KindlED
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED
Empowering Kids, Part 3. A Conversation with Prenda Guide, Tara Larsen
Ready to dive into another amazing microschool this week? Tara Larsen from Flagstaff, Arizona, shares her journey from public school parent to Prenda guide. Tara's microschool is a shining light of joyful learning.
Listeners will gain insights into how microschools maintain a learner-centered approach, allowing students to enter a flow state where engagement and curiosity lead to deeper learning experiences. The episode underscores the influence of modeling behaviors for children and challenges listeners to rethink generational teaching patterns. Discover how Prenda's culture empowers children to set and surpass their own learning goals, dispelling myths about student motivation while revealing surprising stories of growth and ambition.
In the final segment, Tara opens up about overcoming societal pressures and initial fears to embrace non-traditional education for her own children. She highlights the benefits of goal setting and autonomy, and the role of Prenda guides in creating magic through supportive and engaging educational spaces.
Learn more about the professional development opportunities for Prenda guides and the supportive community that encourages innovative educational approaches.
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
About the podcast:
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
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Hi and welcome to the Kindled podcast where we dig into the art and science behind kindling, the motivation, curiosity and mental well-being of the young humans in our lives.
Speaker 2:Together, we'll discover practical tools and strategies you can use to help kids unlock their full potential and become the strongest version of their future selves.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Kindle podcast, everyone. Today we are wrapping up our three-part series on what empowered learning looks like in the wild or in a friend of my girl's school. Not that they're wild, they're very organized places.
Speaker 2:You guys are very full of well the one today. She is near wood and she rides horses, so I would say it definitely is in the wild. There you go. So who are we talking to today? Today we are talking to Tara Larson, and she is just so fun. She's the best personality. I've met her a couple of times at Prenda cons, which is a conference that we do for our Prenda guides. Her energy just fills the room, so I cannot wait to talk to her and about how she runs her maker school. So let's go talk to Tara.
Speaker 1:Tara, welcome to the Kindle podcast. We're super excited to talk to you today.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1:All right. So tell everyone a little bit about your background and just give us your story. Who are you?
Speaker 3:So my name is Tara Larson and I'm originally from Queen Creek, arizona. Down the valley I moved to Flagstaff, arizona, about 25 years ago where I was attending Northern Arizona University, where I got to compete in track and field and I got my degree in health sciences with an emphasis in nutrition, and there I met my husband of 20 years. We have seven children. We have three girls and four boys, and our family loves sports. So every season we're doing whatever sports happening that season and I'm a career coach so I love coaching. I do speed training for a lot of teams in our community, I do our softball team and I do travel softball teams, all-star baseball teams, and I love coaching basketball. And our team loves to or my family loves to hike and we want to be fishermen. We're always hoping to catch a fish.
Speaker 2:You're like a big team. I like it that you called yourself a team.
Speaker 3:And we have horses, so we train a lot of ponies and just problem horses. And then I love being a print guide. It's my real passion.
Speaker 2:That is awesome. Okay, so can you describe your micro school and how it differs from, like a traditional classroom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'll start kind of from the beginning. When we started micro school, the families that were with us, they knew what they didn't want, so they didn't want to wear masks and they didn't want a full, you know long school week and they knew they wanted no popular political or social trends. But we didn't really know what we could have. And when we started Prenda it opened this plethora of things we didn't know that was available to us. So things like a four-day school week, a shorter school day, assessments as opposed to testing every week or every day, and then mastery-based learning was like a really big idea for us. And then interest-based learning and then collaborative problem solving and then the goal-based learning.
Speaker 3:So now we've taken the idea of Prenda and took it farther beyond we ever knew possible. So every week the kids get to ride horses, we do monthly field trips, we cook every Thursday in my home, we do career days where we invite people from the community to come to our home and expose the kids to different career paths. We do service projects every month. We love doing like student based activities, spirit days or plays or recitals, things that they love. So it looks a lot different than where we started of things, like we knew what we didn't want and now what we love of things like we knew what we didn't want and now what we love Amazing.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love to see how each Prenda micro school and it's not just one micro school You've created kind of like a little cluster of micro schools out there. How many micro schools do you have in Flagstaff now?
