Providing the Tools to Found New Microschools

Amar Kumar, Founder and CEO of KaiPod Learning, joins Danny Curtis in this conversation! They discuss the growing microschooling movement, unpack what teachers need to feel successful starting and operating their own schools, and envision a future in which districts leverage the power of microschools.

Danny Curtis:

Welcome to the Future of Education, where we are dedicated to creating a world in which all individuals can fulfill their potential, build their passions, and live a life of purpose. I'm Danny Curtis, producer of the podcast and collaborator with Michael Horn on all things learning innovation. And I  am stepping in front of the camera here again this week for a conversation with Amar Kumar who is the founder of Kaipod Learning, which is a technology solution and service provider for microschools. Amar, thank you so much for joining us here today.

Amar Kumar:

It's great to be here. Thanks for having me, Danny.

Amar’s Journey to the Work

Danny Curtis:

Yeah. Well, Kaipod Learning has been such an important player within a microschooling movement that has been growing rapidly and earning a lot of attention. So I'm so excited to have the chance to learn from you about all of the great work that you're doing. And so to start us off, Amar, could you tell us about your journey to microschooling and the founding story of Kaipod learning?

Amar Kumar:

Yeah, happy to. I have been in education for almost 20 years now. I started off as a school teacher where I taught a high school math class in a very high needs school in India. And I discovered in front of the classroom what I think a lot of teachers discover, that you might be planning to teach the pythagorean theorem today, but there are kids who are not ready for that. They're maybe doing math at a fourth grade level, and there are some kids who were way past the pythagorean theorem and they're doing calculus and they're all sitting in front of you waiting for a lesson. That problem of I just couldn't appropriately target all kids with the same lesson plan was really, really difficult for me, and it caused me to want to try things differently, create small groups. I started experimenting in my classroom, which worked to some small effect. I became the principal of the school, saying, I'm going to do this across the whole school. And it all failed because I started to realize that the construct of a rectangular classroom with a teacher at the front and students sitting down all getting the same delivery at the same time, that construct itself is the problem. I wasn't the problem as a teacher. So I left traditional brick and mortar education to do a lot of things in education. Eventually, that journey led me to online schooling, where a curriculum and lesson plans and assessments are all pre-created on a predictable path, and the students move through that at an unpredictable pace. So students get to choose how fast they're consuming that knowledge, demonstrating understanding before moving on to the next thing. And I loved it. I fell in love with that model because I said, this is the future. Every teacher doesn't have to reinvent the lesson plan. The teachers just focus through an online network how to help each child. Loved it. I became the head of product for Pearson's online schools business. And of course, as much as I loved it, I started to also realize the flaws in that system. When students are completely home alone, it can be really difficult from a social and emotional perspective for them. It's difficult for parents when maybe just need some childcare, when the kids should be in a safe place outside of the home. And so I knew that that solution was also incomplete. And when the pandemic happened, like all education companies, I said, what do we do now? And we in Pearson were seeing massive growth of our online schools business.And the families who were in those schools were saying, wow, my child is thriving in an online learning environment. And never predicted it, but, oh, my goodness, like, I would never want this long term because socialization, childcare. And so for me, there was a really important insight there. While the conventional wisdom was, everyone's going to go back to traditional schools, for me, the counterintuitive insight was, but this form of learning really works. So what if we could create small groups of kids who come together socially in a safe place outside of the home, and they're learning at their own pace? So I thought I'd invented a brand new learning model. I was going around telling someone, I've invented something new, until someone said, this is called microschools. We know what this is. And so for me, it was a really interesting sort of bottoms up way to enter this space when I just found this problem that I thought I could solve.

The Evolution of Kaipod Learning 

Danny Curtis:

Got it. So, you know, you saw the shortcomings of traditional education from inside the four walls of the classroom, as you said, and also some of the challenges of tech only from within ed tech, and then tapped into this microschooling movement that was trying to get the best of both worlds. And that was a movement that was in the midst of a lot of growth and change. When schools were closed during the pandemic and more parents were sort of entering their students into these small, personalized learning environments, learning pods, and some of which stuck with it even after school doors reopened. And I understand that Kaipod learning is also in a period of growth and change. Could you tell us a bit about how Kaipod looks differently now than when it started?

