60. Reinventing the Future of Education at Prisma w/ David Waitzer

our goal is to repair them for a future that it would be absurd for us to assume that we understand and can predict. So we're trying to prepare them to be successful on their own terms, kind of meeting where they're at and helping them get to where they want to be, but also helping them develop these skills that they will be able to apply and kind of whatever way they need to in the, you know, an uncertain future where a few trends are probably pretty clear. Hey everyone and welcome back to Ready to Redo. Today we have David Waitzer from Prisma, an online school that's doing things super differently, building children's natural curiosity and fostering what we'll talk about in this episode of Hard Fun. If you're going, hmm, why is that name so familiar? Well, in episode 51 and 53 we had Victoria and Emily come onto the show who are from, you guessed it, Prisma. You're in for such a treat so without further ado, enjoy. Okay, well, welcome David. It's, we're no longer strangers because we have had a decent chat over the last couple of months, which led to the, the led to the very, very amazing experience where I got to actually sit in on Prisma lessons and the Prisma day-to-day sessions, which was incredible. So welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much. It is great to be here. Yay. And the first, let's start with the very first question, which is in the start of this season of Ready to Redo. I made an episode that introduces education on a spectrum. So we've got mainstream schooling on one end and progressives with special ed and re-engagement schools and well-being schools, all the way to the other end where we've got more closer to home schooling and unschooling. So with our audience, we have some people who have listened to the past episodes with Victoria and Emily and some people who are coming into it fresh. So on that spectrum, where would you put Prisma? Yeah, that's an interesting one. I would say that Prisma is kind of, it straddles a bunch of this spectrum and we kind of hit all the way from home schooling up until just before you get to traditional schooling. So the fact that we're fully accredited in the US and working really well with Australian families and families around the world to kind of meet their needs for reporting with whatever bodies, you know, government bodies they work with, that brings us more towards the traditional schooling model. Our pedagogical approaches are extremely radical, I guess you could say, right, like at least progressive and we are a natural fit, like one of our three kind of main categories of families that tend to really love us are home schooling families and typically they love us for one of two reasons. The first being like they hit a point in their home schooling journey where they no longer felt like they had the expertise, like the academic expertise they needed to kind of give their child the rigor that they wanted for that stage of their growth journey or they're just like absolute home schooling rock stars but they're kid or they want community and they want their learner to be in a community of folks working together. So I'd say kind of on that spectrum, I guess we have some like unschooling elements to us in that, you know, we reject the notion that young people are vessels that need to be filled and that we consider young people to be deserving of the same amount of respect as anybody of any age and I guess another way that we could be considered unschooling slash homeschooling towards the unschooling side is we try to help our learners accomplish their growth goals and surpass them in as little time as possible. So we're definitely not trying to fill up their time, we're trying to give them really, really high value stuff to work on. Great and to fill in for the audience who aren't really aware of Prisma's particular values and the way that they operate and teach, how would you very, I guess in a intro to Prisma way that's easily digestible, how would you explain the the organization's values? Yeah, totally. So I guess number one, we are project-based, transdisciplinary, authentic learning focused. Our big goal is to help learners develop a deep understanding of universally applicable constructs and frameworks, right? Because our goal is to repair them for a future that it would be absurd for us to assume that we understand and can predict. So we're trying to prepare them to be successful on their own terms, kind of meeting where them where they're at and helping them get to where they want to be, but also helping them develop these skills that they will be able to apply and kind of whatever way they need to in the, you know, an uncertain future where a few trends are probably pretty clear. And I guess something that's also worth mentioning with us is what we do is we take, we have this incredible team of curriculum designers that kind of take all of the standards that we need for accreditation and some more that we think are just really important. And then we reorganize them typically over two year bands so that at any given time we're doing a deep dive into a specific theme and there's no other than math, which is like kind of siloed because of the need for differentiation. Everything else is kind of mixed together at any given time. So learners are never, you know, explicitly studying social studies or whatever. They're digging into like really immersive kind of authentic exploratory experiences where they hit all of the learning outcomes that in you. Wow. That is intro to Prisma, isn't it? You probably had to do that so many times. You've got the you've got the discipline, hey. I'd like to think about it. Let's back up with the one that you had led with, which is that Prisma is project based. And the fact that it's curriculum, if I'm doing it in Airquartz because it's a very flexible curriculum, but a project based curriculum for people who do not understand what that looks like. Could you just intro that and also some things that I saw with Collab and with workshops as well? Yeah, totally. So I guess maybe a good place to start is more of a personal opinion, but one that I share with a lot of people that I know. So I'm not speaking for anybody else at Prisma necessarily, but I speak for a lot of educators, I guess, where my baseline understanding is that traditional schools have a primary value proposition of acting as a daycare. It's like keep young people busy, keep them, you know, confined physically for long enough for adults to be economically productive, right? And that comes from the third industrial revolution. And you know, we're far beyond that and most other parts of our societies and cultures around the world, but not quite in education. And at Prisma, we come with the understanding that we do not provide daycare as a service, right? And so that automatically means that we probably aren't the right fit for a lot of families, right? And it gives us the opportunity to kind of rethink everything from first principles, right? We were born as an online school and we were born with this understanding where we were trying to figure out, okay, well, if we had an incredible curriculum, if we had coaches that absolutely love what they do and like, really believe in it, you know, if we have families within our community that are really aligned with our values and kind of what we're trying to accomplish over time, you know, all this stuff, like if all