Speaker 3:Well, it's mainly because I have seven children, so I just found guides for their age levels.
Speaker 2:You can have him and you can have her.
Speaker 3:So there's six of us that work together doing different age groups.
Speaker 1:That's really cool because I think it's important to have to give kids this sense of small, like little, like intimate, connected, but then it's also fun to have like a little bit of the big right. I think a lot of people that start micro-schooling there are parts of having a larger community that they miss, and this is a perfect way to solve that with micro schooling is through, like, these clusters of micro schools. We have the same thing in my neighborhood too, where we have, we have a handful of micro schools and then we go do field trips and you like you know there's you're sharing siblings between these micro schools and it's just like really, really fun. I love it. Okay, what inspired you to become a Prenda guide and start your micro school and talk us through like the feelings of like what that was like for you? Did you like how did you hear about Prenda? And were you like, oh yeah, I've got this? Or were you nervous to start it? Like, tell us that story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and were your kids homeschooled before or were they in regular school? Love to hear that part too.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So my inspiration to become a Prenda guide was after COVID, our community. We started a homeschool co-op. So moms and I we would switch off here's my kid, there's your kid and we loved working like right alongside our kiddos, giving them new material, figuring out things that they loved, and we had never been homeschoolers. We were the kind that probably made fun of them. Sorry about that.
Speaker 2:I think I was in that camp too, and now I'm like the one that makes fun of it, the other side. No, I'm kidding, I try not to do either.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So pretty early on we learned the fallacy, though, in this method. We were trying to recreate public school and we could see that even kids that were exact same age, maybe even levels of interest, they were on different levels. And then the other thing is we had workbooks, which was beautiful for parents and organized, but it seemed like something was missing, that the way to teach them is to flip the page, and I just could never, like, how do we solve this? And then the other thing that, as a homeschooler, we love the idea of being with our kids.
Speaker 3:We felt like man, why weren't we given this permission that we have everything we need to teach them or to expose them to new knowledge? Like, why weren't we given this permission that we have everything we need to teach them or to expose them to new knowledge? Like, why weren't we given that permission? But as a homeschooler, you felt like you were disciplining them through education, through their chores, because it's turn the next page, go to the next thing. So we needed a practice that helped empower them, and so, about a year into it, a friend approached us and she had joined Prenda and she's like hey, you're having these problems, try this game changer. But it answered mastery-based learning for us, interest-based learning, empowered learning, setting goals, and it was the answer to what I couldn't figure out learning, setting goals, and it was the answer to what I couldn't figure out.
Speaker 2:That is awesome, okay, so talk us through what your physical space looks like, because, as we know, micro schools can be in homes. I've been to ones that are in a dance studio and a community center and a OT facility. So what does your space look like and how does it work with the other guides that you work with as well?
Speaker 3:So the way that we've developed the space is, through time, just based on needs. So, as a coach, I had every ball net bat. Whatever they wanted to play, I was ready for it. I had tons of saddles for my horses and we backed the forest so we could hike till, you know, days end. But as far as the internal space, where the you know, a lot of the learning happens, that has been developing over time.
Speaker 3:So we had a space in the back that was like a mother-in-law's quarters and it had random chairs in it and we've just over time, accumulated comfy beanbags and little tables and, you know round chairs and layout chairs. And then we got whiteboards that they can do collaborative problem solving. We purchased a TV where we can watch videos together and now we have, you know, posters that have Spanish verses on them or we have like desks where they can put you know, any of the projects that they're working on. So it's an ever changing environment. But, as soon you know, we wanted to make it like public school and then we learned the home is the perfect place to learn. We don't need to make this stuff up, it's all here. We have a kitchen for cooking and the outdoors for exploring.
