Matthew Worwood:
What happens when you mix creativity with the freedom and flexibility of micro schools? That’s what we’ll be exploring in this episode. Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
This is the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the field of education.

Matthew Worwood:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives. Creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood:
So let’s begin.

Cyndi Burnett:
Today we welcome to the show David Richards. David is the founder and CEO of ChangeMakeredU, a national network of affiliate love based microscope schools and an incubator for school founders who want to usher in a new paradigm for the future of education. David has worked in education reform for over 25 years as a teacher, principal, executive and board member. David, we are so excited to have you here to talk about micro schools and creativity today. Thank you for joining us.

David Richards:
Yeah, excited to be here. Thank you.

Cyndi Burnett:
So this is foreign territory to me. So I would love to start with what is a microschool? How do you define a microschool? And how does the structure of micro schools engender creativity?

David Richards:
Yeah, great question. So most people don’t know anything about micro schools or very little. So I’m happy to share the basics. So there’s a national microschooling center now in the US and so you can always go there and check out their website. And they define a microschool as anywhere from five to 150 students. So you think about like a homeschool parent that’s in adding a few kids from down the street and you got five kids in your living room, you are considered a microschool. To the 150 student microschool, that’s like a very small, you know, considered a big microschool, but considered a very small school. So that’s kind of the definition in terms of number of students.

David Richards:
The simplest way to think about it though is a redux of the one room schoolhouse. So my mother grew up in rural Texas, my mother in law, rural Nebraska. Both of them are like, this is not new. This is what we went where we went to school. Right? Multi age one room schoolhouse. And that’s kind of what microschools are doing. It’s a very intimate type of environment, which is why it engenders creativity not always, but Typically when you have that kind of small group setting and you get to know the kids really well. And so like in the National Microschool Center’s report, they do annually they share that 60% of microschools use self directed learning as one of their academic models.

David Richards:
Right. And so that engenders more creativity, more project based learning. So micro schools in general are trying to be different. So they’re not following the kind of factory model of traditional education, which typically engenders a lot more creativity. However, just the infrastructure alone, if you want to create a microscope and you want to make it all about creativity, and I can share how ours do that, obviously, but it’s just the infrastructure works so much better than 38 kids in a classroom or whatever the number is. And trying to just kind of go through that conveyor belt model that a lot of us know very well.

Matthew Worwood:
And just to continue with the what is micro school theme a little bit.

David Richards:
Yeah.

Matthew Worwood:
Is this something that has, I, I, I see the connection to the schoolhouse and I, and I think that’s really relevant. I think there’s a great avenue to con, to explore in terms of the community piece and communities raising children.

David Richards:
Yeah.

Matthew Worwood:
But before I do that, is, is this primarily something that’s run within the, the homeschool movement and you know, homeschooling parents that have, I know other homeschoolers in my area, let’s put together a micro school and it’s kind of as well as kind of nonprofits maybe coming around establishing micro schools for homeschoolers in the area. Is that a fair assumption of what you’re making in terms of connecting the dots?

David Richards:
Yes and no. So I started that way. And so the homeschool data is interesting because it’s just been increasing, increasing, increasing over the years. And then the pandemic happened. So I was already kind of looking into different micro schools and homeschools in 2018. And then the pandemic hit and it was like, boom, now we have these pods, now we have parents asking like, what are our kids doing all day? Teachers melting down because they weren’t ready to deal with this. And so I think that really catapulted the microschools movement. So it was a lot of those pods and kind of homeschool families saying, hey, it’s really hard to homeschool.

David Richards:
So let’s try and figure out a way to do this, you know, maybe hire a teacher or create a microschool. It started in that way, but now it’s moved into a much more formalized movement in terms of educators launching micro schools and like you said, nonprofits. Most micro schools are private tuition microschools. 80% currently, but I think that number is changing quickly. And so 20% are either district microschools or a public charter school. But out of that 80% tuition based micro schools, based on your state in the US you might not be paying much at all as a parent because of an education savings account or a voucher program. So for example, in a state like Arizona or Florida, you’re getting around $10,000 per child from the state if you leave the public school and the money then follows you. So you go to a microschool, you pay that 8 to $10,000 and you’ve essentially just gotten a free education through a privately funded, private tuition microschool.