this stuff is like, check, check, check, check, check, check, then what's the least amount of time that we would require for a learner to be in kind of classes, those are great. And how would we need to support them outside of those classes so they could be really successful and like learn deeply in a way that really met where they were at, right? So we landed on about 10 hours a week of online group activities, you know, that run from like academic specific to like social emotional executive function type stuff, all with a big focus on community building. And then depending on the learner between probably six and 20 hours a week of kind of independent project based mostly work, with the kind of live time always explicitly building up and supporting the learners and being successful in their project based stuff. And with the project based stuff allowing us to provide this incredible level of differentiation, right? Because if you think about it, like it could kind of be like if we had a train going down this track, everybody's on the same track, but there's maybe like three or four train cars attached to each other. And each train car has like a different level of rigor in the independent stuff, but people can be getting the same level of support in the communal stuff because it's all the same general topic, right? So that allows us to kind of honor learners time, provide them with a lot of time to focus on stuff in their lives that they need that we can't provide them given that we're only online, right? So like finding in-person connections and community, figuring out what's right for them physically and all that kind of stuff. Right. Thank you. And then as they are coming together on these online classes, they are moving towards certain projects that you have brought to them. And for our listeners, what are some of these projects that they have worked on across these last few, and I don't think you work in terms, but more so, these last few months. Yeah, totally. See, we work in, we call them cycles or themes, and analyze it. six weeks each, at least like our core ones. Okay, so what are we doing right now? Right now we are doing a really interesting theme called beauty and beliefs. And it's really aspirational and it was a bit of a risk for us because it covers topics that most young people don't get a chance to like explicitly access in an academic situation until probably high school at an elective or even undergrad potentially. So it's looking at diving into understanding different religions around the world through analyzing their architecture and attire, also kind of solidifying our own personal belief systems and then making these kind of connections that allow us to build kind of more empathy and more ability to do kind of negotiation and conflict resolution across pretty major divides. So the project for this one is a collage which could be kind of anything the kind of base model would be a physical kind of visual classic artistic collage that shows kind of your personal beliefs in contrast or in congruence with some of the key beliefs of the religion that you kind of dove into. And then our kind of literacy component of it is writing on essay about one of your core beliefs and why it's so impactful in your life and doing it in a kind of anecdotal narrative based way to build that kind of empathy with your reader and to help them really understand. A cycle we did before that was build a business, fairly straightforward. So learners built a really in-depth business plan did a bunch of financial modeling, some of them actually launched their businesses, some of them decided to stop at the business plan part. And then while we were studying like effective marketing and critical consumption stuff and then their literacy component was creating marketing materials for their business. And that kind of came together where they presented it. So it tends to be kind of build stuff, make stuff, something physical or digital, but like visually, conceptually representative of your learning coupled with some kind of a literacy based artifact that kind of come together. - Incredible. And when I had dropped in, I do recall a lot of the students working towards their expo. And I would love if you could explain what the expo is and what sort of work they sort of showcase in that expo. - Yeah, totally. So expo day is unreal. One of my favorite days of every cycle if not my favorite day because it's at the end. And we invite members of the community, families, but also friends, whomever, like we have guest workshop speakers every cycle, we invite them, other coaches or other folks on the professional side of the Prisma community. And the learners just present essentially what they're most proud of from that cycle. So the idea is to further solidify this reality that the learning that they're doing and the work that they're producing has authentic value in the world, beyond just kind of accomplishing some arbitrary goal set for them by some adult who has some power over them. So it's just really beautiful thing. And typically learners will choose to lean more into their project or their literacy stuff and pretty much always there's some kind of reflective component where they kind of reflect on something that they've learned that really stands out to them. So something more kind of in terms of academically knowledge they gained or mastery they developed. And then some way that they've grown as a human being which tends to be kind of more open-ended and philosophical perhaps. - And what sort of examples could you share of some Prisma kids and their expo ideas? - Oh man, yeah, okay. So I'll try to give some examples from cycles that I haven't talked about already. So let's go way back. Second cycle that we did after launching on this side of the world. So pretty much exactly a year ago, the cycle was called Toiology. And the project was building up to building your own toy that could propel itself somehow. So there was a strong focus on like physics. Yeah, we were working on a simulation where we were in teams running toy stores analyzing market trends and making a bunch of financial decisions. And then the literacy component was writing a story in which a toy was personified. So kind of like Toy Story-esque. Either using the toy that you created or another one, but you know using all those literacy devices that are really helpful in that specific context. So we had some insane presentations that expo day. We had a bunch of like physical toys, you know, like they ranged from, I guess something that was really beautiful about it is they ranged so widely in terms of like complexity to represent the fact that we have some learners with us who are like nine and we have others that are 13 and you know, and the age isn't necessary. The predictor of exactly what would be reasonable for them to aspire to when it comes to this kind of stuff. But you know, so we had everything from classic like wind up, elastic band, propelled stuff, to gravity, magnet, propelled stuff, to like water working against gravity. You know, but all really, really kind of fascinating stuff that really helped the learners show their personalities. Another example that I loved when we did a more kind of medical biology themed unit, learners were picking a body system, a human body system to become an expert in. And then they ended up picking one way to show in a model, either like physical, digital, whatever. An example of that body system working in