Kindling Learning

An item from a neo-liberal…  This one is an item from a business professor with little direct experience in education, but who believes free market economic principles are the answer to education’s (and pretty much all other society’s social) problems.

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AUG 23

Kindling Learning

		MICHAEL B. HORN

Kelly Smith, an entrepreneur and founder of one of the hottest microschool networks, Prenda, joined me to talk about his new book, “A Fire to Be Kindled: How a Generation of Empowered Learners Can Lead Meaningful Lives and Move Humanity Forward.” In our conversation, Kelly shares everything from an update on how Prenda is doing to some of the big themes around his book, which is designed not for educators, but for individuals—to help them become lifelong learners and maximize their potential.

The book follows the philosophy behind Prenda Learning and takes readers through what it means to be an empowered learner—followed by the key components in a learning process: to dare greatly, figure it out, learning over comfort, start with heart, and a foundation of trust. I pushed Kelly on how to overcome the barriers in our DNA that cause us to try to save energy and avoid doing hard things like learning. We then ended on a question of the importance of making this real so people can put it into action and connect it to their everyday lives.

As always, subscribers can listen to the audio, watch the video, or read the transcript below.

Michael Horn:   The messages in this book are ones that resonate for any individual regardless of your life stage. You’re a kid, you’re an educator, you’re an adult living life, this has messages for you. So first, Kelly, it’s great to see you. I always love when we get to spend time together. Thanks for joining us.

Kelly Smith:      Thanks for having me, Michael. It’s good to be here.

Morning Warmup

Horn:                So we’re going to start off with our morning warmup. We got four parts of the show, morning warmup, work cycle, our specials, and then our closing time. Morning warmup is just a little bit about Kelly and the Prenda Learning that you’ve started. Just tell us a little bit about what it is for those that don’t know.

Smith:              Thanks for that, and excited to be part of morning warmup. So I think you just said a second ago that my life’s work is helping empower learners, helping people see themselves differently, and I hope we get a chance to talk about that, but it wasn’t always that way. I studied physics and nuclear science. I was trying to make fusion work, which if you’re following this, it doesn’t work. I did a whole bunch of careers in technology and software and got to this point as a father of four kids, myself and somebody who was, at the time, volunteering at the library to teach kids computer programming of all things. I had this moment where I just started thinking about the questions, what is it learning and what is formal institutions? And I think very much an outsider perspective on this, although I, of course, attended school like everyone else, but it got to this point where I became obsessed and that led me to do something crazy, which in 2018, was to pull my kid out of school and invite my friends to do the same.

And I started a micro school around my kitchen table. So it was me and seven kids. Really, I was reading your book, I think the word, micro school, you had uttered and a couple other people had talked about, but it wasn’t huge yet. And we just put this thing together, personalized learning for mastery is using blended learning. We were doing a lot of projects and inquiry and all the fun things. At first, it was just designed around what made sense to me intuitively as an adult who likes to learn. Eventually, I found that there’s lots of great research and people who have thought a lot more deeply about these things than I have. I’d say one of the interesting differentiators between something like homeschool and a micro school is this inherent connection, this human piece. We were together in-person every day.

My role as the learning guide in this class, as the adult, was to know and care about and understand the motivation of each of these kids and then be able to provide an environment in-person where they could take the risks and do the repeated failure and all the things that learners do. And that became just a fascinating semester that led to more semesters and more people doing it. The COVID pandemic came and exploded the whole concept. And since that, we’ve continued to grow. So we’re serving something like 2,000 students today, really, all across the United States, but strongest here in Arizona, which is where I started out.

© 2023 Michael Horn