Amar Kumar:

Yeah. It's interesting because when we first started, we grabbed onto this concept of learning pods, or pandemic pods, as people were calling them, where parents would voluntarily come together, hire a teacher, meet in someone's basement, and the children would be learning in person. And same thing as what I mentioned earlier, parents who were in the system said, wow, my kid is happy. He's not being bullied. He's learning. This is wonderful. I love it. It's the best year of school he's had. But when schools reopen, it's like, why? Why would you do this? This has been great for you. Again, the insight there was, it was a huge pain to organize these learning. It was a huge pain to hire the teacher. So when we started off to your question, we said, we can organize this for you. We'll grab the space. We will hire the teacher. We'll set the schedule. We'll recruit the families. You just pay a membership fee to join. And that model scaled from our first site in Boston three years ago to 16 sites across the country. And so we saw families were craving this model. Families who'd been homeschooling or families who've been doing online schools. And what we discovered is every time we would want to open a new site, we would get hundreds of applications for our learning controls, and then we would get hundreds of families who said, I'm interested in learning about this. So we just knew we just couldn't do it faster. We knew we could never open enough. It's very capital intensive, as you would imagine, to open one of these learning pods. And so for me, I really wanted to bring this learning model to many, many more cities and states across the country. And I said, I don't have to hold the secret. I don't have to be the one that has my name on the building. It can be someone else who opens it. And so I went sort of down the path of franchising, but there's a lot of legal hurdles there. And then eventually we discovered, actually, if a teacher in a community has a lot of passion around creating her own school, she knows the families in that community, she knows the geography, so she knows kind of where the school could be. She has her own how she wants to run it. Why don't we support her to get her dream off the ground? And then once she launches, we can continue to provide that support, and that can be the start of a new business model. So that's what Kaipod is turning into, is we have sort of our core pods. Those are like our innovation sites where we continue to learn and iterate. We work with great kids, we help improve their life outcomes. And everything we learn there goes into supporting our partners. And there are now almost 100 partners across the country who are opening their own microschools. And so I'm sure we'll talk about that now. But that program is called Kaipod Catalyst.

Kaipod Catalyst

Danny Curtis:

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a great segue. I would love to focus in on that work that you are doing to bring new founders into the fold and support aspiring micro school founders in making the leap. And I know you all have been doing a lot of work around it, as you mentioned, and have some big goals around it, too. So could you tell us a bit more about that initiative?

Amar Kumar:

Yeah. The number one goal here is lower the friction to start your school. So if you're a teacher who's got this dream to say, I wish I could have my own school, or if you're a teacher who's sometimes in a staff meeting, like, I bet I could run this place a lot better than those people. If you have those types of attitudes, you should think about starting your school. And when you start thinking about starting your school, you get overwhelmed very quickly, because that's a really big task. And through our research, we've identified four really big barriers for teachers who want to do this. The first is sort of content and knowledge. They don't know what to do.

So how do you build a website? How do you figure out regulation? How do you build, set your price? How do you do marketing? How do you enroll families? There's so many things, probably hundreds of decisions you have to make. Teachers don't have a knowledge base to do that right now. That's the first big barrier. The second big barrier is confidence. Teachers don't have the confidence to say, I am going to be, I'm going to be a small business owner. That's a really difficult transition for teachers to make, but it's really important going to start school. You got to see yourself that way. The third is community. If you're doing this alone, it can be a really lonely journey and a lot of people give up. In fact, 90% of the people who want to do this give up—90%. So we know there's a huge problem where people feel alone in this journey. And then the fourth barrier is capital. You need a little bit of money to get started. It's not tens of thousands of dollars, but it is some money to get a lease, to pay for some marketing materials, to buy curriculum, etcetera. So there's a little bit of capital required.

So these four barriers prevent teachers from starting their schools. And if you prevent teachers from starting new schools, you're not creating new supply. Because the new supply starts, the more demand generates, more and more parents get interested. So this is the problem we're setting outwards. How do you break down each of these structural barriers? Teachers and the catalyst program is very specifically designed to break down each of those barriers. On the content side, you have our entire playbook. Everything you need to know to start a school is in our course. That includes lessons, videos, master sessions, tools that you're going to need, templates like, gosh, I spent like $15,000 on my first staff handbook and family handbook with lawyers. Don't spend that much money with a lawyer. Like just use my handbook. Customize my handbook for your school. It's just like that. There's lots of these templates that the school founder has to build. It takes a month to do it. So we think we can accelerate your journey about six to seven months to get your school off the ground.

On the confidence piece. We provide a lot of coaching, one-on-one coaching, group coaching to help these teachers make that mental transition that I am first, a business owner. I'm figuring out how to build a sustainable microschool for my community. So it serves kids forever and it gives me a sustainable wage. So we do a lot of coaching.