Speaker 1:I love that. So talk to us a little bit about how you create culture in your micro school. How do you create positive, like a positive supportive learning atmosphere, relationships, like talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the way that we encourage supportive and positive interactions within our students is first going by the Prenda core value, which is start with heart. And I'll be perfectly honest, I love kids but I'm a very competitive, I'm a coach, so I'm naturally training kids for their betterment, you know, and I'm like encouraging your best kind of environment. So I've really had to grow within myself as a guide and as a like a mom, and I would say that this is one of Prenda's biggest ideologies, like mastery-based learning, that's big empowerment learning. But connecting with kids, that's our job. That's literally what we're you, we're here to do as a guide. So in the day to day it looks like every morning, because it's a small class size. We see the kids eye to eye every morning. We can welcome them, say hello to them, ask them how their game went or how the guitar practice went or how Fluffy's doing, and so we're always trying to meet them where they are.
Speaker 3:What are you doing? And then we um every day work on the printa based database that is called camp. So on mondays we do community, on tuesdays we do autonomy, on wednesdays is mindset, and then thursdays we work on purpose and these we do journal entries, we do team building games, we have motivational videos, books, and the kids choose. You know what they want to learn about that day, and to me, that really creates this community that we're constantly talking about it, that we're here to support you, and then finally, we work with them with their goals. Right, we're talking like what's your purpose, why are we doing this, what are you working on, what are you excited about and how we incorporate that is that every day we're trying to do something that they want to do, that they're working on.
Speaker 3:One of our students loves to sing, so we got a karaoke set and during brain break she sings. One of our students loves archaeology, so we got molds, and every day they were putting fossils and rocks in the mold. You know digging with the things, and on Thursdays we have them plan a meal Like what do you want to eat? And they plan that. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:What do you want to eat? Yeah?
Speaker 3:That's so awesome. And then on my side I try to do what I call continuing education. So I've done continued education through Brenda. And then I constantly listen to the Kindle podcast myself. I read the self-driven child like on repeat. I have highlights on it and like books like the Whole Child. So I'm constantly trying to keep myself in that mindset.
Speaker 1:So I'm constantly trying to keep myself in that mindset. That's so important because so much of what our kids and our students will take from their education isn't just like what fractions are, it's like who we are. You know, like we are going to rub off on them and like they're going to become like us. So making sure that as we as adults are demonstrating, modeling that like we're also empowered learners and that we can be humble and we can make mistakes and we can apologize and we can do better, we can repair relationships and we can treat kids with a profound respect that isn't kind of isn't commonly found in a traditional classroom or just in society.
Speaker 1:You know, just because someone's little doesn't mean they don't get to make choices, doesn't mean their voice doesn't matter, all of these things that we kind of assume really accidentally. I don't think we do it intentionally. It's just kind of the way things are. And until you take that intentional look and get some other, I love how you're like seeking out and other influences, um, trying to like round that out. I I love your commitment to that. It's beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do too, Cause when it's front of mind it's easier to do. I just created a reel for Instagram yesterday and I'm saying all these things and then I turn off the camera and then there's explosions happening in my house and I'm like, okay, Adrian, you just told other people on the internet that this is what you're supposed to be doing, you know. So it's like connect before you correct name it, detain it, and so if it's not front of mind and if you're not continually reading about these things and reminding yourself, it's so easy to just go right back into patterns. And you know, these patterns aren't just from our own childhoods, but they could be from just generational patterns. And so I love that you are just keeping that front of mind and you're continually learning and growing, because it sounds to me like you are an empowered learner as well, which is how again what Katie said kids learn so much more from us as we model, versus just telling them what to do. So next question is how do you balance structure and flexibility in your micro school?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So how I naturally balance um structure is that I love lists and I love right planning and it works out really well for organizing a day, but soon, within a year, of being a print, a guide, I realized that that was bogus, not just because kids kind of resist that, but I learned in the self-driven child. Which made so much sense to me is that kids will get into what they call a flow or like we can term it like, a structured, focused learning time, and they enter that very early on. When they're interested in something and they're playing like superheroes or they're making a structure with blocks, they you don't need to tell them to do that, they just do it. You know. Well, this happens daily, not every day with every student, but it happens with kids and they're interested in something and then you're like okay, now it's time to open your books to 46.
