When Learning Looks Like Digging Ponds: Rethinking Education with Ryanne Plaisance | Daycare & Early Childhood Education Series

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti (09:01.298)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Ryan Plisantz, co -founder and head of school of the Argo Novus School, an education center with locations in Playa Vista, Los Angeles and mid city California. They service grades from preschool through middle school.

and they invite you to imagine a learning experience unlike anything you had as a child. One that has swing chairs and study blocks instead of desks. One where you travel to locations throughout the city to learn by experience and not just from a book. One where emotional aptitude was as highly regarded as academic excellence. One where math is equally important to entrepreneurship. And one where a course on human happiness is available.

They place a big importance on nutrition and offer a vegetarian diet in line with USDA standards. They value diversity and actively celebrate individuality and self -expression. Ryan herself started her career working with homeless families in Chicago before becoming interested in our education system. Now, before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits.

that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefitsagency .com.

Now, back to our guest today, the head of school and co -founder of the Argo Novice School, Ryan. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today. Okay, so tell me about how this transition came from working with homeless people in Chicago to working in education.

Ryanne (10:54.997)
Thanks for inviting me

Ryanne (11:07.182)
I started working with homeless families and kids in Chicago and continued that work in Los Angeles and really became interested in their educational journey. So many of these kids were so many years behind academically that emotionally we’re giving them the skill set to become healthy stable adults, but without giving them the academic resources, they wouldn’t have the skills to reach their dreams. And our schools do some

was not providing them the support that these kids needed. As I got deeper into that work in education, there were so many areas that were not aligned with current research in how our kids learn. We’re still teaching so much to an outdated methodology and needs that are not the focus that our kids and students should be focused on today. So

started to really change what area I was going to go into, which was specializing in education. I believe when I started a program with homeless kids in LA and then traveled to Africa, I worked with homeless kids in Malawi. That was probably the biggest turning point for me in my interest in education.

Anthony Codispoti (12:31.259)
what happened there that was such a big turning point for you.

Ryanne (12:35.352)
site.

was with our kids in Malawi. There was so many material items that were lacking for those students, but there was such a great love and a deep commitment in the community for the kids and the families. And it was something not only that our homeless kids struggle with here in America, but that we as a population and as communities struggle with. There was such a connection that I found in Africa that wasn’t here.

when you look at how that impacts our most vulnerable populations, which, you know, I was working with homeless kids and youth, there’s such a disconnect from the greater community and who these kids are. And you travel down into our education system and these kids are still looked at not for their individuality or their passions. We’re still so focused with all of our kids on getting it right and teaching everyone the same thing at the same time, despite

the needs are for our kids. So it was just a really wonderfully insightful time for me to understand the importance of something that wasn’t tangible like material things, like relationships.

Anthony Codispoti (13:56.398)
And so, so what did you learn from the time in Malawi that you were able to bring back to the experience that you now apply here in the States?

Ryanne (14:06.136)
What was interesting because our kids in the states that I was working with had so much so many needs.

And then when they started helping and working with kids in Malawi, something transformed with them, where they were surprised that they didn’t have lunch every day, or they didn’t have shoes, or 10 kids were sleeping on a mattress. And so in the process of the program, the students here, that were…

and our homeless were saving their allowance so they could help these kids in Malawi. And the fact that the kids in Malawi couldn’t just go to school like the kids in LA were so jealous of the kids in LA of how easy education was here, at least the ability to attend school. The kids in LA started looking at their lives very differently, and it almost empowered them because they

able to be helpful to somebody else, it empowered them to be helpful to themselves. And so for one major takeaway I had is that the power of philanthropy and the power of connections and relationship with people maybe outside of our bubble or outside of our world and how powerful that can be.

Anthony Codispoti (15:27.117)
And how were you able to sort of share with the kids in LA what it was like for the kids in Malawi? How were you able to convey what that life experience was?

Ryanne (15:37.592)
So there’s a big time difference between Malawi and LA, but we would do these late night Zoom meetings with the kids and the kids would also have pen pal letters, which they complained about in the beginning and then really got into because they would start to send each other small trinkets and things. So that relationship really blossomed.

The greater part of that project, which didn’t come to a petition, would be if they could travel and then meet each other and do that. But we weren’t able to get around that red tape at that point.