David Richards:
So it’s a very mixed bag, but typically it is a private micro school. And like I said, the charter space is starting to do much more micro schools and the traditional district schools are starting to do many more micro schools. And there’s another organization called Transcend Education, which has put out like an 80 page report to build a public micro school. Because I really am encouraging people to do public micro schools through charter or districts.

Matthew Worwood:
What’s your take on that? You know, one of the benefits I think we’re going to get into with micro schools is to a certain extent the freedom that the community may have to determine the curriculum and the method of instruction. Yes. So what you said at the end there is, are we, are we saying that we, we might see in the future public schools that are almost kind of offering an alternative type of public schooling within the micro framework, where they’re then maybe going to kind of ease up on, you know, things like accountability and assessment and, you know, preferred curriculum standards.

David Richards:
Wow, you’re very optimistic. Just kidding.

Matthew Worwood:
I’m curious about the connect. Just because you said public school. You know, just because public schools are looking into it. That’s what got me.

David Richards:
No, it’s, it’s a great question. And it’s like where all the juice is. So here’s. I think what’s going to happen. I think that this is going, this movement is going to increase. The parents are. I cannot keep up. So I talked to 250 people in three months that wanted to open a micro school and I did not even realize it was going to be that crazy.

David Richards:
I had 2,500 applicants. The families are calling me all the time asking like, how do you have a teacher for me in Iowa? Do you have a teacher for Me, I don’t want to send my kid to the kind of old same old, same old school. So I think we’re going to see more and more change coming and I think that it’s going to come from the grassroots and then the policymakers are going to start to follow. A lot of states in the US are starting to change their policy around education Savings Account. I think it’s something like 27 out of 50 now have some sort of voucher program and if you count like tax credits, it’s something like 40 out of 50. And so many more states are now saying, how can we empower parents to have funding to go to a private microschool? Now that is very controversial. Right. However, I do believe that district schools, like what happened in the charter space when you started seeing district schools kind of emulating charter schools that were successful because there are a lot that weren’t.

David Richards:
But the ones that were, it’s just like Netflix to the cable company. Right now we’re seeing a district school saying, well, we’ve just lost a lot of parents to micro schools. And by the way, most district schools are seeing declining enrollment because of lower birth rates and just general exodus from public district schools. So they’re going to have to figure something out to make sure that the families aren’t leaving. So what we’re seeing is them starting to think about, okay, let’s create a micro school for our most needy, you know, our neediest population. Now the question in there that’s really interesting though is unfortunately with the bureaucratic government district school, typically they don’t do great with like letting people have control or like you said, loosening the grip around assessment or accountability metrics and stuff like that. So it’s going to be an interesting journey to see how all that plays out. My hope would be that there’s some really innovative forward thinking superintendents and school boards that are saying, hey, we want to try this and to do this well and to be innovative, we actually have to let the educators do what they want to do and stop getting in their way.

David Richards:
And that’s going to kind of feel more. That’s what happened in the charter space. You know, you saw some really amazing superintendents that said we want to create charter schools. And then people start following. There’s an example in Indiana of a school district that’s rural and he’s actually creating a collective of micro schools across the state and has figured out a way to leverage funding for micro schools. And he wants to create more innovation and more freedom for the Teacher. So that was a long answer to your question because it’s a very complex issue, obviously.

Cyndi Burnett:
This is so interesting and we’ve had a lot of conversations on the podcast about the topic. Do we need a creative revolution in education or do we need an evolution in education? And you know, when animal. Yeah, so when Matt and I started this podcast, you know, five years ago, it was, we need an evolution, we need to make changes. And it just keeps changing and changing and changing. And now it really feels like we need a revolution. And it sounds like micro schools is a revolution. Like, I’m not gonna go into this normal, you know, systematic educational space. I want to build something of my own.