Speaker 3:You just messed everything up, so true, we just stopped with that flow, yeah, so I've really taken a step back from that, and this could even be in the day-to-day where we're in brain break and they've created a nine square game with different rules and then we come out. Come out, excuse me, children, we need to go to our science experience and you're like they were so into it. Everybody was involved and everyone had a part and they were dicing out the game rules and so I've learned like you have to have structure, because us adults we think it's cool, but kids they like thrive on the idea that you see them for like humans, not for things to be acted upon or, like you know, put in to, to practice, you know yeah, so much.
Speaker 1:So much of the time, like we think, when you walk into a classroom, if it's like quiet and everyone's sitting in their desks and they're like writing and they're like on task, we think that the kids, that that's a good classroom and that, like the kids are learning.
Speaker 1:But a lot of those kids are just like doing something they've already know or they're like spending so much of their energy trying to hold still that they're not really focused on what they're supposed to be learning.
Speaker 1:You know, it's kind of like a dog and pony show a little bit and it's like, well, if you actually let kids be humans and actually allow them to engage with things that are interesting and stimulating to their brains, like this game that you're describing, it's like man, there's so much good cognitive work going on in that, in that flow state, and, yeah, we always just want to jump in there and be like well, we need to get back to this like ideal picture, this invented picture that we have of what school looks like or what good looks like or what excellence, like all of these things. We kind of have these perceptions of what we should be doing when really we need to be like going with the flow of their interests and engagement, and I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you, like you've talked about, like, not interrupting that flow, but then when you are doing the academics, what does that look like?
Speaker 3:So we start off each morning we do this introduction, kind of like these icebreakers. We have a student leader that welcomes everything, but we found that kids when they get to school, they actually really want to learn it. They want to go at it. So we've actually flowed with them what works for them and that's like their prime time. It's like time to learn. So once kids are in the Prenda culture, which I would say is empowered based learning, where they're setting their own goals, I'm not telling them what to do. They're going after it and I'm just like here to cheer you on. They're going after it and I'm just like here to cheer you on, Isn't?
Speaker 1:it funny that we have this perception that if you let kids choose, they won't do anything. Or, like you, know that they will choose to be lazy or whatever. Like kids definitely want to learn and we see this in the data at Prenda. You know we have a software system that tracks everyone's goals and we can see those goals holistically. And on average, kids are setting a goal of 1.8 years of growth in math and reading. And it's like wow, if I, if you sit down and say, hey, what do you think you could do in this year, they choose to do almost twice what their same age traditionally schooled peers do. And it's like if you give them a hopeful path where they feel like I can win here, they absolutely will run so hard and that you won't have to like carrot and stick them into it. Like you're observing, it's like I just have to get out of the way. Have you ever had a?
Speaker 2:student that doesn't do that, though, cause I have been in a lot of micro schools and there's one it's only one, though, out of probably the hundreds that I've been into that this, the guide, was just at such a loss with this student who she's like he just sleeps, he just has. You know, he's like his grandpa's, really wealthy, and he's just going to inherit his money. He doesn't need to do anything, and she's like I just don't know what else to do. How do I motivate this kid? So have you ever had a single student that wasn't just motivated, or they're just like? So maybe it's. It is the environment that you set up. I'm wondering.
