LiberatED Podcast

Cecile Enright is the founder of River’s Edge Academy Charter School (REACH), which she launched in 2011 with 70 students in a leased church space in rural Rogue River, Oregon. Today, the school serves over 200 students in two locations. REACH is a K-12 hybrid charter school, enabling students to be on campus for part of the week and to learn from home or in the community for the remainder of the week, often taking enrichment classes in areas such as art, music, and 4-H with local community partners. As a charter school, REACH students attend tuition-free.  *** Sign up for Kerry's free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated.

When schools shut down in 2020, Detroit mom Danna Guzman joined countless parents across the US who created “pandemic pods” to enable their children to continue learning together during school shutdowns. Mounting enthusiasm for her learning pod led Danna to expand it into an established microschool for homeschoolers that continues to grow and flourish today. *** Sign up for Kerry's free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated.  

Maysaa Bazna haș been involved in education and alternative education for many years. She earned her doctorate in curriculum and teaching at Columbia University, and was a professor in Columbia’s Teachers College and the City University of New York (CUNY). She has taught in the areas of learning disabilities, disability studies, and inclusive education.  Maysaa is currently the Director of Professional Practice and Community Partnerships at the School of Education, Queens College, CUNY.  In 2010, looking to create the kind of hands-on, self-directed educational experience she wanted for her child, she launched Pono, an outdoor, democratic education co-learning community in New York City. She continues to serve in an advisory role for Pono while also expanding her passion for outdoor education by partnering with the New York City public schools.  *** Sign up for Kerry's free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated.

Ariel Maguire, a rural Hawaii mom, created a Waldorf-inspired microschool but was shut down by state regulators. They discuss challenges with licensing, regulatory obstacles, and the importance of preschool options in rural areas. The concept of Private Membership Associations is explored as a solution to government regulation on homeschooling and childcare. They also talk about their vision for a Waldorf-inspired microschool and reflect on the experience of launching a micro school and running a PMA.

“A lot of families started realizing things weren’t working in the conventional system,” said Syreeta Farria, a homeschooling mother of two children in Detroit who, along with another homeschooling mother, Victoria Washington, runs a weekly homeschooling program for local families. Farria has seen the growth in homeschooling over the past three years, particularly among families of color. “There are a lot of stereotypes about what homeschoolers look like. And quite often, most people do not see moms like myself and Victoria. They do not see that there are Black and brown families in urban areas that are moving away from traditional learning and deciding to do homeschooling or non-traditional methods when it comes to educating their children.” *** Sign up for my free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated.

Cara Frantz is a certified professional midwife who never planned to launch a microschool until the school closures and education disruption of 2020 led her to create Envision Homeschool Collective for her children, their friends, and members of the community. Envision Homeschool Collective consists of two microschools, one for high schoolers on her property and the other for middle schoolers just a mile down the road, with three hired educators. Prompted by local demand, Cara intends to expand her microschools over the coming months.  *** Sign up for Kerry's free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated.

Ben Kestner and Lisa Pavlock are experienced educators who taught in both public and private schools in the US and internationally before leaving conventional education in 2013 in search of something different. They moved to Montana with their young daughter and founded a Sudbury-inspired, democratic school on a Native American reservation.  In 2021, they moved to Ibiza in Spain to help lead The Learning Project in Ibiza, a new Sudbury-model, democratic school focused on non-coercive, self-directed learning. *** Sign up for Kerry's free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated.    

Coi Morrison worked for several years as a public school teacher in both the Chicago Public Schools and the Memphis Public Schools. She became frustrated by the standard education system and left education, earned an MBA, and worked in banking for a while before returning to teaching. It was searching for a school for her own four children that led her to create The Lab School of Memphis in 2021.  Sign up for my free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated.    

Becky Abrams is a longtime homeschooling mom in the Rogue Valley of southern Oregon who started a small, parent-run homeschool co-op in 2015. That co-op led to the creation of Arrows Christian Academy, a drop-off, K-8, hybrid school with nearly 200 kids and 25 staff members in two locations.  As she delegates more of Arrow’s day-to-day operations, Becky is now helping other education entrepreneurs to create similar learning models across the country through her website, nonprofitedsolutions.com. *** Sign up for my free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated.

By the time Covid hit and schools shut down, Bernita Bradley had been working on education issues in Detroit for a decade, including as an AmeriCorps volunteer. In 2020, she launched Engaged Detroit, a citywide co-op for about a dozen families who wanted to homeschool their children during the pandemic. Today, Engaged Detroit serves as a resource center for more than 100 Detroit homeschooling families. Sign up for Kerry's free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated.