How Students Take Flight with Yass Prize Finalist SOAR Academy

In the latest episode of the Future of Education, I interviewed Kenisha Scaggs, founder of the Soar Academy. We talked about everything from the history of the Soar Academy to how she defines student success and why more public school funding won't get us to where we need to go. Scaggs originally started her microschool-turned-private-school in her attic to help kids who were desperately behind in their education.

Helping neurodivergent kids reach new heights, Scaggs noted that the classroom environment she created is different for her students. “Our class is a one-room schoolhouse, so it’s not about what grade you’re in. You’re not necessarily sitting with fourth graders if you’re in fourth grade, you’re sitting with whoever meets your learning [need],” Scaggs explained.

The SOAR Academy puts a big emphasis on helping students learn to read—with a focus on phonics and background knowledge—and learning math. In the conversation around helping students learn in different ways, although Scaggs used the phrase “learning styles”—which generally refers to the debunked notion of people being a visual learner or an auditor learner and the like—you’ll see that she means something different by it in actual implementation. I also really enjoyed learning about how the SOAR Academy treats Mondays and Fridays as dramatically different from Tuesday through Thursdays to help students get in the flow of their learning and feel a real sense of belonging in and excitement about the school.

I continue to be inspired by the wave of education entrepreneurs solving problems for students whose needs aren’t being met. As always, you can listen to the conversation, above, watch it below, or read the transcript.

Michael Horn:                Welcome to the show where we are dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. And to help us think through that today, our guest is Kenisha Skaggs. She's the founder of the SOAR Academy. A school that has what it says are not your typical classrooms inside. Flexibility is the name of the game, but with some clear principles at work. Which we'll get into, and I'm excited to learn about. Also, SOAR Academy was one of the finalists recently for the Yass Prize, which rewards permissionless education. Which for my reading certainly describes what they have built at the SOAR Academy, which is based in Georgia. So Kenisha, welcome to The Future of Education. It's really good to see you.

Kenisha Scaggs:             Thank you. I'm super excited to be here as a part of the Future of Education. So, awesome.

Morning Warm-Up

Horn:                Well, I think you've represent it in many ways. So let's start with our segment, the morning warmup. We're trying out a new set of segments for this show. And it's a set of lightning rounds, if you will. And just simply what is SOAR Academy in your words.

Scaggs:             Sure. So, SOAR Academy is a neurodivergent micro-school. And it is for students with autism, dyslexia, ADHD, and students facing remediation. Our approach is project-based learning, real world application, and just getting to the heart of what's important. Which is mental health support and literacy and math, is what we think are the really important points in education. So that's kind of how our education standards are formed around math, literacy and mental health support for our students.

Horn:                Wow, that's fantastic. And what grades do you serve? Is this K through 12? Or what is this?

Scaggs:             Pretty much. We're first grade through 12th grade.

Horn:                Gotcha. And then tell me the founding story. This is 2011, I think when you founded it if I have my year right. What was the sort of barrier or thing that said, "You know, we got to create something for neurodivergent students? Whatever is out there is not serving them."

Scaggs:             Right. So in 2011, I was working with No Child Left Behind. I was working with a provider. Actually, I was just a tutor there, and we were working with a lot of inner city kids from low performing schools, just trying to increase their literacy and their math rates. And the students were not engaged with the program. It was a lot of worksheets, or back then they weren't online as much. But the time they were online, it was just kind of more of a babysitter. It wasn't really something that engaged the students in their interests. And so I mentioned to her, "We should have some games we can bring in. We can go outside. We can turn this reading into a multisensory project, versus just the worksheets." And she said to me, "We're making a lot of money. Let's not do that. Let's just push the paperwork through the state. And you're going to get paid well. I'm going to get paid well."