Cyndi Burnett:
So imagine I’m a teacher. I am a teacher. But imagine who wants to start my own micro school in my area, which is Buffalo, New York. And I come to you what take us through those steps of how it all happens. And then I want to relate it back to creativity, because I’m curious, if I wanted to build a micro school that specifically focused on creativity, could I do that? So that’s sort of a. Yeah, two part question.

David Richards:
Yeah, absolutely. So I think just touching on that revolution piece for a second. So I think what you’re seeing is that there’s a tipping point coming around families and educators being done, like just fed up, like we need something different. Right. And I know there’s of course, really great schools everywhere. And I’m not trying to, you know, say bad things about I’m a teacher too, so. But I think you’re seeing that in general. And so I think that there is kind of a revolution brewing.

David Richards:
And I think micro schools are a place where that revolution can happen because of the fact that it’s not as regulated. And there’s a lot more freedom. You can get it open quickly, you can do it small. Like the unit is smaller. Everything about it is just, you know, more lean, more innovative, potentially. So that’s that piece. And then in terms of the steps, that’s exactly what our organization does, is we take you from idea to launch all the nuts and bolts. So I was doing consulting before I launched this organization.

David Richards:
Like I said, I’d worked in charter schools for years and I opened my own small charter school and started doing consulting on the side and started working with these amazing people that were opening micro schools across the country. And I was basically just teaching them because I’d opened 15 charter schools over the last 15 years or whatever, just cranking out these charter schools. And I just kind of got this niche expertise around opening schools. So I started helping people open micro schools. And I got so excited because there’s so many opportunities to do what you really want to do as an educator. So. But what we noticed as I was helping these folks is that I was a banker until I turned 30 and then I left my career in banking to become an educator, to become a teacher and went into an urban school district. But so I have that business background.

David Richards:
But most teachers, to no fault of their own, they don’t understand the insurance piece, the facilities piece, the entity formation, all these things really stress them out. The budget. They just want to work with kids and create magic in their classrooms. And so as I was consulting, I’m like, there’s a real problem here that needs to be solved. And the problem is we need to create a comprehensive program that allows teachers to have a system, to be able to launch a new micro school, which is like a new business or a small nonprofit, and not have to worry about all the operational business pieces. So we take you through every single step along the way. So if you came to me and you said, I’m in Buffalo, New York, I would say, okay, you’re going to have to charge tuition because you don’t have an education savings account. Most of the blue states like New York, California, Massachusetts, Washington, I’m in California.

David Richards:
You’re going to have to do a private tuition model where you’re going to have to aim for like a middle class community. If you come to me from another state, I’ll say, oh, this is exciting because you’re in Florida now, you can work with any community you want, right? So we help you do the market research, we help you figure that out. And then we put you through a year long cohort program with about a dozen founders across the country where you’re doing virtual sessions with them. We do individual coaching, we give you a bank of resources, everything you can imagine. And then we also give you the pieces like around the learning management system and that kind of stuff. So it’s almost like a franchise. But it’s not because you have your own autonomy and you’re an affiliate founder so you get to do whatever you want and we’re just here kind of helping you in the background. But then the network piece is where we see the revolution coming in.

David Richards:
Because we believe that we could open several of these over the next several years. The goal is 100 over the next 10 years and then have proof points and say, well, we have one in Chicago, we have one in rural Indiana, we have one in Buffalo, New York and say, look what happens when you focus on creativity, empowering learners, and putting kids and educators at the forefront and the communities that know the kids best, putting them in charge of the, of the schooling rather than a bureaucratic institution.

Matthew Worwood:
All right, so let’s, I mean, this has been really, really fascinating. I could keep asking more and more questions because I, I, my gut feeling is Cindy’s thinking the same thing as me. And, and we’re probably gonna have a conversation about this afterwards. Hmm. Could we start our own micro school together?

David Richards:
It happens every time I do one of these. Yeah, yeah.