a typical fashion. And then they picked an atypical condition and helped to show how that, how like the body system works in that case. And we had a lot of learners picking stuff that actually impacted them. So like celiac disease. We had like this one that we're creating this incredible thing to show like the fibers in your digestive system using inflated surgical gloves. And then she would like move a piece of corn through with all this powder on top. And the gloves would knock it off and it like showed the reaction when somebody was gluten. Or we had this, we had two kids create models on the beach where they like dug out in the sand. One of them was the blood system. One of them was the nervous system. And then they were kind of like, this is it function normally. And then they're like dumping a bunch of water and it shows how like things will like overrun. And you know, we had one learner with ADHD trace themselves on a massive piece of paper and draw out like to scale their nervous system and then create two versions of it like when they're on their medication and when they're not. See, I really cool. Like really cool stuff where they're, you know, they're doing things in this really advanced way that also really connects with their passions and they're kind of goals from themselves. - Wow. And is this all online or is there a physical in-person element to this? - Yeah, it's all online. So in North America, because we have, you know, that's where we originally launched and that's where we have like a tremendous concentration of learners within our community. We do have some official Prisma in-person events, including some like, you know, week-long camp kind of stuff that people are invited to. And those have been amazing from what I've seen and heard in base in Asia, I have an added chance to join them. And in the future, we plan on doing that kind of stuff here once we grow a bit more. But in terms of like the learning that Prisma school focuses on at a base layer, it is 100% online. - And that's a nice segue actually, 'cause I would love to, especially for people who are perhaps skeptical of online learning. And it's hard not to be. Honestly, I understand why because COVID learning, we can associate a lot of the online study with that sort of mainstream learning. Obviously what we've heard so far is that Prisma is anything, you know, anything from mainstream. It's probably, yeah, it doesn't belong in the same category at all. My fur those who are skeptical of that online learning. How would you respond to their concerns and pitch Prisma as a place that is actually really utilizing technology in the sense that it's serving the education? - Yeah, sure. I mean, I would start by saying that we are very aware that Prisma isn't the right fit for the majority of families. Right, again, going back to this daycare thing and also going to this understanding that like the way we view education is quite progressive, right? So for people who have a really traditional expectation for what their child will get education out of their educational experience, but actually more so for more traditional folks when they think about the process through which their child will kind of grow unless you can kind of suspend your disbelief on that one. If you're still holding on to that, we're probably not going to work super well because we need buy-in from the family, right? So now that we've removed whatever 90-ish percent of the, you know, general population for folks that are aligned enough or like within the, you know, zone of proximal alignment with us, a few things that are really important about how online education can work. So first of all, like I was, sorry, I give long answers to short questions. - That's right. - Okay, thank you. Needed that. Okay, so like when COVID hit, I was running a team of upper elementary teachers at an international school in Bolotá, in Colombia, right? So I was in charge for this group of like transitioning into online learning and it was a really interesting, experience because we pretty quickly came to the conclusion that we needed to prioritize community over academic rigor and like maintained engagement and just like therapeutic engagement essentially over academic rigor. And part of that was because, you know, it was an incredibly traumatic time, but also part of it was because if you were trying to transport in person physical shared space learning to the online space, you're doomed. Right? Like there's no way it works well, right? Because so many of the mechanisms that traditional educators, educators rely on just don't exist online, right? So lucky for us at Prisma, we did the opposite, right? Where we built it for online from the very beginning because essentially our founders wanted a more traditional experience or sorry, a less traditional, more flexible, sorry, educational experience for their kids and they couldn't find an online school that they thought was kind of what they were looking for. So they started working on building up Prisma and hired a bunch of awesome people who now I get to call colleagues, but we do a really great job because the online aspect of it, this kind of like catch and release model where, you know, some of the time is spent in group settings. A lot of the time is spent independent, even when they're working independently, they get a ton of support asynchronously and potentially synchronously depending on what they need and you know, how it makes sense for the family. That allows us to really customize learners' experiences to help them grow in an accelerated rate. And you know, we do map testing, which is less of a thing in Australia, but that's kind of like the main way that North American and a lot of international schools around the world measure growth in literacy and math. And our learners tend to progress at about 50% faster than comparable schools that are like traditional brick and mortar ones. It's like a forum of standardized testing typically opt in for a lot of schools and it's typically used as an assessment for learning and for comparison. So the number one reason why schools would choose to use it. And honestly, I'm from Canada and we don't use it in public schools there for my understanding and that's the kind of education that I received. So I can't speak on the USA whether or not it's mandatory in schools there. I don't think it is. But yeah, the big idea with these map tests are to see where folks are at compared to people in their age group in math and literacy. Just just those two things. Educators and educational systems use it to kind of benchmark their learners against, you know, others in groups, but then also dig in individually and see how they can support people. So we use it like three times per year, mostly as a way to measure our learners growth. So they can kind of look back and reflect over the last three, four months, you know, how much should you progress in this, how much should you progress in that, where you at compared to the average globally. Okay, so now we're changing tracks and really zooming in on what Prismacol's hard fun. Hard fun, you might say. Yes, well, if that's peaked your interest, let's hear what David has to say. Just to take a step back from what we've been talking about, you know, there's there's common themes that it would be nice to tie up and sort of connect all we've been talking about. So Prismar really seems to be prioritizing real life skills. And when you're talking about the