                        And that was what was important. And I just could not leave that space thinking that was a good idea for those kids. I really felt like, if we could give them a real chance to read well and to critically think, that might change their trajectory after graduation. And so I decided I had $700 in the bank actually, it's funny. And I said, "Okay, I'm going to start a school in my attic. Or am I going to work through some things that needed repair in my home?" And I said, "Nope, I'm going to start a school." So I quit my job. I was actually working in accounting right after college. And I started a school in my attic. And it was about 10 kids who were not reading on a grade level. Two and three grade levels behind high schoolers. They were not doing basic math. And from there, it spiraled quickly. Parents found out that I was homeschooling and the line within a year, it was over 20 students. And that's when I had to lease a retail space. So it's just always been in demand.

Horn:                Wow. Wow, that's fascinating. And so, would you describe yourself in the lingo of today as a micro-school, a private school? How do you think about that?

Scaggs:             Yes. Well, the Yass Prize actually coined us as a micro-school. But thanks to them, we've actually turned into a private school. Because we are looking at serving hundreds of students this fall. So we're not really a micro-school as much, and we're looking at more than one location. So I say we're leaning more toward the private school realm at this point.

Work Time

Horn:                Wow. That's exciting. That's really exciting. So let's move into our next segment, work time. Where we dig into the work of the day of what students do. And let's start there. Give us a sense of, if I come into SOAR Academy, what do the classrooms look like?

Scaggs:             Sure.

Horn:                And how does the teaching really work?

Scaggs:             Sure. So our school is super flexible, as you've mentioned before. So Mondays and Fridays are very non-traditional. Our students go to mental health therapy if they need it. ABA therapy, speech, OT. We do character development. And we do field trips, STEM and art. So on Mondays and Fridays, you're not even in a classroom setting. We have autism chairs, ADHD stools, some kids lay on pillows on the floor. It's just sort of getting kids back into the flow of the week. And I don't think you can really just ask kids to sit at a desk at 8:00 AM after all of the deprogramming you have to do from the weekend. So our kids look forward to coming in Monday because they know they're not going to be sitting at a desk doing busy seat work. They're going to learn how to work with other kids that aren't like them. They're going to learn something that connects to the real world. And they're also going to be able to critically think outside of the box.

                        So it's really fun. Tuesday through Thursday is a little more traditional. You'll do math, language, science and social studies, but still it's project-based learning. It's multisensory. Our class is a one room schoolhouse. So it's not about what grade you're in. You're not necessarily sitting with fourth graders if you're in fourth grade. You're sitting with whoever meets your learning style. So if your learning style is that you need audio to hear the lesson and you need a video, then you're sitting with those kids. And if you need to move and be kinesthetic, then you're sitting with those students. And that's kind of how we've broken the room apart. And that seems to work for our students. They're still meeting the standard. So yeah, Tuesday through Thursday are more traditional. But still, what is your kids' learning style? How can SOAR teach your kid the way that works for them? And that's what we do. We build the curriculum around the kid.

Horn:                Wow. And do you find that students will gravitate toward their math? They maybe want... I'm making this up, but maybe they really want that audio, video, headphones in. But then they're doing reading and they're like, "Nah, I need to be more kinesthetic, moving around." Or similar. Do you find that it varies based on whatever they're working on, or their mood, or things like that? And how much do the kids get to dictate that?

Scaggs:             Yeah, so I would say that the kids 100% dictate that. Because at SOAR, we're dealing with a lot of learning challenges. We've got, pretty much everyone's dyslexic. Over 50% autism. ADHD, pretty much 100%. We have a huge foster care/adoption community. So those kids need us to be flexible to them. So of course we require a certain level of respect and character development, but we let the kids guide which way they learn best. So for example, if we're learning social studies and I say, "Guys, we're going to read a story together and we're going to create a civil war box. And we're going to talk about a major battle in our civil war box. And then we're going to incorporate some math."

                        And I might have one of my gifted students whose ADHD say, "Miss Kenisha, that doesn't sound appealing. I'd much rather go on Khan Academy. I found this great article on there. Can I do that instead with a quiz?" Sure. You're still learning what we're learning. And then I might have another student say, "Miss Kenisha, I found this Civil War book." And I'll go, "Okay, you can do a paragraph for me on that while we do the project boxes." But we're all learning the same topic a different way. And it works. It works.