The third is the community itself. Like I said, we already have about 100 founders. We're tracking more than double that this year. So the idea is that you are not alone. There are people on this journey who are a few steps ahead of you. There are people who are a few steps behind you, but you're all moving together to create new education options in your community. And one of the most famous phrasing sayings in our community is don't make this mistake, we've made it for you. Because whenever someone asks, oh, I think, I'm going to buy this, like 15 people will say, don't do this. I bought it. It was garbage. It didn't work. And so it really helps people see how they can learn from each other. And these founders are all over the country, and they're really helping each other because there's no competition. They're all over the place. And so it's a really vibrant community. And our founders helped. They feel so supported. Every time there's a win, the first place they go is their husband. The second place they go is our community.

Every time there's a fall or a hurdle, they come to our community because they want the help. They know there's going to be 15 people who have ideas for them on how. And then finally, capital, which is the fourth. We're working with banks to provide loans. We're working with nonprofits to provide grants. We have access to our own grant that the catalyst founders are eligible for. So we're trying to build all these wonderful supports so that there's as little friction as possible if you want to start school.

Danny Curtis:

Yeah. It strikes me as a comprehensive set of offerings that you all have, no doubt informed by the 360-degree view you got into the challenges of microschool operators during your time or in your role as a direct service provider yourselves. And I love that you are not just leveraging your own expertise and experience in this field, but crowdsourcing, the wisdom of microschoolers everywhere, through the community piece that you're describing.

Amar Kumar:

Our network just gets stronger and stronger as more people join the network, that crowdsourcing gets better and better. And so we're really excited about the future.

Serving the Varied Needs of Microschools 

Danny Curtis:

Yeah. And to stay with the alliterative c theme, I'm wondering about another term starting with c customization. One of the great parts about microschools is the wide variety of microschools around the country. Kaipod is plugging into schools with very different missions, different methods, different student populations. And so I'm wondering, how have you all designed your product, your services, to allow it to meet the needs across so many different contexts?

Amar Kumar:

This is great. I think the first thing you picked up on is that the strength of this movement is its diversity. This is the primary reason I decided that the franchise model was the wrong model, or just like the company owned center is hundreds of times the wrong model. Because the reason microschooling will be successful is that they can completely flex to serve their community. They're founded by people from the community for their community. And they're in the community. Right? So I'm sitting in Boston. I have no business telling a founder in Wichita, Kansas, how to launch your school. She knows her community, so then my job becomes to give her a wraparound support and give her the key principles and teach her what would make her successful in her community. So, essentially, we have 15 building blocks of success. Each microschool needs to think about these 15, but the way they adapt them within their school is going to differ. And so, for example, one of them is family relationships, right? Obviously, a great microschool has very strong family relationships. They're not just, we do a parent teacher conference twice a year, but, hey, family member, like, you're getting pulled into the school to support each other, support the other families, support the other kids. Now, for some schools, that dimension is very explicit. There's an expectation that families are volunteering. They're running enrichment activities or field trips for other schools where maybe they're serving a different segment of families that might be busier. There's not an expectation that they volunteer, but there are regular community events. So we don't prescribe how you should do these 15, but we give them guiding principles. We give them the way to think about how their school brings these 15 to life to get to excellence. And so we found through that framework, all of our software, all of our services, all of our coaching, everything can flex to support each founder in their journey. And the biggest proof of that is in our network today. We've got one school in the Bay Area who's charging $30 to $40,000 a year for a very high end gifted student education. That's what that market commands. In the same time, we have microschools in our network who are serving very low income families in Atlanta for less than $5,000 a year. And we, as the network, can and have been supporting both founders serving these extremely different sectors. And so that, for me, is the promise that microschooling diversity is great, and we, as a network, can flex to support that.

Danny Curtis:

Yeah, got it. Accomplishing two very important goals, providing the bones and the structure to stand these things up, maybe more quickly and more easily, and also providing and affording the flexibility to adapt these to different contexts and environments, both of which so important to doing this at scale and making room for the potential for innovation, the enormous potential for innovation of the microschooling movement.

Amar Kumar:

This is the great thing about having teachers start them, because teachers have a million ideas about how to do things better, how to do it differently, for their community. So to give them that flexibility, the bones, like you said, giving them the structure to innovate within is exactly what's right for them.

Founders’ Experiences 

Danny Curtis:

So, Amar, I'd love to hear what you're hearing from the microschool founders that have gone through the program, both about the program itself and the experience of moving into the micro school founder and leader role.

