001: New Schools as a Startup: Creating Ohio’s First STEM School & a Platform for Innovation | with Marcy Raymond & Jack McClintock

Today we have two wonderful guests, Marcy Raymond and Jack McClintock, joining us to talk about creating startups with a meaningful impact on the world of education.

Marcy is serial school starter and a STEM education specialist with the Education Services Center of Central Ohio. She is a founder of Metro Early College High School (MECHS), which is Ohio’s very first STEM school and a platform for innovation in school design that many schools across the nation are now based on.

Jack is one of the first students to attend and graduate Metro, after which he received a bachelor’s from OSU’s Fisher College of Business and founded G&P Productions.

We unbox:

• The massive undertaking of starting a new school, especially one with such an innovative design philosophy
• Why doing school differently is a “moral imperative”
• The goal of The Metro School, and all of the schools that have followed its model
• The uphill battle of STEM education
• Why Jack took the risk and jumped in as a founding student of Metro
• Partnering with OSU, the Battelle Memorial Institute, and the Educational Council to start MECHS
• Battelle’s “opportunity gap”
• Why the school is, by design, for all kids – not just “the smart kids”
• The conversation around starting similar schools in other communities
• Why students are more engaged at MECHS
• The habits they teach at MECHS to help students be persistent in any environment
• Looking to the future, what do the next iterations of STEM schools look like?
• The poem that Marcy read on the first day of school, “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”
• Education is dynamic and it cannot be standardized – and as a society, we have to figure out how to effectively provide that to everyone

Resources:

• Learn more at https://www.themetroschool.org/
• The Metro School on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Metro-Early-College-High-School-171761588940/
• The Metro School on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroHS
• Check out https://www.gpproductions.tv
• Connect with Jack on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-mcclintock-8991592b/
• Read: “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”

Learning Unboxed is produced in part by Crate Media

Recorded by Eric French at WOSU Studios in Columbus, Ohio