Horn:                That's awesome. That's awesome. I'm so excited about this. I'm curious, digging into this, right? So where do you say this is a non-negotiable for a student? Where do they have that choice? Right? Because I find that's always... You often hear the phrase like, "learner voice and choice". But then you dig in and, not all schools, but a lot of educators are like, "No, no, no. They've got to learn their reading." And it sounds like you have certain things around that. So how do you navigate that?

Scaggs:             Very good question. So here's my motto. I believe that if every student has excellent literacy skills, they can do anything post-graduation. That's my motto. Because I was homeschooled in high school only. And my mom's not a formal teacher, but she knew exactly what I needed. And I was able to learn anything because I had strong literacy skills. So we draw the line with phonetics. You must do the phonics lessons, and that's K through 12 at SOAR. It doesn't stop with sixth grade or eighth grade. Because when you talk about dyslexia, and processing issues, and memory issues, it's something that affects them all the way up. So they need it K through 12th grade. So we require each student to do phonics. And we require each student to do math intervention. There are certain basic math skills you have to have just to survive. Outside of that, we're very flexible with how much you complete with the science and social studies. Very flexible with those. Because we know if we can get our kids reading really well, they can do anything they want when they graduate.

Horn:                Gotcha. And then in terms of maybe civics or things like that, how do you think about where those come into the curriculum?

Scaggs:             Sure, great question. So a lot of our civics is real-world application. We went to the capital quite a bit this semester. And we really dissected our state government website. We spent a month dissecting that. So we do think civics is super important. We met our senator, our legislative members. So we kind of take a real world approach to that. There's awesome videos online for that. And so for Georgia history and for Georgia learning, our kids were engaged, because they actually saw the building where the legislation takes place. And again, you can so easily incorporate science and social studies into literacy. So that's something that we find is easy to transfer into our phonics lessons when we learn about spelling some of those words, or verbs and nouns with... It's just so easy to cross pollinate the subject. So.

Horn:                That makes a ton of sense. And I think a lot of folks are finding we've sort of broken them out arbitrarily actually. And maybe that's hurt us in many ways, because learning something about social studies and reading are sort of intertwined once you know how to read.

Scaggs:             Exactly. Exactly. This morning we actually walked to Lowe's because our school's so close to Lowe's. And we were dealing with conversions. And we were also dealing with our phonics lesson for the week. They were looking for words. We were also working on area and perimeter. And so the kids were like, "Miss Kenisha we're doing three subjects just by walking the Lowe's." I was like, "Exactly. And this is real world application. These are things you've got to know how to do inches to feet." And it was something that our sixth through 12th grade did all together. And it related for all of their lessons. So it was beautiful.

Horn:                I love that they're getting real interdisciplinary learning. I will also say I love the Monday sort of ease back into school. At the risk of oversharing as a father of a kid who doesn't always love getting back into the Mondays, if you will...

Scaggs:             Right.

Horn:                I can see the benefits of that approach.

Scaggs:             Yes.

Specials

Horn:                Let's switch to our third segment here, specials. Where we're going to lift up a little bit and get to geek out on some of the things that are on your mind beyond just SOAR Academy. And you certainly have some provocative views that I want to dig into. I won't hit everything, I suspect that's on your mind. But one I think is becoming maybe less controversial, but really important. And you referenced it earlier, the importance of phonics...

Scaggs:             Yes.

Horn:                For every kid. And I know you believe it should be essential for every single student in all grades K through 12. You say low performing schools, but I suspect you have in mind everyone. So...

Scaggs:             Yes.

Horn:                Tell us why that's so important in your view.

Scaggs:             Phonics is so important to me because if you can read for yourself, then... If a student can read for themselves, then they can teach themselves. And you're not stuck in a system telling you where to live, and dictating where you can work, and how you can live your life. So what I've seen with kids that come into our tutoring program is that their IEPs say, "You have to read aloud to this student." It's a sixth grader, and the IEP says, "Read aloud. They're not reading on a grade level." So if we're reading aloud to that student, when do they actually bridge the gap? When do we actually ensure that they're going to read on their own? It never happens. The read aloud is listed in the IEP from sixth grade through 12th grade. And so they never have gotten past the third grade reading level.