Amar Kumar:

I would probably categorize their reactions in three buckets. And the first is we're hearing that the comprehensive nature of compliance support is really valuable to them. They love that they are never alone and that that support doesn't stop once they launch their school. So I haven't mentioned this, but the way the Catalyst program works is you actually don't pay anything to join the program. You don't pay anything for any of our coaching, any of our support, any of our content, because my vision, my passion is not to run an accelerator for schools. My passion is to run a network of really successful schools. So my incentive is to get you to that point that your school is so successful that I'm so happy to be in your network. You're in my network.

So essentially the way our model works is it's free to join the accelerator, and then when you launch your school, we essentially do a revenue share model, like a first student fee model for your school. And so what people love about Catalyst is that it's a full amount of support and we're with them forever. Like, we don't give up or we don't let go once they've launched. So they always feel like they're part of a bigger team. The second thing we hear is this, this phrase that comes up all the time, that this is literally a lifesaver. I think literally is being used a little extremely here, figuratively a lifesaver. We've had founders who've been two days from being evicted, that we've been able to step in. We've had founders who have accidentally signed a lease for a department that wasn't zoned. So we've been able to step in and help them out when they've made these types of unfortunate mistakes. And so I think knowing that there's a national network with connections, with resources, with the ability to help them get out of sticky situations has helped them get the confidence to keep going on this journey. You can imagine it's really stressful for a first time founder to have made a big mistake like that. And so we're there to help them in that. So that's, we feel great when we hear that. And third, which for me is just the most amazing, is when they say, this journey and this program has changed how they see themselves or it has changed how their family sees them. And they use phrases like, I used to be, quote, just a teacher, unquote, but now I built a school, now I'm a founder. And those phrases, you know, it's really hard to be a teacher. Saying just a teacher is not a great phrase. It's a really, really difficult job. But to make that leap and then see yourself differently and see your community, have your community see you differently is just so incredible to see that transition. And these, these people, they just sit up a little straighter. They carry themselves with more confidence, and they tell us that, hey, I was at the grocery store and someone recognized me as, you're the lady who started a school, right? And their daughter is beaming with pride at their mom being recognized. I love those stories. Like, these are people who are creating jobs in their communities. So this is as much of a story of education innovation as entrepreneurship in some of the most disadvantaged communities or with some of the people, these teachers who've been really forgotten, who aren't respected, and now they're taking matters into their own hands to do something about them.

Danny Curtis:

Yeah, I love to hear that. One of the biggest drivers of career dissatisfaction that we hear about from teachers is that lack of career pathway in a lot of traditional education settings, the lack of opportunity for experienced, excellent teachers to sort of grow their responsibilities and their role within the traditional school context. And so it's nothing surprising to hear that that is the opportunity to be a CEO and a leader and a decision maker within their own school and in their own classroom. That that is one of the most gratifying and rewarding parts about this switch. But for those teachers that might be skeptical of microschools or apprehensive to making this switch, what would you say to them?

Amar Kumar:

Yeah, there's plenty of them. I don't think starting a microschool is right for everyone. Like I’ll be upfront about that. But I think the first thing I would say is every teacher deserves more than they’re getting. And I don't think that's a controversial statement. I think everyone of any political stripe would agree with that. Teachers deserve more. That's the first.

The second is asking these skeptic teachers who may be skeptical or apprehensive, asking themselves why they got into teaching. And when I had this conversation in an interview for Catalysts, they often sort of give, like, the rehearsed answer, but then, like, I push, and then I let them sort of sit in some awkward silence. And then it really gets into the real reason, you know, the spark in a kid's eye. Or, like, my grandmother was a teacher, and she inspired me to do it, but now I've lost the passion, etcetera. And so we asked them, why did you get into this? And are those dreams still being fulfilled? And if not, which, unfortunately for the majority of teachers, it is not being fulfilled, then I would say, just start looking at some of the profiles of people who started schools. Believe it or not, they look like you. They have the same struggles as you. If you go to our website, Kaipodlearning.com, you'll see these profiles, you'll see these men and women of all ethnicities, in all geographies, all income levels, all backgrounds, all ages. Who said, I need to take charge of my life, of my careerAnd all of them were. All of them were skeptical. No one wakes up and says, that's it. I've decided I'm gonna start a school today. No, that's not how it works. Entrepreneurship isn't this magical spark that we might see on Twitter or on TV. It is a slow and fearful journey. It's a journey where eventually you say, oh, my goodness, I have to do this. Something or someone is calling me to do this. So if you're religious, that someone or something is God. If you're not religious, that someone or something is your own inside or the fire that's burning inside you saying, you've got to do this. So if you're finding yourself moved by some of this, just read profiles of people. Type in microschooling, type in how to start a school. Go to our website, whatever you want. Just start learning.