Anthony Codispoti (16:15.609)
And so who were the kids in LA that you were sort of connecting with the kids in Malawi? Were you working in two different schools at the time?

Ryanne (16:24.522)
I was the director of development for a nonprofit agency in LA for several years that worked with homeless and foster care youth. And so it was the students in the group homes and the transitional living programs that I was working with.

Anthony Codispoti (16:36.836)
And so your experience working with homeless kids in Chicago and LA and the children that you worked with in Malawi, this helped to kind of inform a philosophy of yours on how education should be approached.

Ryanne (16:54.976)
It developed a deep interest in how our kids learn and what is needed for our world to grow to be better than we are today.

I was tackling so many of these problems with our nonprofit leaders from homelessness to hunger to water issues. And how do we answer those huge problems? have agriculture problems and we need leaders that care about those things, but also that are problem solvers.

and that are okay and feel okay to fail and have the grit to carry on once their ideas don’t work. In my work with our kids,

there was such a lack of confidence that was happening with them because, and not just kids that are homeless and are vulnerable populations, our kids all over America in education, they didn’t feel like they were good enough. And they were trying so hard to get an A, and had studied so hard to regurgitate information for a test that was supposed to show them if they were gonna be successful in this world or not. And all for…

For what? It’s not connecting anymore in the needs that we have. And so when you really dig down into the research, we have it now of how kids learn best and the skills that we need for our worlds, but we’re not able to implement that fast enough in our school systems. And so that became…

Ryanne (18:37.152)
a passion I guess of mine that developed because our kids deserve and our world needs an education system that has caught up with the times that we are living in.

Anthony Codispoti (18:47.683)
And so what does that look like? What do kids need to be successful in today’s world? And how can that be delivered from an educational standpoint?

Ryanne (18:58.69)
I think that the first thing is to get out of a mold that everyone is learning the same thing at the same time.

We don’t live like that at any other time in any other place in life. You’re not just friends with 30 -year -olds or just friends with 41 -year -olds. We don’t function like that in the world. There’s so much learning that can happen between ages. We know that Maria Montezori taught us that many, many years ago in the benefits of being with a multi -mixed -age class and how that helps students become both teachers and students organically in an environment. So it’s not just the teacher who’s teaching.

that kids are learning from all places and each other.

You also have a sense that some kids get material very fast, whether that’s in math or language or science, and should be allowed to continue to move fast through that subject matter. And it doesn’t mean they’re going to move fast through all subject matter. Maybe in math, they’re just getting it and connecting with that subject. But in English, they need more support. And so as that child moves through schools, those are very different needs that child has. And if our job as an educator is to see each

as the individual person that they are and to help them grow, we have to change the system in which our kids are working through school, which really comes down to just having smaller class sizes.

Anthony Codispoti (20:23.939)
smaller class sizes and allowing the kids to sort of progress at a pace that’s more comfortable to them.

Ryanne (20:31.382)
Yeah, and where there’s no getting it right. You know, I think in school there’s so much of trying to get it right versus the love of solving a problem. Like, lifelong learners, mastery of a subject matter, there’s always more subject. There’s always more ideas and problems to solve and curiosities to, you open. You’re never finished, right? And…

I don’t know, so that thinking for teachers and students and families that there’s an end goal versus life being a lifelong process of developing learners is a shift in our mindset.

Anthony Codispoti (21:14.273)
And how do you teach that in a practical sense? Because I think you’re really onto something. Something that I try to teach my own kids, a couple of the points I think you’re touching on here. One, this idea that you’re never finished learning. My kids look at me, they see an old man who knows it all. He’s probably known it all for a long time, far from it. I tell them if I’m doing it right, every day I am learning something new.

And right, and I also try to instill in them this idea of, you know, rather than trying to promote and coach them on how smart they are and pat them on the back for that.

I, know, hey, you’re such a hard worker, you’re a good learner, you love figuring things out. So these are things that I’m trying to instill in my kids because I think that it’s a much better approach, it’s a much better mindset to go through life with. And I’m curious for somebody in the education space, how do you teach that to kids, like on a practical level?

Ryanne (22:18.678)
I think you hit on something very important, the power of language. Instead of focusing on this picture is the best picture ever, right? You’re focusing on, I love the choice of colors that you use, or I love the character traits you made in your story and in your characters. I love that you’re a hard worker, that this was, you got it all right. Doesn’t matter to me that you get it all right, just matters that you try your best. Like that language shows

kids what we value and that happens at home as much as in the classroom.