Speaker 3:None of this is perfect and this is this is daily, but I I do. You know this is not just a plug, for you know the class that Katie taught of the advanced guide training, but it was a life changer. It was right when I needed it. I had a student that I wanted to diagnose, like I wanted to tell his mom. I know what's going on. That wasn't my role, I didn't need to do that, and the things that I learned from that class made me actually stay alive and him stay alive. So we're alive today.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 3:And he was tough. He was really tough for me, and not that he was lazy, but he had his own idea of what would happen that day, from minute to minute, from day to day. And I've had several since him, but I can go in with it with much more relaxation because I have tools under my belt and Adrian said it right. So instead of like labeling them, like this child, it's more like you get curious hey, how are you doing? How's that snake Pedro doing? And then they're like oh hi, you're talking to me, snake Pedro doing. And then they're like oh hi, you're talking to me, you know.
Speaker 3:And they're they're like excited and that doesn't what they're interested in yeah, and it may not change their goal, may stay still at, you know, whatever low it is, but I love them and they love me and we're moving forward.
Speaker 3:So I was gonna say I do have a struggle. Sometimes in the afternoon I will have this struggle. Sometimes in the afternoon I will have this really cool activity and this might even mean riding horses, which is my favorite ever. And not every student of mine loves horses and so they don't all ride, and in the beginning that was tough for me. Like I am providing you with the coolest possible thing in the entire world. What are you doing? And I've learned to relax in that, but I still. It's hard for me when there's so many interests, even if that means times 10, that's not very many interests, but that's times 10. And they all want to do different things and it is a struggle for a guy to separate your mind. Like you want to use what in my where, with how many?
Speaker 1:like, what are you saying? So that is something that I continue to have to work with. Yeah, it's totally balancing that is is always tricky, but I think, um, if you pull back a little bit and look at how, like that just means that they are curious, interested, engaged and on fire. Like that just means that they are curious, interested, engaged and on fire, right. So it's like, okay, yes, it's a lot to balance, but that's, we would so much rather balance that than disengaged, apathetic and like fighting you on things. Right, at least they like are alive inside and like have have a fire.
Speaker 1:Can I share, like, a really interesting thing that I just learned? Um, as we're talking about lighting fires and Kindle, the Kindle podcast and Prenda, um, I was talking to this guy um, there's a nonprofit that helps, um, that helps. They set up little libraries all over the world and they'll like staff it with librarian and they do all this cool education stuff. And I got connected to them through a friend and they're going to start using treasure hunt reading in these, um, micro schools. But this guy was talking to you, he was in Columbia and he was like what does Prenda mean? And I kind of gave him the normal spiel about, like how Prenda means gift in Portuguese and it sounds like a friend air in Spanish, just to learn learning as a gift.
Speaker 1:You know our little thing that we say, and he's like heo un fuego like to light a fire, and I'm like what it means to light a fire and I was like, yeah, that is just like so shocking that has this third meaning that we didn't know about. But that is what you're doing. You're creating this environment where kids can be alive inside, and I just it. While it does definitely like bends your mind sometimes to be like, wait, there's too much, this is very chaotic. Or you know, like we have to balance this and you do have to get to a place of like, yes, there's interest and yes, there's structure, and you can find this balance. But just to know that your kids are like passionate and alive humans and we're not like beating the the curiosity and passion out of them so early, like that's amazing. I love that. So we've talked about this a little bit. But what are some more ways you encourage meaningful interactions between students? Like, how do you build these friendships? How do you or how do you deal with conflict?
Speaker 3:You know what is the peer to peer interaction look like so the way that we encourage meaningful interactions um to me, is is a day to day effort, Prenda, though how I think it makes it 10 times easier because of a smaller learning environment and then different age levels. I think this would be so widespread if people understood this idea of like pecking orders. It happens in horses, like when you're training young horses, you use an experienced horse to lead the young horse, and even when you're on a trail ride, there'll be a trail boss horse that will naturally lead. There'll be horses that follow. There'll be horses that are mares. They're the same and they do not ride next to each other. Well, that's real. So I find that that's one of the magics is there's different ages, different sexes, and these can really interact more healthy. But it goes without fail.