Because it might take you three years to get there. It might take you three days to get there. But everyone should. Every teacher should say, I deserve more, and I want to know what I can do about it.

The Future of Microschooling 

Danny Curtis:

Yeah. To your first point, a big fan of using the five whys to get at that deeper meaning or those deeper reasons. And on the second point, I can imagine that as microschooling grows in popularity, and more and more teachers are seeing more and more teachers like them developing these schools. It becomes easier to imagine themselves in those roles and taking on that responsibility. And for this last question, as we wrap up, I want you to get your crystal ball out and look five years into the future, and I'm curious, where do you see this microschooling movement going? How is it growing or evolving over that period?

Amar Kumar:

Yeah, I think there's probably two scenarios on how this plays out. The first scenario is microschooling starts to get steam. More teachers are starting schools. More parents are then leaving traditional schools, public or private, to start there, to join these micro schools. And that plan just continues. More and more people leave the system, which creates more demand for these microschools, which then spurs more supply. More demand, more supply. Right? So you can imagine a world where, say, 70% of kids are in a microschool in the next ten years. It's not unrealistic. You might think I'm crazy, but it's not unrealistic. North Carolina today already has 25% of kids who don't go to public school. 25% are already opting out of traditional public schools. That's one state. But it's not inconceivable that across the country, 70% to 75% of kids will have opted out of public school. That's a really big existential crisis for the public school system. It is also an exciting opportunity for education innovation and transformation.

So that's one scenario. The second scenario is public schools see this trend, and they say, we're not gonna. We are going to start competing for these kids. Public schools say, I will not lose another kid to these new microschools, because why? I'm gonna empower my own teachers to create new pathways, new microschools within my district. So I have this really wonderful teacher. She's a middle school math teacher. Everyone loves her. She's got such amazing energy. I'm going to say to her, you now create your own pathway for robotics. A microschool focused on robotics within the Boston Public Schools system. You're still a tenured teacher. You're still in our union. Families still join public school. But now kids can opt into your pathway. And if they opt in and that pathway grows, she can grow, she can add more teachers, and if that pathway dies, then someone else can do that. What a great pluralistic system that would be to build within the public sector. That's the second scenario. Now, which scenario will it be? Anyone's guess. And I think it comes down to how the public sector responds. The way I see it is this innovation is going to happen regardless. Whether the innovation happens by teachers who have left the system or by teachers who are still in the system is the choice of the people who control system. Yeah, it's an exciting vision that you've laid out in that second scenario where students in more traditional settings are getting access to this personalized small learning environment. But obviously, as you have already alluded to, a lot will need to shift or change for that to become a reality. And so, I know I said the last question was my last question, but if you'll allow me one more, I'd love to hear what do you see as those necessary supports or changes that would facilitate or accelerate that future? And feel free to take this any direction you'd like, from culture to technology to policy. I mean, I'm a pretty simplistic person when it comes to this. I feel like there are, when something feels too hard to do, you think about what are the barriers? And there are barriers that sometimes exist in nature, and then there are barriers that are man made. And I think in this case, all of the barriers are man made. Right. All it requires is the political will of a strong school superintendent or school leader, the support of the bargaining units, the excitement of local parents and the passion of teachers. Those are all man made. Like, these things can happen in any school district in America, but those four ingredients don't exist yet. And so the question is, how long will it be until the school leadership, the staff, like sort of the membership organizations like unions, the parents and the teachers, how long will it be until they come together and say, we're tired of losing kids, we want to do something about this. Right? So I think those are the things that have to happen. Am I optimistic? No, but that's for the next five years. It's all really I can see. I don't think it's going to happen in the next five years, at least not at scale. But I do know there are school districts who are thinking about this today. This is not a pipe dream. Some of them are saying, I wish we could do this. What would we have to put in place to get it right? So it will happen in small pockets over the next five years, not at scale. And my hope is that in the five to ten year horizon, you do start to see the majority of districts say, we're going to build this within.

Danny Curtis:

Yeah, well, thank you, Mar, for sharing that vision and the ingredients it will take to realize that vision and more generally, your knowledge and expertise within this world of microschooling, and not only with us on the podcast here today, but with microschooling founders around the country. I look forward to watching as you continue to inspire innovation and facilitate learning across education and just really appreciate you joining us.

Amar Kumar:

Thank you. Appreciate you having me. And to the teachers who are listening, I'm serious, you deserve more. We need to look into what that means for you. We have a new program of Kaipod Catalyst that's going to start this fall. So if this is something you want to think about doing for next year, go check it out. This could be the right, this could be the thing you've been waiting for.

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