                        So what is that student going to do post-graduation if they can't read for themselves? And again, another reason why I think literacy is so important is because, again, I was homeschooled in high school. So once I hit high school, my mom just went to this whole real world field trip learning. Just this really different approach to learning. And so I recall not following the state standards for high school. But I graduated early. I did dual enrollment. I went to college. It was no problem. And what we found was that was because of the strong literacy skills that I received K through eighth grade. And the critical thinking and the comprehension, all of that is so important.

                        And so when we don't have that, we rob our kids of the opportunity to be independent in adulthood. And they're stuck in the system. So reading opens up the gateway to freedom. And I just wholeheartedly believe that. And when kids come to SOAR and they go, "Do you want the test scores for science and social studies?" Nope. I need to see how fluently they can read. I need to check their vocabulary. And that's all that matters to me initially, because that is the gateway to freedom.

Horn:                Super interesting. So I want to actually dig in on that. Because I think a nut that educators have struggled to crack is we know phonics is important, but we don't know how to do adolescent literacy. Because a lot of the materials out there are not, maybe age appropriate, if you will. They're built for a first or second-grader, but maybe they don't hold the engagement. So you must have cracked this nut. How do you get around that with your sixth, seventh grader that doesn't want to read "Spot did X" sort of thing over and over again?

Scaggs:             Yep. Yep. Such a good point. And I love that you say that. Because when I think of phonics program, I think of ABC Mouse, Hooked on Phonic. And these are for early readers. So if you have a sixth grader not reading on grade level, their self-confidence is already low. So you have to connect to them first. So what we typically do is, we find out what that child interest is. And if it's art, if it's sports, science, whatever it is, we focus on introducing them to a book that they like first. But we're reading it to them. And then our approach is that we have the standards for what is important in phonics, but you're not going to be working in Hooked on Phonics. So for example, if you need to learn "sh" and "th", we're going to use that book that you're interested in, and we're going to find "sh" and "th". And then when we need to get to tion, T-I-O-N, we're going to find that in a book that you like.

                        And then we've come up with these lists of 30 projects we have. And it's pure project-based reading intervention with our kids. You don't have to do, like I said, the Hooked on Phonics approach. We can use things that you are interested in. And then once we have you hooked and you see that you can read a little bit, we're usually able to sneak back in into a Wilson Reading program, or Orton-Gillingham. But again, we don't use that kind of first grade approach. It's more of projects built around your age level, that we custom create for every single child, honestly.

Horn:                Wow. Wow. I'm just struck by how much, I suspect people who love phonics typically think of it as a drill and kill sort of methodology. You've really said, "No, we can take these two philosophies, sort of the direct instruction merits of that with the project-based learning. And kind of unify them. So we're really grabbing the interest and motivation and doing something that feels real and authentic." It sounds like.

Scaggs:             Exactly.

Horn:                With the science of like, "We're going to make sure you get your phonics and so forth."

Scaggs:             That's correct. And when I think about what I just mentioned to you, I'm thinking about my middle school boys. Because it is very hard to capture their attention. And most of the time it's sports for them. It really is. And so we have maybe like 50 to 75 sports books. And we've got the list of phonic standards. And we will play basketball for a week. We'll play air hockey. We'll play soccer. We'll play whatever gets them excited. So it builds that relationship and that trust first. Because again, they're already so nervous and downtrodden with their self-esteem. And they know they cannot read. So let's build the relationship first couple of weeks. Let's not delve straight into a worksheet or anything. Let's just talk about what you like to do. And then once we have the relationship there, again, you start with something they love. And I tell you, three months in, they're reading things that you never would've thought, that interest them. So again, just go with the student led interest first, even with literacy. And then bring the rules into that information, is what we do.

Horn:                Love it. And use the interest as a segue to build and broaden them.

Scaggs:             Yes. Yes.