Speaker 3:Every day there's little squabbles that happen within our unit, but what we found is that truly what Prenda is trying to inspire us as guides is that when you connect with individuals, with kids, and they feel like they've been heard, they've got to say that exciting thing they've been thinking about all night and they've been seen oh, that dress that you wore or your Crocs that you got then they feel safe, and when they feel safe. They don't threaten other people. And that's not that we do it perfect either. Sometimes we have squabbles, but just through that, you know kind of training that I've had is seeing students for individuals I think has made a huge difference in my parenting. I have seven kids. I have a whole community right in my house and then through my Prinda is just connecting with kids before I'm disciplining them and that's amazing, okay, so how do you tailor their learning experience to each student's needs and their interests?
Speaker 2:We talked a little bit about this, but I would like to get a little more specific. And how do you encourage your students to take ownership over their learning? Because it sounds like they are doing that. So is that something you feel like you've done, or what are some things that help that?
Speaker 3:Um. So the way that we tailor learning experiences to each student is through the goal setting. For me, I think it's one of the most pivotal things that I'm trying to incorporate in their learning. So, first off, with each morning, we have the kids use their autonomy. Like autonomy is something that rolls in my mind 50 times a day is something that rolls in my mind 50 times a day. So we have a student leader and they say, okay, I'm gonna choose Spanish to welcome everybody, or I'm gonna choose ASL to welcome everybody. And then, in their core subjects, at the beginning of the year, we have a meeting with their parent and with the student.
Speaker 3:We talk about long-term and short-term goals, and these goals because I've worked with some of the kids a long time and then, through assessments they've taken, we set these goals. Now, these are ever-changing, we're constantly updating them and figuring out new ways. But it gives this guideline and, like I talked about, when you're homeschooling, you're like I need you to do, do, do, do. Well, through this goal-based learning, you take that out of the equation. Your new vocabulary is hey, what are your goals today? Hey, what are you working on today? And you're constantly it's on them and that, to me. It's exactly the empowering word. It gives it back to them. It's not my problem, I don't even. What are you learning about. So I love that.
Speaker 3:And it takes off the control of the parents, which we don't need. That that's the kids. They want that. They want that in their lives, that they can do it on their own. They get to decide. You know what they're doing. And then, kind of alongside of what I've said, in our weekly activities we are, you know, asking them what they want to do. Where do you want to go this week? What should we plan when we do this? How do you guys want to present this project? What do you want to eat this week? We continually are asking them to lead out and I feel like that really helps their learning experience, because it's theirs, they picked it.
Speaker 1:So how do you feel like this empowering environment has affected their academic performance and their personal growth? How like tell me some stories about either academics or personal growth that you've seen?
Speaker 3:So, um, when I saw this question, I can really take it to personally, to personal, personal experience. I've had many kids and beautiful success stories. But my son, when he was like first to third grade, he was struggling to read and I loved school like I loved every grade. I loved, I had notebooks, I had highlighters, I loved pencils, notebooks. And then my kids struggled, I'd read to them every day. It was life. We have a library in our house.
Speaker 3:What was happening? I didn't know and I'd go to these meetings and I'd feel like a failure, not him, me, and I don't know how to help this kid. I am reading with him. What do you want me to do?
Speaker 3:And then COVID happened and we learned he had astigmatism in his eye. We later were able to get therapy for his eye, but that's when we came into Prinda and before school was discouraging. School was the bad news that was going to tell us my kid wasn't going to be good enough ever. And he now, in Prinda, like, by his eighth grade year he was above grade level in all subjects and he loves school, like he's homeschooled, actually for high school and motivated, just he loves school. And then my second son he was in the younger classes and he would write about grenades firing off and rifles in the battlefield. And the teacher would be like, so we're really concerned about the material Giant's writing about. And I'd be like, should I be concerned? And it felt like school was a bad. Look on him. You know like you don't fit into this box that we're trying to make. You're supposed to be writing about the magic tree house and a dragon.
