LiberatED Podcast

Felicia Wright is a US Army veteran and former teacher in the Nevada public schools who decided to pull her daughter out of kindergarten for homeschooling and eventually launched a microschool called The Learning Outpost in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Learning Outpost now serves 22 kids, including two of Felicia's children, and employs two teachers, in addition to Felicia.   Sign up for Kerry's free, w...

In the South Bronx, the teachers at the Wildflower New York Charter School are creating a nurturing space for children's intellectual and emotional development. Located in the Morrisania neighborhood, the charter school is a collection of three separate Montessori microschools that priorize child-led learning, including for the more than 30% of their students with identified special needs.  The Wi...

Mercedes Grant had a tough childhood and became a public school teacher to help students like her. After teaching in four states, she finally decided that she had to leave the system to create new, learner-focused education options. She is now the founder of Path of Life Learning , a new microschool in Virginia that just opened for fall registration and is already near capacity at over 20 learners...

Amber Okolo-Ebube is a mom of 5 and longtime homeschooling parent in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas who runs Leading Little Arrows , a weekly homeschooling enrichment program focused on nature, art, and STEM subjects. She launched last spring and her program has become so popular that she recently leased a building across the street from the University of Texas at Arlington campus. With 33 st...

Kenneth Danford is one of the true pioneers in alternative education. In 1996, Ken launched North Star , a self-directed learning center for teen homeschoolers in western Massachusetts which was one of the first such spaces to exist. Prior to launching North Star, Ken was a middle school social studies teacher in public schools and wanted to create a new, non-coercive learning option for young peo...

Alycia Wright taught middle school in the Virginia public schools for over a decade before becoming a homeschooling mom to her four children. She is the founder of Cultural Roots Homeschool Cooperative , a non-profit with the mission of creating a liberated educational space for children of color in Richmond, Virginia that currently serves over 125 learners. I recently had the chance to meet Alyci...

Barefoot University is truly one of the most exciting organizations you'll hear about this year. It is a rapidly expanding network of outdoor education programs that brings families together for weekly nature meetups and theme-based learning activities. Barefoot University was founded in 2019 by our guests today, Madeleine Braden and Amber Brown, who were looking for more ways to connect their kid...

Chrystal and Joshua Bernard are pastors of their local church as well as the cofounders of Braveheart Christian Academy , a microschool in Arlington, Texas and part of the vibrant cluster of microschools and innovative learning models in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area.   Chrystal is a former high school mathematics teacher in the Texas public schools. She left to run her own CPA firm, which sh...

There is a vibrant and growing hub of education entrepreneurship and alternative learning models in New York City, and our guests today are a part of that. Jacob Greebel and Melissa Sornik, both licensed social workers and experienced therapists, founded Acton Academy Seacliff in 2020 in Seacliff, New York on Long Island, but decided to move their Acton Academy into the heart of Manhattan. In thei...

Dr. Natalie Summerville taught for over 20 years in the Virginia public schools before first launching The Grand Magnolia School , a microschool in Richmond, Virginia that her grandchildren and others attend.  Sign up for my free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated .

Today's guest is Yesi Sol, a former New York City public school teacher and founder of The Joyful Learning Academy . Joyful Learning is a learning center for homeschoolers in the DUMBO (down underneath the Manhattan Bridge overpass) area of Brooklyn, New York that also provides after-school enrichment and tutoring services to local learners. I had the chance recently to meet Yesi and visit her bea...

Jerry Mintz has been a leading voice in the alternative school movement for over 30 years. In addition to his 17 years as a public and independent alternative school principal and teacher, he has also helped to found more than one hundred public and private alternative schools and organizations. In 1989, he launched the Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) and since then has served a...

Wade Moore runs Urban Preparatory Academy in Wichita, Kansas, a private K-8 school where most of the students attend tuition-free through the state's low-income tax-credit scholarship program. Pastor Moore has been a longtime advocate for expanding education choice programs to enable more children to have access to the best educational fit for them. "It's life and death to students," he says. Urba...