A program we have that I think is really important is our design and engineering program. That’s because so much of design thinking becomes very tangible in that space. The plans that we have often don’t work out the first time around. And what do we do with that? And so when our students are imagining a toy that they want to build or a robot that they’re coding, they imagine it.

They plan it, they design it, they build it, and then it falls apart or something doesn’t work and they have to go back. And so that process in the design and engineering room is then very applicable to many other times and places in our kids’ life that we build on.

Anthony Codispoti (23:40.46)
I think it’s great. I’m looking at your website here and there’s a picture. don’t know if this is designed in engineering room, but it certainly looks like it. There’s a bunch of big butcher block tables. There’s a lot of creative craft tools in the background. It seems like this would be a great place for kids to bring their imagination into the real world and create that thing that they’re seeing.

Ryanne (24:04.226)
don’t know about you when you went to school, I think I had one, I was lucky enough to have one shop class in fifth grade. But then as we got older, the shop classes were for students that were not going to academically

Ryanne (24:21.592)
dictated that, but somebody did. And it was called alternative education. And so I remember being in these honors and AP courses and looking out the window and watching these kids in shop class, fixing cars or building trebuchets or doing these really interesting things that were considered a backup to the academics of the world. And what a disservice we do to all of us. One, I still can barely hang a picture frame, you know, on my wall.

To not understand that the academics go hand in hand with the inventions and the building and the making is just a huge disservice that we’ve done with our kids. Taking them away from the world that they live in to learn doesn’t make sense.

Anthony Codispoti (25:13.067)
So let’s talk about the story of how Argo Novice actually got started. You working with homeless kids in different locations. You were working with children in Malawi. At some point, how did you come up with this idea to start your own school?

Ryanne (25:25.742)
Yeah, and I had this crazy dream about starting a school way, way back in that time in my early career. You could see the need as I talked to more schools nationally and internationally, the research was there and the educators were really frustrated that they couldn’t bring that to the table for their kids. And so I dreamed about opening a school and I got really excited about it. And 100 % that’s where it would have stayed is, you know, a dream in my head.

And then something, you know, happened that really changed my whole trajectory in life. I contacted a rare illness called tranversal myelitis and it paralyzed me for the waist down. So it took me about two years to learn to walk again. And that just changed my whole…

way of approaching the world and how I wanted to live in the world in the time that I was given to do so.

Anthony Codispoti (26:39.424)
How old were you when this happened?

Ryanne (26:42.094)
Gosh, I was 24?

Anthony Codispoti (26:45.896)
And so one day you woke up and just from waist down, you couldn’t move. wasn’t any warning signs, anything leading up to this.

Ryanne (26:54.094)
Well, I was coming off of a bag of food poisoning.

And then I woke up and was feeling better and my hands and feet were tingly, like almost as if they had fallen asleep. And I was supposed to get on a plane to see my best friend. We were having a girls weekend, very excited. And my boyfriend was driving me to the airport. And I remember telling him, gosh, I can’t get this tingling to leave my hands, you know, in my feet. And we both just chalked it up to, you know, me having been ill over the past

know, a days and it would go away. And then I was on the plane and we had a layover in Texas. And as we were landing, that feeling started going up my whole body. And that’s the last thing I remember before waking up on the ground outside of the plane. And at first I thought for sure we had crashed.

And then when I tried to get up, I realized I couldn’t feel my legs or move them at all. And so that was confusing because we hadn’t crashed. And then I said, well, someone must have dropped me because you just don’t wake up not being able to move your body. And then it didn’t make sense to the paramedics. They were like, you walked on this plane. so on the way to the hospital, it almost felt like someone was pouring cement on me, the rest of my

started to go numb and I lost feeling as well. So by the time I was at the hospital I was only able to blink and…

Ryanne (28:37.646)
struggling to breathe and so that was really, that was scary, really scary. And I thought that was, this could be it. And I still wasn’t sure what had actually happened. But I was really lucky that I passed out while the plane was landing. So I got to the hospital very fast. You sometimes you only 1400 people a year get this illness. So it’s very rare, but I’ve met people whose kids

have woken up in the middle of the night and they wake up and they can’t move a part of their body. Or there was a girl who came on from soccer practice and then feel well and then lay down. And then wake her for the whole night. And so nobody knew what was wrong. So for me, was lucky that I passed out in a public place because I was able to get to the hospital quick. And within 24 hours, I got my waist up and I was able to move my arms and talk again.