trans discipline subject, so it's not just English and you've just learned English and that's it, and then you do an assessment on English, and then you do one on maths. It's really blending all of the skills and the strands and knowledge all in one cohesive project, which is generally what you would see in the workplace and what you would see after school. And there also seems to be a level of challenge and a level of holding the children and the teens accountable for the growth that they want to take and where they want to take it with the expo days and that level of freedom. And what I came across on the website was really interesting. It mentioned hard fun. And I wonder, yeah, I would love for you to speak on that. What is hard fun and how does Prismar foster that hard fun? Yeah, totally. So I mean, like, tendentially getting us into that, going back to this idea of, you know, map testing and that's like being a traditional test. That's literally the only time at Prismar that learners ever take anything that resembles a traditional test, right? Everything else is expansive project-based exploratory, you know, our math assessments are called checkpoints, and they're literally like projects, you know, and they have all these click-throughs and they're all highly contextualized to connect the concepts with the real world. And learners always have a choice between two different themes. So it's the same math, but it could be like skydiving or I don't know, sea creatures, and then they pick whichever one they care more about, but they, you know, exhibit the same level of mastery regardless. And I think that kind of gets us into this idea of hard fun, where it's like, number one, if the adults in the room in online context, I suppose, can honestly say that all of the stuff that they are guiding the learners towards working on is valuable for the learners. Like, there's, you know, there's no jumping through hoops. So if they really believe that, if the learners believe that, and if it's high quality work that the learners can see kind of paying off, then I think that puts us in a position to kind of like toggle these two switches, you know, and like it's kind of like tension and joy, you know, or like fun. And it's kind of like as long as fun always, always tension at least a little bit on average, you know, over, let's say a couple of weeks, we can really crank up the tension. And I think that's the idea with, with hard fun, right? So, you know, the work they do is at an extremely high level intellectually. And it's highly facilitated through the structure of how our curriculum team puts together our live and kind of independent experiences. And it's highly supported through all these like funny rabbit holes and they go click throughs. And because it's fully online, you know, it's super normal for say if you have a page of work to include, you know, a bunch of hot links, maybe like a little Easter egg in the corner for somebody who gets excited and it's like, well, I know if I see an egg in the corner, like, I'm going to click it, it's going to be something cool related to this. And I know I don't have to click it, but like if I'm into it, I might as well, you know, so there's all these opportunities for like expansive exploration and kind of learn or agency. So I think that's how yeah, hard fun comes together for us. And to be able to facilitate that hard fun, this goes back to when you had mentioned the one-on-ones and the feedback and the mentoring with your coaches. When the Prisma children and teens are being guided in that mentorship phase, what does that actually look like and what do the coaches do to facilitate that hard fun and identify, you know, oh, how can we sort of challenge Bobby and where can Bobby go? Classic Bobby. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I guess it really depends. So there's, you know, a suggested structure for one-on-ones depending on the community and the needs of them, it'll either be, you know, a larger amount of time every other week where learners are meeting with their coach or every week, but like a shorter amount of time. And depending on the learner and what they need, you know, how much trust there is and how much self, like how how how high their executive functioning skills are and whatever, like what additional supports they need or whatever, the kind of that individual individualized one-on-one support could look really different, right? So for some learners that like fly through stuff independently, but have trouble feeling connected, it might be like just playing games together and having really casual conversations like building trust with the intention that that might kind of build their capacity to appreciate kind of social engagement in a group context could be troubleshooting for learners who are struggling with some kind of like social growth issues or whatever. It's very common for learners to join us when they've had, well, it would be the right way to say it, maybe unsafe for unhealthy experiences and more traditional education systems. So a lot of the time, you know, time could be spent on that, like, kind of like helping them get back to a place where they feel like they're operating from a position of power could be working on stuff, you know, some learners just have trouble getting through the work or like creating schedules for themselves, right? You know, there's one North American coach that I know she gets a tour of the chicken coop every time she has a one-on-one with a certain learner and they she gets updates on all the chickens, you know, so it's really whatever they need and it can really range from being like super academic to super loose and like from the untrained eye or maybe who does? You could probably make an argument even if you had a trained eye, like maybe somewhat kind of superfluous, you know, but it's, I mean, we're pretty careful to make sure that that time is time will spend. Right. And if we were to, I guess, take a step back for any listener who is a bit confused with how the day might even look because there's so many things going on. You've got colabs, you've got the mentorship. What does a typical day look like? Yeah, totally. So right now, because we're quite small on this side of the world, a typical day exists within about a four-hour band. Also, worth mentioning, we never have anything that's considered mandatory on Fridays because so I'm going to, so many of our families and learners and professionals love that flexibility. So typically, let's say, for example, AEST time zone, right? Our younger learners would start their first kind of group thing at 10am and that would be stand up. So we'd all come together. We'd, you know, go over kind of announcements for the week and then we do some kind of activity. We love doing chit chat so it's basically community-generated questions like kind of conundrums or like would you rather stuff that they come up with and kind of share in a group chat and then you know we curate into slides. So you know some kind of tricky question like today was would you rather know all the secrets of the universe or have unlimited money which to me there's a very clear answer because if you have the secrets of the universe you can probably make some money but it was actually a 50/50 vote so they so then we send them into breakout rooms they discuss which allows them to kind of like get over any anxiety around social stuff at the start of their day and then we come back to the