Speaker 3:And so that was discouraging. He kind of didn't like school because it didn't like him. And now as apprentice student he's in middle school. He's made a Bowie knife in his class. He's made a cannon with a pipe and a football.
Speaker 2:Please tell that story, not the cannon, it's the best story, oh yes.
Speaker 3:So one day we're saying, okay, you need to make a prototype for a project. So Ryan's making this prototype on paper and he's using pencils and rulers and making all this stuff and he's like, mom, I'm going to make a cannon. I'm like, oh, yeah, sure. Well, over the course of the weeks he'd be like, mom, can I go to the dump? Let's get a pipe. I'm like for what? Oh, I got it. Well, this keeps happening. And one day we're inside making the kids lunch and we hear this loud explosion like a bomb went off and a football is flying a hundred yards into the forest. And he had made a cannon without us even paying attention to him.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. That's like that's like a Mark Rober story, like it's just like oh, now he's Mark Rober and he understands the physics of that and the chemistry of that and hopefully no one got hurt and it was just a football, not a real cannon. No one needs to call anyone. That is so great that he was so engaged and so passionate about learning all of those things. I love it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And then I want to share one more thing is that my youngest son, he started public school in kindergarten and he had always been lower energy, he was quiet, but he started school and I mean it continually drained him. It was such a heavy weight on him and if you even dared think about homework you got to be kidding me Like this kid's drained. And he got into first grade and I thought it was going to suck his entire life. Like I didn't think he was going to be able to play sports because he didn't have enough energy to even come home to eat dinner. And this eight hour day, it wasn't okay for him, it just was not okay.
Speaker 3:This affected his learning. He got behind because he was so tired. He woke up early, got the bus you know this whole pattern that many students go through and going to Prenda, I think, literally saved his health because now the shorter day he's able to use his energy in the morning and he's not a changed child, but the environment changed for him so that he could be successful. And when he started Prenda he was two grades behind for two years in a row and it was tough. It was embarrassing a little bit because we came from that public school environment. Tough, it was embarrassing a little bit because we came from that public school environment and to this day, as a middle schooler now, he completed all up to grade level information, just because he had that time to rejuvenate himself.
Speaker 2:Love it, I know. Thank you so much for sharing. And so what advice would you give to educators and or parents looking to create a more empowering learning environment? Or if they're listening and they go, that is my kid. They're so drained or they're getting in trouble constantly, or what your first story reminds me of my son too.
Speaker 2:In second grade they had to do a biography and the biography he chose was bomb, which is robert abenheimer, the atomic bomb, and there's language in that book and and he had an amazing teacher that year. But I was like, is this okay for him to read this? I said I'll read it with him and but that's why he was interested and passionate about and to this day, I mean, he's in civil air patrol, he knows every make and model of every single plane and engine and you know we'll see planes. We live right next to Luke Air Force Base, so we'll see planes flying overhead and he'll tell me exactly what they are. And if he stayed in regular school he would have been allowed to do like to dive into a lot of these things because they wouldn't be appropriate for him at his age. So I love that story so much and it's just a tuning to the individual child Cause, like you said, you loved school, like I did too.
Speaker 2:Like I, school was my thing. I really, really thrived and I absolutely loved it. But there's so many kids that that's not their thing. So what advice would you give to those parents or to teachers? They maybe have a traditional classroom and they're burnt out and they're looking for something different and they want to be empowered. So what's, what advice do you have for those people?
Speaker 3:and they want to be empowered. So what advice do you have for those people? So the advice that I would give someone that I'm often giving, I mean, parents are approaching because it's sort of my identity. Now in my community, and just this morning my boys are working for an older lady who's caring for her grandparents and or for her granddaughter, and she's so worried about her child and she's like you know, I'm going to do this online and I don't even know about it, you know, and it is a foreign world to most of us. You know, public school is a standard and so the things that I usually share with them is that it is scary.
