that you need to place education, the education to other people. We can't burn out our teachers. And from the family's ends of things, you have to remember as we are being stewarded stewards of these finances, that there's a conversation that happens there and that you have power and I'm incumbent to my parents. I have a much closer. or relationship that I have ever had to parents, sometimes a little bit too close. But we are partners. We build a partnership. Here's the contract with your funds. I'm going to do these things, but also, like we're going to come together as community and do a lot of things together. We're going to go with they're making cardboard boats and they're going to race them out on the marina, right? So I think it's a profit for teachers is scary, the idea of money and finances scary. It shouldn't be. It's just an extra way that we're able to innovate and do more things and provide more services and get that therapist in and get that one-on-one coach in and that the more money I have, the more abundant and fulfilled my students can be. So the more finances I have, and I do that because I'm super frugal. So I'm like, I'm going to-- they don't need brand new pencils this year cutting that out of a line. They don't need new scissors, right? So then I reallocate those to possibly getting an iPad. We had to get an iPad this year because we're working in workbooks so they need to be able to submit their paperwork, whatever. So I'm just reallocating the funds in a way that's more responsible. It's not about just like, me, me, me, me, me, and I want to buy more things and I want to buy bigger houses. And even if it was, that would be OK, Eric. And I think we have to be OK with that too. But that finance gives us the opportunity to create, and to innovate, and to do things differently. And so not to be afraid of profit, for sure. But not at the expense of other people. So that's where we balance it. And not at the expense of the planet. We're not going to cultivate the planet and not do restorative building. And we're not going to use people until they're worn out and then discard them, right? So-- Yeah. I mean, the other thing that having, like, being profitable does, it just doesn't let you buy things. But it gives you kind of the assurance that you can-- it buys you time, right? It buys you the assurance that you can make it into the future. And next year, too, right? Compare that to, you know, maybe you-- if you're constantly worried about donors and grants and philanthropy, maybe you get this grant, and it says you have to buy pencils, right? So you buy pencils even though you don't need them, right? So you've got a huge horde of new pencils, which you really need in rice skateboard wheels or something, right? So I've heard-- Omar Kumar from Kaya Pod talk about this idea a lot, very powerfully, right? So it's not-- you mentioned stewarding your family's money, but you're actually providing them value-- something that they value, right? Like, they're willingly giving you this because they like what you're doing. But Omar has talked about how a lot of founders-- kind of undervalue themselves, right? Like, they think that they're running like total charities. And they're missing the point that they're actually giving parents and kids things that they want, and they should value themselves appropriately. Have you come across this experience in all of your meetings-- For sure. --and under as a potential-- And even myself, even myself, looks like maybe-- sorry, just-- right? But it was a parent that had to change my mind. She's like, Cherine, do your school. It's the school I have been praying for. And I'm like, in your students, and that it's a relationship of mutual respect and honor for what each one of us is doing, her son needs to skateboard, and he's hyperactive, and he needs to be outside, right? There's all these things that she's like, I have been looking for you. And you are the solution to what was our problem. This is a problem we had, and you've filled this solution. So you're so super grateful. And if anybody here, the family in particular, if anybody here can't pay their tuition, please let us know. They're willing to even make sure that other students have access to it. I think as a public school teacher and as a teacher, in general, we-- and as a mother. But this should be selfless. And I think that that is a rhetoric in the nation that we're working to change. Just that our labor should be free. Yeah, hard work. It's hard work, right? But it's not-- you should value it appropriately, right? So what would you say to someone who is maybe a potential founder? Who has this-- they think what they think is a good idea. And their-- but their hold up is, you know, I've got this teaching job, which gives me real financial security versus I could take the leap and do this startup for educational purposes, but also for, you know, maybe building something that's going to outlast me, right? So what would you say to somebody like that? First, I would tell them the more CEOs that I meet a very large fortune heart-puntered companies. I know like five teachers that could run