main room share out and then we do like a pull and kind of see where we stand as a group and keep moving and then we get into some content that is supportive of what we're doing in our project and literacy work but like a little bit looser so today we were thinking about like the prisma power that we're focusing on which is like one of our five key kind of life skills so right now we're focusing on applied curiosity so we play this game it was basically like a really race where you know they have to nominate one person from their breakout room who they sent to the main room I give them a question they run back find the answer then another person has to come and that was like really building you know their questioning techniques and their communication techniques and their like time management skills in team environments online which you know as I'm sure you know can be super challenging in groups and then we tend to do something kind of wrap up and then we have some co-working time where they can kind of focus on socializing while maybe getting a bit of work done or like hop into a breakout room that's like silent and kind of just work on their stuff and then I can kind of do ad hoc like non-scheduled one-on-one support for anybody that feels like they needed at that moment and then they kind of head off to do their thing three days a week they would have half an hour of math which we call numbers lab which again is like very expansive conversational connected to the real-world game activity based stuff and then if they have a one-on-one scheduled for that day that would fit in somewhere and then every day Monday to Thursday we have our main kind of block which is either colab which you join so that's one hour of lifetime completely focused on that lifetime so they never have any independent work done outside of it and it's all focused on collaborative from solving communication and emotional like social emotional skills and then the other two days of the week we have project workshop and literacy lab so project workshop supports the project work that they're doing independently and gives them opportunities to share their work with each other and construct meaning together and whatever and literacy lab the same that like provides them kind of this like really great jumping off and regroup point every week to keep them on those those rails and that's basically it and then and then each day we have half an hour of enrichment which kind of like clubs that at this point are quite unstructured so like Mondays we have art Tuesdays it's build stuff Wednesdays today was board gaming but like online they like playing Uno online or chess or you know what I was just basically like people show up if they want and do what they want and we facilitate it as a way to help them connect and then tomorrow's video gaming within certain limits so yeah so typically four-hour block within that four-hour block they're online for about two to two and a half hours right and I assume at the start of the cycle so this is sort of as the cycles progressing you'd have these but at the very start they would be introduced to the overall arch over arching themes and the activities and the projects and then they continue on yeah totally so like you know our six-week kind of cycle arc is very much that right so it's kind of like we start off like super like whoa wow like why not like what's this you know and then we kind of get into okay like we got it you know what's like the high-level stuff we want internalize and then and then it's like okay now we start like whittling it down it's okay like we're producing our tangible evidence of mastery here so like let's like kind of zoom in and use everything we learned at the top of the arc to kind of drill down and create this thing that we're going to share on expo day and it's just always going we also have colab showcases at the end of each cycle where we invite members of the community and they and the learners show the skills that they develop during colab so that would either be like you know say if it's a business simulation kind of thing they're making decisions in real time but then also showing their like historical decisions and like where that got them and they're reflecting on you know they create some kind of a chart to show their profits or whatever and then reflect on that or if it's debate you know we would have a new topic and they would kind of debate it in real time in front of an audience. So now we're changing tracks this time really seeing how prismat challenges students to be problem solvers especially for problems not yet solved. With the fact that prismat kids are doing a lot and learning a lot and reckoning with a lot of real world problems it's very interesting because what prismar writes about on its website and what it really is proud of is the fact that prismat kids are tackling complex problems without clear answers and I like that concept a lot because as a teacher I really at times get frustrated with the fact that I'm not the knowledge holder I at least shouldn't be because if I'm testing students on stuff that we already know they always have that level of oh well this is a higher thing above me and it's already been solved so I just need to check and make sure that I know but the answer is already there and the teacher has it and they already know. Yeah interesting. With this new outlook on problem solving and the fact that some problems have not been solved and don't have clear answers could you provide examples of perhaps projects that the kids have done or concepts that you've heard in the prismar circle of where they are demonstrating the fact that they're introduced to complex problems but there's no clear answer to how to solve it. Yeah that's a great question. That's a really good question. So I think that you know we definitely have clear desired outcomes and the range that is included within that those desired outcomes is massive compared to what more traditional education organizations would have. I think that things like for example in a previous cycle we were focusing a lot on kind of future technology ethics stuff so you know debating about the use of AI and different professional capacities would it be cool to start using it more in the medical field or law or maybe more creative fields like all these fields are creative you know like more traditionally creative fields or you actually using different AI tools as well as more legacy tools you know that people like you and I have probably more experience with and then reflecting on what the advantages and disadvantages of each were and you know where the where the opportunities lie those kind of things I think we end up with a bunch of questions but through the process of exploring these things within the like constructs that are provided I think that we end up walking out with like a fair amount of confidence in our ability to explore these unknowns as they present themselves. Maybe that's a good way to explain it and I think that's probably one of the most obvious example I can think of but I think just generally speaking that's always our goal right our goal is is never to be like when you're talking about in more traditional kind of school environments and they're like you know the answer to this exists and I check it off and I move on to the next answer and like probably forget a lot of what I did before because the goal was not to kind of have this as an applicable tool or you know at least