Matthew Worwood:
But you alluded to it earlier that kind of, when you’ve got these micro schools, and in fact, I think you said this, I really like this, that teachers get to do what they really want to do, then it kind of makes me think so. It’s almost suggesting that within their classroom we’ve got these educators that perhaps limited on doing what they really want to do. So tell us a little bit about what is it that you see teachers can now do what they want to do under the framework of a micro school.

David Richards:
Oh, good. Now I get to talk about the micro schools that we have. So we have six opening this fall. So we did a cohort last year and we basically said we want to be values aligned around this belief that we need to shift the paradigm of education, put the power back into the teacher, the communities. And we didn’t actually say like, oh, please do this type of model or that type of model. So what we ended up with is an arts empowered micro school in Philadelphia where the kids are doing different types of performing arts, talking about creativity. The whole entire school is based around creative expression and how to express yourself. We have another school in Chicago that’s doing steam.

David Richards:
So it’s all about the arts and science and how to be creative with science. We have another one that is doing neuroscience and meditation and how to basically express yourself from the inside out and be creative. We have another one that is in Houston that is all about social, emotional, learning and finding your own true self and then expressing yourself through that. And we have another one that’s working in New Mexico and also doing online learning that’s helping kids that dropped out of high school or failing in high school find a way to get back to who they really are and find that strength to get a high school diploma. And the last one is the Love Learning center in Atlanta, which is another performing arts, music and dance focused micro school. So again, I didn’t say, hey, I want you to create a creative Micro school here. I want this to be all about creativity. But because the educators, all of these educators, this is their passion, this is what they want to do in education.

David Richards:
And most of them have been teachers for 20, 25 years. Right. Administrators have been all through the system, but they could never find that space where they could do that because it was always like, well, you have to follow this, you have to do that. And now they’re like, I’m going to do this. And guess what? The parents are flocking to them because parents want this. We want our kids to be dancing and singing. We want our kids to be doing steam. Like, we want all these really interesting creative experiences for our kids.

David Richards:
So that’s where I think you can see micro schools creating a lot of change in this, doing it in a creative way.

Cyndi Burnett:
So let’s say I want to start a school here in Buffalo and it’s focused on creative expression, which is, you know, I’m very passionate about that. And so let’s say I’ve got 20 students. Are they across age ranges? So in the same way though.

David Richards:
Yeah.

Cyndi Burnett:
The. How the. What did you call it? The one house?

David Richards:
The one room school house. Yeah.

Cyndi Burnett:
They’re across ages, they’re working together. I’m the teacher. Is there just one teacher? Multiple teachers in a group?

David Richards:
Yeah. What’s interesting about this is another organic evolution that happened. So we did not say we want you to do a one room schoolhouse. We said, you know, you come in with your vision. We kind of have recommendations around budget models and tuition and number of students because we’re trying to help them with the business side. But what ended up happening is all of them started either saying, oh, I might want to do kindergarten or first grade, start with sixth grade. They kind of started with this smaller number, like in terms of one grade. Then as they talk to families, they’ve all turned into a one room schoolhouse.

David Richards:
Meaning they went from I’m going to start with sixth grade to now I’m going K through 8 because they meet a family that has three siblings or they. And so from there what we’ve done is now help them figure out how to run the one room schoolhouse. Because it’s different. And I think as traditional educators, we think standardized curriculum. First graders. Now I have a first, third and fifth grader. Oh my gosh, that sounds so stressful. I’m the only teacher.

David Richards:
But that’s not how it works because most micro schools have about 10 to 15 to one student to teacher ratio. So if you have a group of, you know, 15 kids with that, our age ranges between like, you know, like let’s say a Montessori age range, right. It’s like three years, like maybe fourth, fifth and sixth grade or third, fourth and fifth grade. Now you’re just kind of figuring out what they need. You have the time, maybe you’re bringing in some parent volunteers and you’re grouping them accordingly. Maybe sometimes it’s by, you know, what they, their actual ability. Sometimes it’s about a project and you just figure it out. It’s a totally different way of doing it.

