Matt Beaudreau Show Notes: Matt Beaudreau is the Founder of Acton Academy Placer Schools. He is also the co-founder at Apogee Strong Mentorship Program. He helps driven entrepreneurs open student-led campuses for real education and Freedom. Key Takeaways: 00:00:13 Favorite thing about working about young learners. 00:05:28:17 Examples where you sai…

Show Notes: Joseph Connor is a startup founder, attorney, and teacher. He is the co-founder of SchoolHouse, a micro school company. Joseph is a teacher and lawyer who loves helping great educators start schools. Joseph founded SchoolHouse, an at home micro school company, and helped them scale to over 50 schools in 9 states. He started his career a…

Catherine Fraise is the Founder and President of 100 Roads, the Founder of Workspace Education, and WorkspaceSKY Teens. She has worked in education for 30 years. WorkspaceSKY Teens is a brand new destination for learning just for teens. Teens choose academics from anywhere, join an advisory and enjoy incredible social networking opportunities. 100 …

Show Notes: Victoria Ransom is the founder and CEO of world's first co-learning network that fully replaces regular school. Prisma is an educational startup providing its own live learning platform for 4th-8th graders (approx. age 9-14). It is Learner-centric, self-paced, outcomes-driven, interdisciplinary, and hands-on. Beyond the reading write an…

Tiersa McQueen is a full time working mother of four and a proud unschooler. She is a graduate of Howard University and works full-time in corporate retail as a Location Planner. She’s an advocate of Unschooling and Conscious Parenting. Check out Tiersa’s Twitter and YouTube Channel for great content and more insight on unschooling and self-directe…

Chrisman Frank is the co-founder and CEO of Synthesis, an enrichment club that teaches complex problem-solving and decision-making for kids 7 to 14 through online team games. His co-founder Josh Dahn developed the Synthesis concept while running Ad Astra, a small lab school he built for Elon Musk on the SpaceX campus. Before Synthesis, Chrisman was…

Angela J. Hanscom is a pediatric occupational therapist and founder of TimberNook—an award-winning developmental and nature-based program that has gained international popularity. She is the author of Balanced and Barefoot: How Unrestricted Outdoor Play Makes for Strong, Confident, and Capable Children. Hanscom is also a frequent contributor to The…

Peter Gray is the author of Psychology, an introductory textbook now in its sixth edition, and, most recently, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life. It discusses how to bring more play into kids’ lives, the catalyst that led him to explore play’s benefits,…

Lenore is the Founder of Free-Range Kids and President at Let Grow, the national nonprofit promoting childhood independence. After her newspaper column “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone” created a media firestorm, Lenore got the nickname “America’s Worst Mom.” She went on to write Free-Range Kids, the book-turned-movement. Second Editi…

Jeff Sandefer lives a dual life as an entrepreneur and a Socratic Guide. As an entrepreneur, he founded his first company at age 16 and went on to found or co-found seven successful businesses. As a Socratic teacher at the University of Texas, Jeff’s students five times voted him the school’s Outstanding Teacher and Businessweek named him one of th…

Garrett Smiley is the Co-Founder of Sora Schools, an education startup based in Atlanta. Sora is a virtual, project-based high school where students explore their interests, learn however is best for them, and gain exposure to future careers and fields of work Prior to Sora, Garrett co-founded a charity which built wells in developing nations calle…

Charles Wheelan is the Founder and Co-Chair of Unite America. He is a senior lecturer and policy fellow at the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College, a former correspondent for The Economist. He has been selected as one of Dartmouth’s ten best professors by three different graduating classes. He teaches courses on education policy, health care, t…

Matt Barnes is the Co-Founder and Parent Coach at The Education Game. Over 25 years, he has led hospital departments, distributed $500m in philanthropy, run an education reform nonprofit, served on nine educational boards from university to pre-K, and now coaches parents on navigating the education system. His aim is to help every parent grow kids …

Travis Adams is the Chief Executive Officer of MyFirstSale and lives in Tyler, Texas. Travis has a passion for igniting the creativity and uniqueness inside of kids. He owns a summer camp called Camp Huawni and has started and grown multiple companies, including Apex Fun Run (with Scott Donell), Affair Recovery, and Grow My Camp. Travis and his bes…

Jesse McCarthy, founder of MontessoriEducation.com and host of The Montessori Education Podcast, has worked with thousands of children, parents, and teachers over the past 15+ years — as a principal for infants to 8th graders, an executive with a nationwide group of private schools, an elementary & junior-high teacher, and a parent-and-teacher ment…

Clark Aldrich has been called a 'guru' by Fortune Magazine and a 'maverick' by CNN. He and his work in educational media have been featured in hundreds of sources, including CBS, ABC, The New York Times, USA Today, ESPN, AP, Wall Street Journal, NPR, CNET, Business 2.0, BusinessWeek, and U.S. News and World Report. He has been quoted by President O…