a widely applicable tool the goal was to like show that I could do this thing once and then that kind of allow me to move on to the next thing so for us it tends to be a lot more of like we're leaving each cycle with questions and understandings and capabilities that will serve us in a wide range of future applications and and that we're quite likely to hold on to because nobody's drilling us on the the facts you know in the details of it I know myself as a learner I'm terrible at trivia you know because like that's not really how I see the world and I think that that really serves me in a lot of ways and it's embarrassed me a bunch of times when friends of mine have assumed I'm good at trivia you know so yeah I think that's kind of how we do it right and there are so many things that the kids are learning in terms of hard skills and the problem solving skills and the critical thinking skills and all of these skills which are necessary and keep getting practice because they are important for the future I have a deep love for mental health and well-being and the social and emotional skills that school often overlooks and I wonder because we actually haven't chatted about this so I'm curious about does Prisma actually teach mental health in the way that the kids are learning themselves how to take care of themselves and who they are and how they understand themselves just that little bit better oh yeah 100% I mean like that's super core to pretty much everything we do so it's woven into all of our curriculum with you know the really deep-seated belief that like to be successful you know as the time progresses and as you know more and more technology becomes available more you ubiquitously that can kind of augment a lot of things that we do. The thing that's gonna make us most successful is our ability to kind of know ourselves and give ourselves what we need to feel strong, like to move from a position of strength. So I think that it's super woven in. And I think also partially it's because it's online and partially it's because of how intensely we believe growth happens in a really individualized fashion. And it's like, you know, if you're trying to push anyone to fit into like really arbitrary measurements of success, you're probably doing them a massive disservice, right? So I think we're constantly grappling with this understanding that well, we need relatively arbitrary measurements of success, you know, because we are a real school, you know, so we exist within that ecosystem. And we're always looking for ways to make growth really authentic and tailored to word learners, like for example, instead of giving grades on report cards, our learners earn badges. In order to earn badges, they have to reflect on some key metrics that represent that level of mastery. So you know, badge might be, you know, literacy analysis, let's say. And then there's a few key objectives that they need to be able to show that they've accomplished. And in order to earn the badge, they have to fill out this form with whatever variety of media they want could be voice notes, could be a screen recording, could be screenshots with annotations, could just be paragraph form, whatever. But essentially they're showing like I showed that I mastered this when I did this. Like, oh, part of it is, you know, being able to rise. Well, when I got feedback from my coach and then from my friends, like this thing was really tricky for me to stomach, because I went into it feeling super confident. And then I realized that I was like super off base. So, you know, so everything that they do to exhibit their growth involves a tremendous amount of critical reflection and like vulnerability, which requires us to cultivate this environment that's like really safe and supportive. So yeah, it's all bundled up and incredibly central. And that cycle of self reflection is perhaps one of the most important things in the learning cycle or how. How we learn and develop new skills is to always reflect over how that went and then how we can change our method or continue a method that works. And I do find that that that last bit of the reflection is often the one that gets forgotten or the one that sort of, oh, we'll just add it on. At the moment, a lot of my students are ignoring the reflection, the little, how do you think you went? Why do you think they've just done the outcomes and then they've just completely ignored the self reflection like it doesn't even exist. Which I find very fascinating is just me going, no, everyone, we got to reflect. It's important. But with that idea of reflection also comes the idea that they are taking agency of their learning. So they are the person who is controlling their learning as opposed to it being given to them. So I do remember when I had dropped in to see students teaching each each other what to do or skills. I remember one had taught the rest of the group how to screen share or how to access the badges which was really sweet. And also the idea of when the Prismakids are trying to earn their badges. Like what you said before, they need to pitch themselves and to say why do they think that they deserve that badge. So what other ways does Prismak actually promote that student agency and really get the kids to know that they are the ones doing the learning and not being done to them. Yeah, totally. A great question. Maybe an example of it. I mean, there's a bunch and it's like really woven in. An example that stood out to me when I had the pleasure of joining Prismak to help out on the curriculum team for a few months before we launched on this other world. And it was this wonderful way to kind of get to know people and things and also like a very humbling experience because curriculum development is not my specialty by any means. But everybody was very kind and accommodating. But something that really stood out to me was every session starts with a clear value proposition. So it's like here is our main goal. Like this is what we're hoping to accomplish. And then here's how we're going to do it step by step. And so it kind of like front loads this process and this value proposition is kind of like first opportunity to buy in essentially. And then everything beyond that is always created based off of what we believe to be best practice from kind of neurodevelopment standpoint. Right. So I mean, it's not rocket science, but you know, there'll be some kind of like a hook fun engagement that kind of gets synapses like firing and like opening up. And then something that's more instructive, you know, striking while there is hot, it's like getting content in there the more like school version of that session. And that'll always be quite short like less than 25% of the overall time. And then typically we'll take a quick break where learners can kind of self-regulate or whatever. Or just enjoy kind of goofing off or watching a quick video or whatever playing a game together. And then we'll get into something that's typically group work almost always group work and always producing something of value connected to the hook and the kind of learning that we did before that. And then we move into some kind of reflection and I guess like expansion activity to wrap things up where it's kind of like this is what we did. How is it valuable for like what we're thinking about doing and what we're working on, you know, in a broader context. And how might we apply this in ways beyond the obvious. So that's typical. I think also