It took about two years, a little under, me to be able to walk again. I think six months for me to get any feeling in my feet or anything like that. So that changes, that changes you. The depression was extreme.

because you’re depressed and because you have such needs, right? You need help making food and you need help.

routine stuff like using the restroom and you’re not fun to be around. And so you really start to know who the people in your life are that are fun friends and the people in your life that are, you know, true blue friends. And that’s a hard process too to go through. Sometimes it’s the people that you didn’t think were going to show up that show up. And, you know, the people that you thought would

Anthony Codispoti (30:38.152)
you get people surprising you on both ends.

Ryanne (30:40.634)
Right, right. So that’s a hard process to go through when you’re going through something hard. It’s hard to be a friend to someone who’s going through something that hard. think a lot of times people are afraid. Because it is not.

Anthony Codispoti (30:53.982)
So you found some strength through some friends and family who were around to support you.

Ryanne (30:59.746)
Yeah, incredible people and mostly my boyfriend, who’s now my husband. And we had just moved in together. We had only been dating for maybe eight months. So who knows? But I don’t think I would have ended up with him. And I definitely wouldn’t have started school had that not have happened.

Anthony Codispoti (31:25.766)
And why? How did this extreme hardship, this near death experience, I’ll call it, how did that fuel you to want to start a school?

Ryanne (31:40.034)
The fear is that I don’t come from money. So I don’t easily have access to investors and financial backings to do something like this. And so the fear of trying something that seems impossible, right? How do you start a school when you don’t have hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to back that project? The fear is that if you fail, you will lose everything.

And when you go through a traumatic event where you’ve almost lost your life, all of sudden those other things that you are afraid of losing don’t seem as important or they seem workable.

So before I would have said, well, if we save our money and we start the school and we put all of our savings and everything into it and we fail, well then I’m bankrupt and it takes seven years to get the credit back and where am I gonna live? And this time around it was, if we fail and I’m bankrupt and I don’t have a job, I will get another job.

friends and a support system that will, the family that will make sure that, you know, I’m not on the streets for a little bit and how lucky that I have that, that vision. I won’t go hungry. And so if I lose everything and have to start over, I can, I have the ability to start over. And that was the, that was the change. And you only have one life.

Anthony Codispoti (33:15.609)
It’s a completely fresh perspective, right? And I think this is really helpful for people to hear, and I know it’s a great lesson for me to hear again. There’s so many times as business leaders or people who want to start their own business, there’s the fear of what happens if it’s not successful, what happens if I fail. And I think when you can go through those absolute worst case scenarios and see that coming out the other side, you have still the most important thing, which is your health and your life.

All the other things seem rather small and and I think that the beauty of the difficult experience that you went through is that You were given that shift in perspective to see what is truly important Bankruptcy not fun, right having to having to liquidate everything, you know having to start all over again If it came to that that would not be fun

you know you’ll be all right, because you’ve got your health and you’ve got your life. So okay, so that’s super helpful. I love that story. And so now you’re like, okay, I’m gonna do this. I came through the other side of this difficult situation. I’ve had this dream to start a school. So tell me about the first steps.

Ryanne (34:27.384)
So I had to convince my partner that this was his dream too. And yeah, so this is my husband. Yeah, and my husband works in business. He’s a developer. And he said, no way, because we’re saving for a house and all these, we’re not risking it all and all these things. And I said, well, let’s save money.

Anthony Codispoti (34:32.858)
Is this your life partner, your husband, or a business partner? Okay.

Ryanne (34:55.992)
you’ll save for a house and I’ll save for a school and we’ll see how things pan out. So our goal together was to really see how we could, because I had been out of work, because I had been paralyzed, I had been a disability, so was getting back on our feet that way. And also looking at what options we had with our money, with our 401Ks, we’re different things. And so we moved into a really tiny apartment.

Ryanne (35:29.732)
In the process of this time, right when I got the braces off my legs, the doctors had said it would be highly unlikely that I could have children.