Speaker 3:I, for the first two years, I was concerned like, am I doing the right thing? Like this is out of whack of what everyone around me is thinking is acceptable, and even I had pushback from my family and that was hard, that was hard to hear. But now, as I have seen my kids, they'll use language like mom, I have this goal and I want to make this goal, that I'm going to make this knife and I'm going to use these wood pieces and you're like what? What? Eight year olds? None that I know of. You know, oh, mom, I finished my goal. I was working in Lexi.
Speaker 3:I'm like it's summer, but you're bad, and so to me, yeah, we have FOMO. That's a real human experience that we're gonna do something. That's different, but when you're in it, it feels right, it feels so right.
Speaker 1:I love that. Tara, thank you so much for sharing with us today and for coming on the Kindle podcast.
Speaker 3:This has been awesome oh, thank you for having me yes, thank you.
Speaker 2:it was wonderful and I loved getting to hear like your background, because I didn't know any of those things about you and I promise this is the year I'm going to make it up to five. All right Thanks guys, that's it for today. We hope you enjoyed this last part of this amazing series that we did to really get an inside look of what a Prenda micro school looks like. Every single micro school is different. What would you say about that, katie? I know you've been to a lot of micro schools.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's the beauty of it. I mean, there is like a common magic, right that it's like this feeling, this vibe, that is like transferable. That is part of you, part of what makes Prenda Prenda. But everyone is doing their own unique thing and I think that's how it should be and I think that that's really unique. I think there's principles that should be applied to create this magic, but there's no wrong way to apply those principles, and I think Tara is a great example of that.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I see it as three components. You have the dynamics of the kids, the physical space and the environment and what and the culture I guess in that class, and then the guide and what the guide brings, I feel like, and then you have those three things that come together to really create this Prenda magic. And I love how she mentioned the advanced guide skills. So we do at Prenda offer a lot of extra learning and are constantly helping the guides grow, which I think is really unique compared to other companies that help people start and run micro schools.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. So just a little overview when you come into Prenda as a Prenda guide, there's kind of like a basic training where you learn how to operate our micro school learning system. And then there's kind of a part two of that where we talk about academic rigor and goals and data and kind of fine tuning the academic piece. And then, once you're in your at least your second semester of guiding, you can take something called the advanced guide skills course, where I take you through the last 30, 40 years of neuroscience, psychology, educational, learning, science, um, and talk to you about really what you're doing, so we teach you how to do it. And then we teach you why you're doing it that way, um, so you can learn as you go.
Speaker 1:And then, after you have a few years of guiding experience and you've continued to like, like, just like Tara she's like always reading this book she's kind of created a lifestyle, a practice really, of of becoming a person who really knows how to interact with kids in this empowering, inspiring way, then we, you can earn your Prenda master guide certification. So that's kind of what professional development looks like at Prenda and it's so fun and so cool to see everyone learning these principles and applying them, and just the hundreds and hundreds of kids who are just you know, you just see, like like when I host this advanced guides class, like every week, we have like a little huddle and we just like hear all of the stories of like, oh, this kid was so disengaged and now, like I, he flipped, like you know, you can, just, it's just really cool to see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and what I love about Prenda is we literally are with you every step of the way, so you don't feel like you have to do it alone, and we really are about connecting you with other guides and creating community. Or you could do what Tara did and create your own little community in your neighborhood and have siblings go to different guides and then do field trips together and all the things. So it's wonderful. So if this episode was helpful to you, please like, subscribe and follow us on social media at Prenda Learn. If you have any questions you'd like us to address, or if you're really interested in becoming a guide and you don't know like, oh, how do I do this? Email us at podcast at prendacom. You can also um subscribe to our weekly newsletter. It's called the Sunday spark. All you need to do is go to prendacom and fill out your information.
Speaker 1:The Kindle podcast is brought to you by Prenda. Prenda makes it easy for you to start and run an amazing micro school based on all the ideas and things we talk about here on the Kindle podcast. If you want more information about becoming a Prenda guide, just go to Prendacom. Thanks for listening and remember to keep kindling.