just. honoring the learners journey and providing as much agency as possible within the kind of broad confines of what we're doing to like make sure that everybody's still feeling connected and feeling supported. And then also just really helping learners reflect on what they would need to do to be successful to feel successful right at the end of each one of these cycles. So you know we have these milestones we have the showcase for colab we have expo day. Also we have all these badges that they can earn and you know there's always like different factors and some learners really prioritize one thing over the other. Some learners really go above me on like the visual design stuff some learners will write these impeccable scripts and have like one visual at the whole time but it's so gripping and it kind of allows them to explore their strength intention points and kind of further develop their repertoire of how to express themselves in a way that feels really authentic to them. And also gets them the results that they need to feel kind of like validated you know and feel like they're really like building and maintaining momentum. Okay, on to our final segment first David speaks to how Prisma leads into higher education or tertiary before wrapping up the episode with some rapid fire. When I was actually talking to friends about Prisma and the concept of Prisma and a question and very understandably so because a lot of us have gone through the mainstream schooling process first they asked does Prisma offer high school classes and then how does that actually align with the process of higher education. Yeah great timing to ask that question because this academic year we have our first graduating class of high school learners. Yeah, some of the whom have been with us since grade four so like year five Australia which is wild. So our entire existence as a learning organization because we start in grade four slash year five and us rather and we're late in the game when it comes to you know university applications for for undergraduate degrees right. So our high school is different than our middle school because we need way more specialization academically and we need like both on the learner and the coach side. So I mean just like I guess high school and traditional schools right you end up working with more professionals and you end up having more choices and you end up having less flexibility in the sense that you're not doing these like immersive. Kind of like a theory all things you know and you really kind of zoom in into the stuff you need to kind of set yourself up for the next step. The quote unquote real world depending on what point people start measuring that and our learners have been really successful like we have learners going to Ivy League schools we have learners that aren't going to post secondary at all because they already have businesses or you know are like super competitive in sports. So we have learners essentially like a broad sweep authentic statement would be that our learners are basically doing what they were hoping they would be doing heading into the next stage and it seems like a pretty safe that as time goes on. They will only be more successful if they decide to pursue I mean there will be like this fun inverse correlation I think because like likely post secondary education as it currently stands will become less and less of a priority for people in general as time goes on and our learners will become more and more attractive to legacy post secondary schools as they try to figure out how to keep up with the times. You know even even a great for learners have a portfolio website where they're documenting you know their work. So they have like proof work but also their hobbies and they all have these like quests where they're you know picking these big actually not not all because it's like somewhat opt in but the vast majority have these quests that they're working on. It's like these big goals that they have for themselves based off of their personal kind of passions and growth goals Like so it might be you know building a website learning to code You know growing their YouTube channel focusing on whatever stop motion or whatever it is or you know One learner's been building out a garden to support pollinators for like a year and a bit now and you know now There's like a frog hotel and there's like cool stuff there Because you know, so there's all or one learner wants to be like a professional pastry chef And his goal is to cook a three-layer wedding cake kind of quality cake, you know over so they're all doing these things and Documenting them whatever so you can imagine you know if they stay with us for a few years a lot of our year eight or Nine learners probably have better portfolios than a lot of kids that are graduating from high school now and it exhibits these like real skills and whatever that I think universities and more importantly kind of professional organizations We'll be looking for more and more over a kind of legacy qualifications True that there is the misconception right that the diploma is everything the high school diplomas everything because then it brings you into Higher education. I mean that's the general process But I think a lot of people forget that there are alternative ways to still enter higher education if you want to Whether you've been doing homeschooling there still is a way But what you were saying with they have now skills or they have a folio Were they able to really identify what they have done and why they have done it? Which is really attractive to anyone in higher? You know whether it's the boss or the hiring manager what they want to see is a Candidate who knows themselves and what their strengths are and I can say that when I left high school I could sort of say that but not confidently and I didn't have a folio behind me. That's for sure I just had a lot of anxiety I Feel like you know that you you say really well the kind of like what and how and why stuff? I feel like I didn't develop those skills until my mid-20s and of course now like when I'm looking to kind of higher for you know Whatever or when I'm looking to work with somebody on a cloud of project The thing I want the most is to be able to trust that they can kind of do their own work and That they can effectively communicate kind of where they're at where they were how they got there where they want to go You know like forecast bumps in the road be open to critical feedback like all these kind of you know Those are the things that are gonna predict our success You know with all like the stuff of like grit and all that like Clearly there's a whole can in Now that like that is the number one predictor of success. So yeah, we're definitely kind of aligned with that understanding Great because we're going into rapid fire right now and that actually really leads into one of the rapid fire questions David which is a skill hard-of-soft skill that you think is severely underrated an important in today's society and why you think that I think it's like joyous curiosity and Specifically like the thing I think about a lot is how being able to not to like grapple with Unknowing like the lack of knowledge or the lack of ability or the lack of skill in a way that feels fun You know like almost like a game that's such a superpower and I feel like it's it's fairly hard to cultivate through explicit instruction right but over it's kind of like this marathon cultivation thing where just you