that whole company, right? So I think that one, we need to understand what skills that we actually are coming into the workforce outside of the traditional classroom. And really to evaluate, what are our skill sets? I think we're not even realizing how many decisions we make in a day. The second is, yeah, you have to be aware. You need to run some projections, learn how to do your numbers. And so it can look scary. But once I realized how many to have three or four students to be able to pay my bid-- oh, I can do that. And being in control of your finances is actually going to give you the freedom that you're seeking, right? So-- and then it's OK to start super small. And then it doesn't need to look like a full classroom with all the things that you want, and that will come. But the integrity of what you do has to be first. So building a safe place for three kids or 10 kids or however that needs to be, and to give yourself the permission to take more time to get 20 and 50 and hundreds or multiple locations or however that looks for you. And that it's OK. The water's warm. We don't make much teacher. So come on out. You'll find you're making-- you're going to be fine. I think the thing that's the scariest is the retirement funds. And for some states, they have amazing pensions, right? For many states, they don't. And so you can just roll your retirement into-- and I'm not a financial advisor, but there are many other places that you just move your teacher retirement. And it can continue. Don't lose it. It just gets moved into a different retirement account. Yeah. So there are plenty of hangups. But I think we may be in the early stages of this. So like you said, the water's warm. The water's empty still, too. There's lots of room for lots of new schools. So last couple of questions. One is, what would success ultimately look like to you as a founder? Long term. Oh, Eric, that's a tough one. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, it would be that this model could be picked up and that people could utilize it and that if I died one day and came back and haunted a place, right, that it would be in a way that I would want it to look like, right, where students are happy. Enjoyfully. Yeah, be careful if you open a colossal in 2095, but I might come back to your class. But that I've successfully explained what's in my head and my heart through the outside world that it's so well explained that somebody could recreate it, right? Like that feels like a successful thing to me. Being able to have generational wealth feels successful to me. So being able to purchase my children's not having to figure out how to come up with a down payment, or how to even-- are they going to even own a home feels like generational wealth to me. So I am a colossal thinker, a big picture thinker. So I would like to secure seven generations of wealth, right? So that for seven generations, they don't need to worry about where they're going to eat. And I think that that's fair. That's the big, big, big, big goal, right? But ultimately, I think the closest goal within reach that would-- I feel like give me a success check would be that the model-- anybody could pick up and read or understand how to build a colossal. Yeah. I mean, that seven generations just takes a long time, right? But that is like a new-- like a pretty recent way for teachers to think about what they're doing. But you know, many other aspects of society think that way, why not educators thinking that way? So what-- OK, last question then. What-- you're doing a lot of stuff. What's the most interesting thing going on in your work right now that anybody interested in hybrid schools or micro schools or any form of community crafted education would like to know about? Hey, Kerfault, Eric. Interesting things within education. That you're working on? Yeah, that I'm working on. I'm working on curriculum and designing workbooks and figuring out how to-- what I'm seeing right now is-- oh, man. What I'm seeing right now is we got to go back to some of the old fashion traditional textbook, pen, paper, pens to the-- they got to write. People need to write. And so I need the workbooks to go with the scalable thing, which is the online school. But then the workbooks need to go with it because I feel like students need to be able to write. So that's kind of what I'm interested in. And I'm interested to see the swing back from AI. and tech and all this swing that's kind of I have a feeling it's going to swing back to some like centeredness and I'm excited to see that happen. Yeah, I'm not sure we're done with the swing yet right but I'm going back. Awesome. Well, Serena Radigan, Classical Academy, it's great to see you as always. Thanks for being here. Thanks, Eric. Thank you for listening to Community Crafted Education, a podcast hosted by the National Hybrid Schools Project and Kennesaw State University's Michael J. Cole's College of Business. If you have any questions about the topics we discussed on today's show or want to learn more about what we do, please look up the National Hybrid Schools Project or reach out to us directly at coalscollege.com/hybrid.