David Richards:
But again, people did this for a long time before we started standardizing our schools in the one room schoolhouse. And so you have to think differently. And now there’s a lot of homeschool curriculum that you can plug and play into a microschool. Right? So it’s. When I opened my charter school, I wanted to self directed learning and multi age classes, but all of the factory model curriculum was grade level based. So my teachers are like, I’m teaching three different curriculum. It’s like, no, you don’t have to do that now because now there’s a homeschool curriculum that says this can work for these different ages. It’s personalized and you can get that online.

David Richards:
You can get it for pretty inexpensive. So we’re able to do that with our founders. And like I said, they all started with kind of a one grade level and they ended in multi age.

Matthew Worwood:
I don’t want to continue to make the close connection with homeschooling because I do think micro schools to your point. Now I understand it has expanded far beyond that, but within the homeschooling movement, you know that plug and play is something that I really have noticed that many parents value is that there is so many options for online curriculum, online to tutors, for example, that can provide that additional support. So to a certain extent it’s, you know, within your framework, I’m assuming that you have, dare I say, kind of vendors that perhaps you’ve worked with or platforms that you’re familiar with. So you can say to someone who’s starting off, I don’t, I. The value piece is important. I hear your value. You want to focus on social, emotional learning and you sound like you want to kind of focus around projects. Well, here is a curriculum or a platform that we know can serve you really well.

Matthew Worwood:
So you, you, you, you can kind of like do it and find your way. It’s, it’s something that you know, if you’re really passionate about it and feel like it’s the right thing to do. It sounds like working with you, you can make it, you can make it happen.

David Richards:
Yeah. And you’re not doing it alone. And that was one of our biggest values commitments that we had, is that we don’t want people to do this alone because it’s a small micro school. And to your question, Cindy, around the number of students and the teachers, typically we do about 25 to 30 kids with two and a half, like two full time and a part time person. And then as it grows, that’s kind of the model around like 15 to 1 student teacher ratio. But again, what’s really cool about a micro school is that you have families that are involved and so you bring in the retired teacher, you bring in grandma, you bring in somebody’s sister. And now you have. I’ve visited so many micro schools and it’s like the student teacher ratio is sometimes like 3 to 1.

David Richards:
Because a lot of traditional schools push parents out. I know we volunteer and we cut papers and do filing when our kids are in elementary school, but by middle and high school they’re like, don’t even come in. And with a microschool you’re not seeing that because it’s more of a community based environment, especially our micro schools where the families are actually volunteering and helping out. So but at a minimum, you have a very basic staffing model that allows you to staff the school and keep the number small.

Matthew Worwood:
I want to kind of like just very briefly talk about it because if you use the word community multiple times, and one of the things that I think is really wonderful about micro schools and this movement is the idea that you can come together within your community to identify the values, as we’ve just said, but you can also respond to the different needs. So, you know, it might be that you’ve got a community where there needs to be a little bit of a focus on this, a little bit of focus on that and you can adapt and modify it. Which within a traditional school or at least a public school, it’s really hard to do that, that kind of offer that kind of personalized learning experience that’s specific to needs of our students, our community, the jobs in this area, the concerns that these people have and that, that’s, that’s powerful. And I think, dare I say it, coming from outside the U.S. one of the things I have noticed, because the country is so big, but it is in the US There is, within the culture, it is very much about community. Right. Like within the country and you know, you’re starting towns, being able to run your own school. It’s, it’s.

Matthew Worwood:
I don’t know, it just kind of really fits, I think. So many kind of different communities within the U.S. yeah.

David Richards:
And that’s part of our why I got so excited when I have a podcast called Changemaker Edu, which I’m looking forward to having both of you on. And when I just started interviewing everybody that I could talk to about micro schools and I literally was like jumping out of my chair, I’m like, wait, wait, wait, wait. So you can say, oh, my community really needs. So I just talked to a guy yesterday. He’s in Indiana, he lives on 50 acres. He’s been a principal, superintendent. And he’s like, I want to create a micro school on my 50 acres. And I’m like, well, tell me what they need in rural Indiana.