Jessica Lahey is a teacher, writer, and mom. Over twenty years, she’s taught every grade from sixth to twelfth in both public and private schools. She writes about education, parenting, and child welfare for The Atlantic, Vermont Public Radio, The Washington Post and the New York Times and is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The G…

Amir Nathoo is the CEO and Co-founder at Outschool. Outschool is a marketplace for live online classes for K-12 learners. He led the development of Square Payroll and also served as CEO and co-founder of Trigger.io. He holds an MEng in Electrical and Information Sciences from The University of Cambridge and he has a young son. Key Takeaways: 00:17 …

Vijay is currently the co-founder, director, and a Socratic Guide at The Humanist Academy. Has two Master's degrees, one in from The University of Chicago (Divinity School), and another in School Leadership and Administration from National Louis University. His professional experience includes teaching high school history and math teacher in inner-…

Aaron Eden’s mission is to re-humanize how we work, learn, live, and lead. Aaron is Executive Director at the Institute for Applied Tinkering, the parent organization of Brightworks which is consistently listed as one of the most innovative schools in the world. He is also a founding partner at Eliad Group, a transformation design firm, where he wo…

Jerry Mintz is the Founder and Director of the Alternative Education Resource Organization. He was the first executive director of the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools (NCACS), and was a founding member of the International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC). In addition to several appearances on national radio and TV shows, …

Esther Wojcicki is famous for three things: teaching a high school class that has changed the lives of thousands of kids, inspiring Silicon Valley legends like Steve Jobs, and raising three daughters who have each become famously successful. What do these three accomplishments have in common? They are the result of TRICK, Esther’s secret to raising…

Samantha Jansky joined Acton Academy as a Socratic guide in 2012, just a few years after its inception. Leading the Elementary school for 4 years, Samantha created systems that fur-ther empowered young heroes in a truly learner-driven environment. She then moved on to specializing in Learning Design Creation (curriculum) and wrote and published the…

Blake Boles is an Experiential Educator who has organized big trips for teenagers through his company Unschool Adventures since 2008. He is a California native and a frequent traveler, hiker, and biker. Blake Boles is the author of The Art of Self-Directed Learning, Better Than College, and College Without High School. He hosts the Off-Trail Learni…

Heather Staker is a researcher and author in the United States who has spent 15 years studying innovation in education and the rise of blended learning as the enabler of student-driven learning. She is the co-author of the Amazon bestseller Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools (San Francisco: Wiley, 2015); The Blended Workbook (S…

Kenneth Danford is the Co-founder and Executive Director at North Star: Self- Directed Learning for Teens in Sunderland, Massachusetts. He has been working intensively with teenagers and their families since 1991. He is the founding Board Member of Liberated Learners through which he consult with others interested in the North Star model. He was a …

Jana Pappas received her Liberal Studies Bachelor Degree in 1998, then her teaching credential and Masters in Education in 2000. She was a former classroom teacher, leader of teacher education courses, tutor of students with language processing differences, and a homeschooler. Now, she is excited to be joining the Education Revolution by offering A…

Kelly Davis is the co-founder and the Director of Education for Galileo. She has taught in various countries throughout Asia, and is thrilled to have the opportunity to build a global school, where kids can learn and develop their best values from all cultures around the world. She lives in Taiwan and is originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia,…

Cassidy Younghans is a Self-Directed Education advocate and facilitator. She was a public school teacher for 5 years before changing her path to focus on Self-Directed Education. She interned at various Self-Directed Education learning spaces including Houston Sudbury School and North Star before founding EPIC Life Learning Community with an amazin…

Michal Leshem is a Cyber Technology Expert with over 15 years of experience in an elite Intelligence unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. She managed large-scale complex development programs and product integrations that delivered breakthrough results, for which she has received the prestigious Israel Defense Prize from the president. In the past fe…

Michael Strong is most recently the founder of expanseonline.co, a virtual secondary school program. He is an experienced school creator whose projects include Moreno Valley High School, a charter school in New Mexico ranked the 36th best public school in the U.S. by Newsweek; Winston Academy, a school for highly gifted students in Florida who succ…

For this episode, our host, Shannon Falkenstein, speaks with Anne Olderog, an Acton Founder who has an impressive wealth of knowledge on education. She is also a Partner at Vivaldi, leading projects on growth/innovation strategy, positioning and brand architecture. She works with education companies such as Blackboard or McGraw-Hill to ensure that …

Maureen O'Shaughnessy, EdD, is the founding director of Leadership Preparatory Academy, a nonprofit progressive micro-school in Washington State. With a master’s degree in educational administration and a doctorate degree in educational leadership, she has an extensive understanding of the components needed to transform the education system. Dr. O’…

In this interview, Sarah Moore of Dandelion Seeds Positive Living shares her story as a worldschooler and a playful parent. Her credentials include publications and speaking engagements all over the globe, undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, certificates in Child Honouring Course from the Raffi Foundation fo…