And then I became pregnant right when the braces came off my legs. So that was unexpected. And so we, one baby in tow and two dogs, we moved into this tiny apartment in the city and saved every penny that we could almost for the next, I don’t know, 10 years. And that,

that became how we invested into our first preschool. So we started in a home. It was this beautiful house. And on the top of the house was a weather vane, and it was the Argo Navas ship. And so this house felt like…

It was a little castle, you know, it had the greenery and the lights in the middle of the city. And so we opened our first place and started taking our kids all around the city and all these different experiences.

And I was teaching there at first and it’s hard because you’re doing everything at first in the business. And for this type of business, right? So I’m cooking and I’m doing the cleaning and the curriculum development and all of it. And that was hard, but I loved it. I don’t think, I think I’m too old right now to have the energy for that today. But when we opened, I was still there. My kids were in the program. And so that was wonderful to be with them every day.

Ryanne (37:10.318)
And yeah, so sorry that I went on a tangent, but that’s how that’s how we did it. And then we grew from there.

Anthony Codispoti (37:18.105)
And so was it successful right out of the gate? mean, I’m going to guess things are pretty lean early on, right? You got to reach a certain scale before you’re able to actually, you know, take some money out of the business and maybe think about those growth steps. But did you feel like pretty early on, we’ve got something here, like this is working.

Ryanne (37:40.076)
The first six months were slow. And then it really started to pick up. I had already been working in a school in that community. So I was very lucky to have a lot of community support and spreading the word about our school, who knew me as an educator and a teacher. And we’re also excited about the work we were doing. So that word of mouth really was what made her break up, made her.

Anthony Codispoti (38:06.99)
That’s what made you.

Ryanne (38:08.248)
Thank you, yes, in beginning.

Ryanne (38:13.25)
things got harder as time went on because we grew. And there’s always that question with the business of how fast to grow and the fear of growing too fast too soon. And.

So we struggled with that. We opened our first building in 2015. We opened our second preschool in 2016. Then with the funding from those two smaller in -home schools, we opened up our center school, which was a big jump for us. And with that came all the permitting and building and zoning, which you don’t know until you’ve been through that, what that is.

You know, I was paralyzed and that was hard, that year with building and zoning almost did me in. I mean, it was rough.

Anthony Codispoti (39:00.746)
This trumped that

Ryanne (39:07.438)
because people will come in and they would inspect something and say you need to be ADA qualified, you need to have a ramp here and here’s what you need and then you hire contractors who will get the plans approved, they would do the thing and then some new inspector would come in and say, oh, well, I want this to be two inches higher or two inches over and that’s gonna cost another $25 ,000 and there’s nothing that you can do but be nice and kind and pay the money

find the money and so at a certain point

They were like, we’re gonna be in trouble because it’s, know, every story you ever heard, the building plans are delayed and the construction is delayed, which means you can’t open, which means you’re not making money. And so that was a hard time. And again, you have to go back to that place, which was harder this time because we had built something that was working. So losing everything before you’ve built the thing is hard. Losing everything after you’ve built the thing is even harder. And…

So that was the come to Jesus moments of, okay, if this is where we stop, then it was a run, this is where we stop, but we’ll go until we can’t go anymore. And luckily we made it through that time.

Anthony Codispoti (40:25.358)
you were able to get to the finish line of being able to get all the permits checked and open the new facility.

Ryanne (40:33.122)
Yes, and I think this is a hard thing to realize. Anybody who’s, I think, done anything, unless you have the wealth of resources and the wealth of money to just easily go through those time periods, you have to be creative and you have to figure out ways to keep…

going that may not be traditional, traditional routes. And I think if we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t have gotten by.

Anthony Codispoti (41:12.845)
What were some of the creative things that you were able to employ to get you through that?

Ryanne (41:17.858)
Well, so you have to have a license to be a preschool in the state of California.

My kids and one of my teacher’s kids are in the class. So for temporarily, we became like a parent co -op and followed the rules with a parent co -op so that we could keep, so that one, parents wouldn’t lose their places at the school. And two, we could keep having some income while we were waiting for all these other things to come into place.

But that was hard because I went back in the classroom then to make sure we met the rules of what a parent co -op was. And in the midst of everything, but that was something that kept our clientele that didn’t have us lose our families. And we were really transparent with our families about what was happening. So they all got it and they all understood. But parent co -ops don’t have the same jurisdiction as licensing and we were being scrutinized with licensing going through that process. And so, you know, that was a little want to make sure that you are doing

everything right and then nobody is helping you along the way with figuring out some of these pieces so there are lots of things where people just don’t seem to know. Like that’s not our jurisdiction and so it’s I don’t know what my point is other than it takes a community and creativity and a willingness to try new things.