Horn:                So I love it. So let's do this next one that you mentioned to me before, which is why IEPs are not effective for most students. I'd love you to double-click on this one. Because when I hear your approach, every single kid in your program clearly has their own individualized learning plan.

Scaggs:             Exactly.

Horn:                So we're with an IEP then, an individualized education plan. That's that formal designation for a special ed student.

Scaggs:             Yeah. So I'll tell you what, we started out with IEPs. This is probably our first year kind of pulling back from it. Because you spend hours and hours drafting an IEP. I mean, the school system meets so many days and hours and they rewrite it. But the implementation is what's difficult. Because if you actually implement every single kid's IEP, that's actually one teacher per child, which is not possible in the public school system. But again, if we get back to the basics of what every child needs, which is literacy and basic math skills, an IEP is not needed. Because we're going to cover that for every student anyway. So again, in our class, what it looks like is sixth grade and seventh and eighth sitting together. We have autism there, dyslexia, ADHD. But every single student is covering the phonetic instruction for dyslexic students, even if they don't have dyslexia. Every single student is doing the real world map application.

                        So you're hitting everything, for every child, no matter what. We have the sensory accommodations. We have the autism chairs, the ADHD chairs. Every student at SOAR can use any of these accommodations. Every student's allowed headphones. You can leave the room when you need to use the restroom. You can lie down when you need to. So there's no need to specialize it for anyone. It's specialized for everybody. You know?

Horn:                Yeah. So you build from there is basically the idea. As opposed to sort of designating, it sounds like the students...

Scaggs:             Exactly.

Horn:                Are building something formal. Is that the real difference? Very cool.

Scaggs:             Exactly. Every kid gets it.

Horn:                So I think this one maybe follows then. Because you mentioned that continuing to increase funding into public school system, it's not going to fix the challenges we're having. Which strikes me as maybe related to IEPs because we spend, in this country, so much on IEPs for each kid. And are not getting the results that they deserve. So I'd love you to reflect on what you mean when you think about that just continuing to pour more dollars, or maybe your point is that it's a money problem, is not the right framing.

Scaggs:             It's not. And I did a lot of studying of Marva Collins and her approach. And she was really big, again, on reading intervention and the Socratic method with teaching. And she taught all of her kids all together. It wasn't like a split thing. And so again, with IEPs, there's no way to implement them for every single individual child. But if we reframed how we taught the entire class. And we focused on phonetic instruction, real world application, project-based learning, we're going to hit every single issue in that room. We are. And so I think that when I look at No Child Left Behind, it wasn't super successful and there was a lot of money leaked into that program. And I was working with that program and I thought, "These kids are still not learning. They're not engaged. They're not excited." So I get what they were trying to do, but it still wasn't working.

                        So one issue I see is that the public school classroom is just too big. So there's no way you can... And you can do 30 kids in a class, or 20 kids in a class if we get rid of the standards. And we focus on literacy intervention and math intervention only, in a real world sense though. So the classrooms are super huge. That doesn't really work for the kids. And then the teachers are bound by these standards that essentially won't matter if our kids can't read. If you're in the seventh grade and you're not passing science. And so you're in science tutoring, but you're reading on a third grade level, what does science matter? It doesn't. What matters is the literacy intervention. And so when we keep putting more programs into the public school and more funding and more... All that just needs to stop, honestly.

                        And I think that if they were able to say, "We're getting rid of the standards, we're going to focus on the meat and potatoes." Which is literacy, strong literacy skills and strong communication skills and math skills, our kids would soar. In my opinion. I don't think that there's anything we can really do to fix the program on such... We're trying to keep every single... We want a national standard for what it looks like to educate kids. And there's no way to do that. And I think that teachers don't have enough flexibility to say, "I'm throwing the standards out the window. I'm going to teach you guys to read today. You're not reading well." They don't have that flexibility.

                        And so I think that as we continue to keep saying, "More money, more money." What really needs to happen is schools partner with micro-schools, they partner with private schools. Let's pull the kids out, even if it's for just two or three years to get the literacy skills up. Most of the kids will go back to the system, because they want to be around their peers and be around the larger groups. But we can't keep saying, "Us versus them." They've got to be willing to partner to change what's going on in the school system. The money thing is just not going to ever fix anything, in my opinion.

