LiberatED Podcast

Dr. LeDonna Griffin is the founder of Leaders to Legends Academy in Omaha, Nebraska. She works directly with families who are seeking alternatives to conventional schooling to educate their children. LeDonna worked in the Nebraska public schools as both a teacher and principal for 30 years. In 2019, she launched Leaders to Legend as a homeschool co-op, and in 2020, interest in her model soared.  *...

Troy Salazar is the founder of Liberty Self-Directed Learning Center in West Des Moines, Iowa. Troy worked in public schools for 22 years, first as a second grade teacher in a rural community in Iowa and later in the Des Moines public schools where he spent most of his teaching career. He launched Liberty SDLC in Fall 2022 after becoming frustrated by the conventional schooling model. Liberty is p...

Listen to Kerry's keynote presentation on education entrepreneurship and innovation at the 2023 Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) conference, recorded live on June 23, 2023 at Long Island University. Read the case study of education entrepreneurship across the US.  Sign up for Kerry's free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated .

Karema Akilah is a former teacher in the Maryland public schools who began homeschooling her children 20 years ago, of which the past 12 have been devoted to unschooling, or self-directed education. Through her personal unschooling journey, she began wondering about the possibilities of Web 3.0, blockchain technology, and artificial intelligence to capture the magic of the unschooling educational...

Linsey Knerl is a mom of 6 in Nebraska who has been a working and homeschooling mom for over 15 years. In 2021, her book, Homeschool Hacks: How to Give Your Kid a Great Education Without Losing Your Job (or Your Mind) , was published by Simon & Schuster and served as a timely resource for the many parents who were drawn to homeschooling as a result of the education disruption caused by the pandemi...

Nestled at the end of a residential cul-de-sac in Hopewell, Virginia is Dream Tech Academy , a microschool founded by former public school teacher, Danette Buckley. Dream Tech Academy launched in 2019 with four children, including three of Danette's own, as a homeschooling and tutoring program. It is now a recognized K-12 private school with about 30 children and four hired educators and is locate...

Matt Dreier and Kristen Braia are the cofounders of a new Acton Academy affiliate microschool, Pace Academy , in North Chesterfield, Virginia, about 10 miles outside of Richmond.   Matt retired from a 20-year career in the US Marine Corps and began pursuing his interest in education. He earned a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and then teamed up with his niece, Kristen, a m...

Kimberly Stringer is the founder of Kreative Kids Academy in Wichita, Kansas, a child-led, outdoor-based licensed preschool that during the pandemic response and school shutdowns expanded to include a school-age program that continues to grow and flourish. I had the chance to meet Kim and visit Kreative Kids and was so taken by its beauty, warmth, joyfulness, and emphasis on the value of abundant...

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...

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 em...

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 Profes...

Today's guest is Ariel Maguire, an accountant and mom of 4 who lives in a rural area of the Big Island of Hawaii. In early 2022, she and a group of local moms got together to create Kulike Learning Garden, a Waldorf-inspired microschool structured as a Private Membership Association, or PMA, to help with the care and education of their children in an area with severe child care shortages. They hir...

"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 a...

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...

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 L...

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....

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 entrepreneu...

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 fam...

What began as a microschool in 1967 for Clonlara School founder Pat Montgomery's two children and six others has grown into an internationally-renowned, K-12 private school serving 2,000 off-campus students around the world through its online program, as well as a small group of on-campus students at its Ann Arbor, Michigan headquarters. It quickly became clear that parents outside of Ann Arbor we...

Dr. Cory Steiner is the superintendent of the Northern Cass School District in rural Hunter, North Dakota. Northern Cass was a 2022 finalist for the prestigious Yass Prize for education innovation, particularly for its unique strategy of reaching rural students in a more personalized, learner-centered way.   Northern Cass Personalized Learning Institute June conference information and registration...

Today marks the 100th episode of the LiberatED podcast, which I launched back in February 2022 as a once-a-week podcast, and boosted to a twice-weekly show last fall because there are just so many stories to tell of the entrepreneurial parents and educators who are transforming US K-12 education from the bottom up. In recognition of this milestone, I thought I would share a few reflections. Thank...

Karen Weary was a licensed teacher in Colorado who taught for many years in both public and private Montessori schools before moving to the rural Rogue Valley area of southern Oregon. There, she taught in an established, private Montessori school. The education disruption of 2020 prompted her to explore other education options, and in the fall of 2021 she opened Mountain Montessori , a child-cente...

Nasiyah Isra-Ul, the founder of Canary Academy , an online learning platform for homeschoolers that provides curriculum curation and instruction, learning tools, coaching, and community engagement for homeschooling families across the US. Nasiyah launched Canary Academy as a 15-year-old homeschooler trying to make her own family's homeschooling experience easier and more efficient. She officially...

A former teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, Vijay Shah founded The Humanist Academy in 2016 in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas. An Acton Academy affiliate, this learner-driven microschool now has over 85 students.  Sign up for Kerry's free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated .

Dr. Gina Riley is an educational psychologist, clinical professor, and program leader of the Adolescent Special Education Program at City University of New York (CUNY)–Hunter College. She has over 15 years experience working with teens diagnosed with learning disabilities and emotional/behavioral disorders. She is also widely published in the fields of special education, psychology, school psychol...