In the small town of Abbyville, Kansas, located an hour outside of Wichita with a population of 83 people, lies Re*Wild Family Academy , a microschool run by our guest today, Devan Dellenbach. Devan was a certified elementary school teacher in Kansas public schools for five years before leaving the classroom to be a stay-at-home mom to her two children. Stay-at-home parenthood evolved into homesch...

One of the high-quality virtual learning platforms that I am especially enthusiastic about is Great Hearts , which is expanding this year into a national online private academy with a Classical education focus.   A network of public charter and tuition-based private schools and microschools, with both brick-and-mortar and virtual offerings, Great Hearts is the largest provider of liberal arts clas...

When Emily Williams told her parents that she was leaving her job as a certified public school teacher to launch a microschool, they thought she was crazy. Both longtime public school educators themselves, they couldn't understand why Emily, who taught in Mississippi public schools for more than a decade, would want to give up a good district salary, insurance, and retirement benefits to become an...

Self-directed education is a tough concept for many people to grasp. It challenges the ways in which many of us were educated, and the ways many of our children continue to be educated, by flipping the entire idea of education as a top-down model of coercive schooling to a bottom-up model of individual agency and self-determination. My 2019 book, Unschooled: Raising Curious Well-Educated Children...

For Becky Elder, education entrepreneurship is nothing new. In 1963, her parents founded a private school in Wichita, Kansas. Becky then homeschooled her own children even before the practice was legally recognized. In 1993, she helped to launch Northfield School of the Liberal Arts as a small, classically-oriented school for approximately 50 middle and high school students in Wichita.   Dalena Wa...

Sean Harrell is the president of Integration Charter Schools (ICS) on Staten Island in New York City. ICS is a collection of four charter schools focused on fully integrating students with special needs (about 40%)and general education students.  Sean has worked as a classroom teacher, assistant principal, principal, and school district administrator for more than a decade. He founded and serves a...

Despite his MBA and a B.S. degree from the U.S. Naval Academy, as well as a prestigious career as a naval officer and flight test engineer, James Lomax was prohibited from opening a secular private school in the state of Nevada due to occupational licensing regulations. Read more in my latest Forbes article : "Why Can't A Retired U.S. Navy Officer And Engineer Open A Private School In Nevada?"   S...

Our guest today is Dr. Lisa Scott, founder of The Art of Words Community School , a small private school in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, NY. Lisa earned her PhD in Education from Claremont Graduate School and taught classes in the history and philosophy of education at both CUNY-Queens and Hunter College before leaving to launch her microschool in September 2020.  Sign up for Kerry's free, weekl...

Today's guest is Michael Strong, a longtime education entrepreneur and innovator and now founder of The Socratic Experience , an online school that emphasizes personalized and purpose-driven education, which I highly recommend. Michael is the author of the 2009 book,  Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems , which includes a Foreword by John...

Turan Rush grew up in West Virginia on Charleston's West Side and was a star football player at Capitol High School, going to on to play at the collegiate level at Eastern Michigan University. He decided to come back to Charleston after graduating in 2021 to make a positive impact on the youth in his neighborhood. He teamed up with Jeff Biddle, a pastor and mentor to Turan, to open a thriving, spo...

In the summer of 2019, after 15 years of teaching in the Portland, Oregon public school district, Greg Brown resigned to pursue Activate  full-time. During COVID, Activate evolved into a full-time microschool with a dyslexia focus, and it continues to expand today to serve more learners in the Portland area. Sign up for Kerry's free, weekly email newsletter on education trends at fee.org/liberated...

Today marks one year since the launch of this podcast! It has grown so much, with inspiring stories of microschool founders and other education entrepreneurs who are building bottom-up learning models to challenge longstanding, top-down systems. I am thrilled to celebrate today's podcast anniversary with Sarah Tavernetti and Yamila De Leon, cofounders of Bloom Academy , a self-directed microschool...