Closing Time

Horn:                Fascinating. So let's move to our last segment, which is closing time. Because I think it's a perfect segue for where you just went to. Which is, I want to start with this question, which is, it sounds like this one world schoolhouse model that you've built, should really be able to serve everyone. But as you just said, people might want to transition in and out of it.

Scaggs:             Right.

Horn:                There's times where you're going to want that comprehensive, maybe rah, rah, school, sports, whatever...

Scaggs:             That's right?

Horn:                Prom. Whatever it is that drives you.

Scaggs:             Right.

Horn:                How do you think about that one room schoolhouse? Who's that designed to serve? Is it for all students? And what's this blend in the future that you envision?

Scaggs:             Yes. The one room schoolhouse is for all students. I've been doing this for over a decade. And our students, about 60% of them go back to public school. And when they go back, they are thriving. They are passing the reading test, they are completing math with their peers. They're no longer having IEP or pullout services, because they can read well. And so, the one room schoolhouse is not not age specific. It really isn't. We have 10th graders reading at a fourth grade level. So if they stay in that one room schoolhouse and they hear what the fourth and fifth and sixth graders are doing, and the high schoolers, they're actually picking up extra information. And sweeping up more than they would've in a grade level classroom. So I think that for SOAR, we are going to keep with the one room schoolhouse approach. And we are just going to magnify that multiple locations.

                        So again, I don't think that there necessarily has to be specific standards for high school to meet, or even middle school. I think, in my mind, just literacy all the way. Math all the way. And then let the kids kind of direct what they want to learn with science, and social studies, and history, and all that. And then they are prepared for the real world in that sense. So I just think that, from my experience in high school, and just seeing what literacy could do. That if we just focused on that component, everything else would fall into place, is kind of my ideal with it.

Horn:                Amazing. So last question as we wrap up here, which is you were a finalist for the Yass Prize. It prizes itself on permissionless education. But I'd love to hear from you, what does that actually mean? Why is it so important? And assuming it is important, how do we get more of it?

Scaggs:             Sure. So permissionless means that, I know for SOAR, we don't wait for any government agency or any funding to complete our program. We've kind of worked around the system. We are accredited as a private school. But we've decided what's important for our students and what they need. And we partner with parents to decide what they want their kids to learn and not learn. So we don't really believe that, if we don't have more money, our program won't succeed. We've run our program with a couple of thousand dollars every year. So we're able to be permissionless in how we deliver the education, by not following the traditional standard of, again, students being in a separate class for each teacher, having certain grades. We put them all together, that saves us overhead. So we're super permissionless in that way, but our students are still getting what they need.

                        Another way that we are permissionless through the Yass Prize is that our kids aren't working just on the core subjects. They're out in the real world. Field trips every week. Daily, trying to see how they can apply what they've learned that week. And so that's not something that you see happening in a traditional school setting. And the Yass Prize, what I like about them is I actually met with other public schools, charter schools, homeschool groups. It wasn't just about private schools. It's about us all working together with public schools, with charters to just innovate for kids. To change these statistics in America for kids. So that's what I really like about the Yass Prize. It's just that it's not biased. It's super open to every type of organization. And most of the people that I worked with, were public school teachers and public school superintendents who said, "Kenisha, what are you doing? We want to innovate. What are you doing with the kids? Show me what's going on there." And I asked them, "What are you guys doing?" And we just worked together in that initiative.

Horn:                Love it. I love your passion. I've learned a lot in this conversation. A lot of really important ideas. And just keep soaring. You're doing amazing things for the kids clearly. And thank you for joining us Kenisha.

Scaggs:             Thank you for having me.

Horn:                Yeah, you bet. It's been an absolute treat. And for all of you joining us, rate us, review us. Keep tuning in to folks like Kenisha that are changing kids' lives. We'll see you next time on The Future of Education.

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