David Richards:
He’s like, we’re going to build stuff, we’re going to farm. It’s going to be based on the farming seasons. He’s like, these kids here don’t have a future like career path, right? And the high schools are barely getting them through. So it’s like we’re going to find their passion, create a makerspace, have them doing actual work on the farms, building things, so they find their passion. So when they graduate from high school, they’re like, I’m so excited about being this or doing that. And yeah, that’s great. And then in Philly, they’re like, oh, we really want to do an Afrocentric arts based micro school for our community two blocks from the convention center. Because that’s what people really want.

David Richards:
Because all of the art schools, and not all, but most, I’m assuming, have closed down. And so my mother in law, who’s a piano teacher and a pianist, she’s like, oh, all the art schools in Philly have closed down. I’m not surprised that all the families are flocking to this new micro school. So absolutely, the community decides what is best. And they’re on the ground. They’re the people that, they have kids that go to the micro school. They talk to the families, they talk. They know what their community needs and why don’t we trust the people on the ground to actually deliver this instead of somebody who’s so far removed from the people that are actually teaching.

Cyndi Burnett:
So David, on your website I noticed that you have some virtual micro schools as well, and then you have some specifically in states that people can look more into. So I’m curious. You mentioned the farmer and he has 50 acres. So I assume that students would come to his house. But where are other people hosting these micro schools?

David Richards:
Yeah. So what’s really interesting is there’s an opportunity here too. So one of the first phone calls I made was to my friend who’s a commercial real estate broker, and I said, hey, I have this concept. This is like two years ago. I’m really considering helping these people open, you know, Microsoft, which is kind of like a small preschool. Right. So I was like, what do you think in terms of the commercial real estate space? He’s like, oh, you got a lot of options because people are working from home. There is so much.

David Richards:
There’s so many people, so many buildings just sitting there, especially in the urban centers, because nobody’s using, like the high vacancy rates. And then you talk about Amazon closing down all the retail spaces. So he was like, in terms of, I’ve done this for years, like creative spaces for charter schools. But he’s like, because he put me on a few of my charter schools and he said, I guarantee you, wherever you go, there will be opportunities. And so there’s two ways that we do it. Number one, we work with commercial real estate brokers to go into an old yoga studio, an old Montessori school. And that’s one way some of our founders choose to do a little more inexpensive route, which is to partner with a church or a community center or ymca. So think about a church or ymca.

David Richards:
They’re using their space. They have classrooms for Sunday school. They’re not using them all week. So win, win. They get extra revenue. You get a space, a community center, like a YMCA. Their buildings are used 20% of the time. Like 80% of the time, they’re saying empty because they do after school programs.

David Richards:
So now you bring in an amazing microsoul. In the ymca, they have a partnership. It’s a win, win. And we do a mind, body, soul curriculum. So the YMCAs love that. So there’s a lot of spaces that can be created. And again, you’re not doing a huge building. 10 years, $30 million public school.

David Richards:
You’re like, can I get 3,000 square feet and put 25 kids in there for five years? Great, done. Sign the lease, good to go. And then you got to deal with the zoning and stuff like that. But we help you figure all that out.

Matthew Worwood:
So, David, obviously this is the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, and I’m a little bit curious because we like to promote creativity. But I’m, I’m wondering, within the micro school dynamic, is there still a culture where, to a certain extent, parents slowly start Moving toward content driven work or are they starting to find themselves prioritizing the things that I use the word tangible. We can easily see it, we can easily measure the progress that the students are making. So just, just from a creativity perspective, how many of these schools do you see people coming to you and saying, I want creativity to be at the heart of this?

David Richards:
Yeah. So it’s, I’m biased in the answer to this question because I lean towards building creative schools. Right. So people that are coming to me are all saying we want to build creative schools. However, I did use that 60% statistic about most Microsoft, 60% of them are doing self directed learning. So I think that talks about what kind of academic models and education models you’re seeing. But I would say most people are creating a micro school as a backlash to traditional schools. Not just public, but private.

