11. School at the Atomic Level, featuring Prenda School

Prenda School is becoming the largest network of America's tiniest micro-schools. 

According to Kelly Smith, founder of Prenda School, sometimes tiny things can cause outsized effects. A former student of nuclear engineering at MIT, Kelly says that operating a micro-school reminds him of splitting an atom, a process that releases incredible amounts of energy. 

Kelly sees a similar phenomenon at his schools. Students don't learn the standards one course or lecture at a time. Instead, they conquer core academic skills in the morning and then spend the rest of the day in collaborative and creative projects with their peers. The result, says Kelly, is pure energy.

Prenda School makes it possible for people to open a micro-school for up to 10 students, grades k-8, in their home. It provides all the training, software, and funding that they need to be able to do that.

In this episode, Kelly and Heather talk about why Y Combinator wanted Prenda School in its portfolio of fast-track startups, why adults want to be Prenda guides, and why students are surprised by how hard learning can be when they have agency and when their progress is entirely mastery based.

Large school systems can learn from Kelly's small-sized model. Listen in for this last episode in the summer series exploring "what schools can be" and how all schools can benefit from the innovations that are bubbling up in the super-agile micro-school movement.