have to exist within environments and be around or be influenced by people that like kind of model this and like curate Opportunities for that kind of growth and yeah, I think I think that's a huge one. I Love the word joyous. I've heard curiosity You know that that deep curiosity, but a joyous curiosity. I really like that combination I think especially in education institutions. I've seen and have worked in It's hard to cultivate because yeah the environment is everything the educators need to be so passionate the peers they really determine the mood and Whether education is something that comes back to agency is education being done to you because if it is Generally that joyous curiosity won't Ventuate because there's something else that needs to be done. That's not on their timeline I love that if this isn't really rapid fire is it this is just another question. No I'm sorry. I'm just hold on all right. Let's go to the next one. Okay Next rapid fire a book or a podcast that you have been really enjoying lightly Okay, the last book I read was Nudge Which was kind of you know like canemain, Sunstein all these behavioral economists and it wasn't super fun It was like I spent a lot of time when I was doing a doctorate that I probably will never finish I was focusing on kind of behavioral economics in Education management So I used to read a lot of these people and I love it and I hadn't written a while So I enjoyed kind of like brushing up, but it really felt like a textbook So I'm not sure if I would recommend it for anyone that wasn't super in dual Well, last book that I read that I really enjoyed that I also like I'm excited was actually Things called never split the difference Which is it's a book on negotiating techniques written by think an FBI or CIA or whatever the agency would be Hostage negotiator But it was it was really just such a lovely reminder of how everything When it comes to all this stuff that we do as educators is so connected and I was like reading You know this guy who's you know talk down terrorists for his whole career give advice This is completely applicable to the work that you and I do as educators And it's not because there's you know anything nefarious about the people that we work with It's just humans like it's just people who need meaning and structure and clarity and like opportunity It's just like so Universal so I thought that was really refreshing and it was a fun read like so yeah Cool, oh one other one that I read before that one was how I think it's called how emotions are made And that was also like my fun read like it was kind of textbooky Not as bad as as noise, but um really cool kind of like science around human emotions And I don't know if you ever saw the the TV show lie to me or like read about you know this like No, actually like there are a lot of these theories around how human emotions are universal and universally expressed based off of like Micro muscle movements and whatever and a parent this person doesn't consider that accurate and like gives a bunch of evidence But I think they really drove home for me when I was reading that book was how Emotions are the core of everything, you know, and we like talk about like controlling our emotions as if that's a real thing Abotions are literally the only pure indicator we have Access to mentally right like everything else is On observation of emotions or analysis of emotions or an application of you know And it's just like really helpful to get back to that and be like okay like we can't just bulldoze over the fact that like We need to be really really careful about how we're feeling and how about other people are feeling and that's like kind of Where we should start everything from I'm definitely gonna check that out cool Next rapid fire question Highlight from the week Yeah, yeah, that's a great question There have been a few honestly, so we Confirmed our first high school student for this side of the world about a week ago and it was Thank you so much and they're not even a current learner Like they're just somebody who found Unreal such a cool fact like perfect fit for kind of this like trailblazing thing So that really excites me because I'm super excited to kind of be involved in that really hands-on and kind of explore that And then also really excited by this clarity that I had Kind of and and it had discussed in my last meeting with with our CEO Kristen About how we're definitely gonna grow a fair amount more on this side of the world in august And we need to start thinking about like how to find the right fit people to bring on to the team And so I've been kind of like madly sketching different potential Schedules and how that would look and like you know different responsibilities and breakdowns and all that And that's just super exciting to me because yeah such a fascinating kind of Growth journey to be on from like a year and a couple months ago when we had 10 learners to now having 30 And just like probably gonna have around 50 you know, you know, like it's just like crazy that I get to be In the front seat for all of this doing stuff that I feel so aligned with like so proud of you know So yeah, I've been feeling a lot of kind of gratitude as I've been just flexing my thinking Oh gratitude is good, right when you have something that you Your values align it's it's really the epitome of the stars align like you feel it in your soul. Hey, yeah, totally I feel I lost and last rapid fire A quote that you really like Yeah, this is a funny one because I'm not good at quotes again like But I actually I had have two that I like that I think of as quotes But I'm not sure if they're actually direct quotes Fine it is just something that we can leave the listeners thinking okay awesome the first I would attribute it to Socrates, but I I've googled it in the past when people have questioned me on it and haven't been able to actually find documentation of it But it's let me ask you a question for your information information. And I feel like that's a really beautiful way to summarize the kind of mentor role in like a pretty optimal approach. And then another one that I really love that is loosely attributed to two different people one who might have a strong preference for is something like it's like it's like we see the world as we are. And I'm nice, Nyn who's like this French kind of writer and poet and just like this wonderful creative mind is attributed also like some American businessman who's like way less exciting. But so I go with unease. And that went to me is so cool to think about how you know we just like project so much. And it's like so easy to start making assumptions and like construct these like seemingly really well-founded understandings like complex understandings of things and people and whatever. And oftentimes they're like majorly false. So it's a great way to kind of stay grounded I think. I feel like Prisa is very very grounded in its approach which is nice to see especially in the education space. And the intentions are literally just to do whatever's right for the kids who are part of it. So grateful to have you here. And also Prisa obviously so grateful to have you as part of them. It's an exciting time. Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, it's all cool. Yeah, thank you so much, Joe. I really hope we get a chance to hang out together again. You are welcome anytime you want to come hang out with the crew. Maybe super happy to see you. Thank you. (upbeat music)