David Richards:
Right. The super academic private school or the mediocre expectation public school. So they’re creating something as a response to something that they’re not happy with. So as a result they typically create something that’s different. Right. You might see a micro school that’s very academically driven, but then you have these multi ages and you have families coming in and it’s kind of like I don’t know how long that’s going to really stay around. Right. Because it depends on what the families really want.

David Richards:
But that said, you could create a microschool. We had somebody in our cohort for a while that decided to push it till next year, but she was going to do a twice exceptional gifted learning and it was going to be very academically focused and it was not going to be multi age. It was going to be middle and high school. And so there’s so many ways you can do this. And again, she had, her children were twice exceptional and she was very frustrated with the way they were being served in her public and private school. She tried and she’s like, I need to create something for them. And I know there’s a whole community of my friends that also want this. And so I’m not sure how to answer the question because I’m so biased.

David Richards:
But I think systemically and from the infrastructure, you’re not going to see a lot of these kind of really traditional instruction type models.

Cyndi Burnett:
That makes a lot of sense. Well, David, I have to say I’ve learned so much in the last 28 minutes with you about micro schools. And I know Matt and I in our debriefs will be talking about how we might start our own micro school. Wouldn’t that be so thank you so much for sharing your knowledge today. So before you go, we have to ask a question that we ask all of our guests. Which is, what is the most creative educational experience you’ve had, either formal or informal? And can you tell us the details of that experience?

David Richards:
Yeah, when you asked me that question, I was like, it’s kind of sad that I don’t have one as a student. So I went through K through 12 middle class suburban district in California, which is supposedly one of the best school districts, and it’s pretty mediocre. I missed a whole entire year of high school and I still got straight A’s. Like, it was just not that exciting and so I kind of just made it through. But my most exciting and creative educational experience was when I was working at the charter schools that I told you about. It’s called Summit Public Schools. And we had found about this book called the Lean Startup and Design Thinking. And this was like 2010.

David Richards:
So we got together and we got the whole organization together and a bunch of students and we interviewed them and asked them what they want school to be. And we did that for a whole entire week as our professional development. And we followed all of the kind of design thinking, doing empathy and really listening, not giving them answers. So we just interviewed all of our students, a bunch of them, and we redesigned our whole entire school model. And that school model is now in 300 schools across the country. And so that was the most exciting creative experience I’ve ever had because you’re getting to sit there and speak with kids directly and have a protocol and a framework that you’re following. And it was like, I couldn’t wait to get there and just talk to them about what they thought school should be. And then we were able to create it from there, which is amazing, right?

Cyndi Burnett:
That is amazing. And 300 schools.

David Richards:
Yeah.

Matthew Worwood:
Well, David, thank you so much for this conversation. I remember Cindy was really excited about the whole micro school concept. She shared it with me. I was like, oh, this is intriguing. And the discussion didn’t disappoint. It’s super fun. And I certainly am looking forward to our debrief conversation that Cindy and I will have in the next couple of weeks. If you’re interested in learning a little bit more about David and micro schools in general, do check out his website, changemakereducation.com.

Matthew Worwood:
you’ll find a link to David’s podcast, which Cindy and I hope to be guests on that as well. See, we’ve said it now. You can’t. You can’t go back on that. We’re going to be a guest on the show.

David Richards:
Absolutely.

Matthew Worwood:
And you know, if you’ve got a friend, a colleague, a family member who, you know, might be a little dissatisfied with their current schooling situation or perhaps is in the homeschooling network, then I think this is a great episode to share with them, particularly if they’re not familiar with micro schools. And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter Fuel Extra Fuel newsletter on our website fueling creativitypodcast.com My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett. This episode was produced by Cindy Burnett and Matthew Warwood. Our podcast assistant is Ann Fernando and our editor is Sheikh.