Anthony Codispoti (42:48.823)
Tell me about what’s behind the name. How did you choose the name of the school? What does it mean?

Ryanne (42:54.424)
We were first city kids preschool. We opened as city kids preschool. We were going to be city school for elementary middle. And then somebody else opened up.

called City School right before we expanded. So Argo Novus, I mentioned, was the weathervane on the top of our first location. But Argo Novus is also the first ship, according to Greek mythology, the first ship to set sail to the seas. And we really love the concept of who we are being about helping our kids navigate their world. I’m not here to tell them who they are or to make them into something that they’re not.

to support them and see them and give them a voice and tools and experiences to find their own passions, to help them navigate the choices that are best for them and in service of their community. So that ship really was a symbol of the foundation and the core of who we are.

Anthony Codispoti (43:58.167)
I’m gonna go back to what you were talking about going through the difficult time opening up the new facility and having to get creative. That’s something that I think is discounted or undervalued in entrepreneurs is when you’re scrapping and you’re in startup mode and you’re trying to figure things out, you need to get real creative. I’m curious in a very tight labor market like we have now where it’s hard to retain and recruit good staff, what are some creative things that you’ve done and found

with to hold on to as well as find good folks to join your team.

Ryanne (44:36.322)
My answer to this is my answer to the same as retaining constituents and getting funding and it comes down to relationships with people and relationships with staff.

Ryanne (44:53.56)
community that was based or built in our staff and teaching team has become so much beyond just work for our staff. Our teachers are really there for each other. You know, in the beginning, we made it a big priority to do things that were just fun with each other. I what I think is fun is not always fun for everybody. So like we used to do these amazing race.

things where I take everyone around the city and a guide would be trekking up these hills and finding these clues. I loved it, but not everybody did. So we changed it up to sometimes we’d go out to dinner or a comedy show or we would, you know, just have happy hour or treat them to massages. Go to a pool for the day and just treat everyone to lunch and just enjoy each other because you know what happens when you see each other as people, when you have a conflict,

You in your mind you know that person’s not out to get you you know that person cares about you There’s a level of forgiveness and grace we offer one another when we have a positive relationship before the thing happens So so that’s been instrumental in our team being so strong as we’ve grown We have also found though because our school travels a lot So it really takes a teacher to be with us for a year to know if this is the right

for them. It can seem fun to teach outside and then some teachers teach outside and they hate it. They don’t like the sun on them that much, they don’t like the different variables that they encounter outside, but if you’ve been with our school for a year then you tend to be with our school for a long duration. It’s usually that first year that it takes people to understand if it’s a good thing.

Anthony Codispoti (46:50.976)
Yeah, I understand what you’re saying about building those team bonds. If you’ve experienced somebody and had a personal connection with them outside of work, you’ve seen that human side to them. Like you said, you know that they’re not out to get you. Something just happened, so let’s talk it through. I think those kinds of things can be really helpful and beneficial.

Ryanne (47:13.534)
And I think a lot of times, especially in the workplace, we can be upset about things and we don’t talk about them. And in goodness, it’s not just in the workplace this happens, right? In many relationships, we can hold on to those things and then we harbor those resentments and then they build to something that is then harder to deal with because all that anger through all that time has been building. But when you’re going out with people and meeting them as friends, it’s easy to resolve conflict.

Anthony Codispoti (47:42.793)
So I want to talk about the decision to go from preschool, kindergarten, all the way up to middle school. That’s not a trajectory that I hear happen a lot. That’s a big jump. I mean, for a lot of people, if they want to expand, they’re going to add more of the same age groups that they’re already accustomed to serving. It’s easier because you’ve got a curriculum already set for that age bracket. Now you’ve got to build a curriculum for different age groups.

more to manage what was kind of behind that thinking.

Ryanne (48:17.774)
No, it’s a good question because all of those age groups have very different needs and teaching those students you need a different set of skills for all of those developmental, you know, times and areas. I would have opened a high school to start. High school was what I was most excited about changing in our educational system before our kids go into, whether it’s college or trade school, there was so much work there that I wanted to support our kids in.

business -wise, business model -wise, just opening a high school was so difficult. I don’t think we would have been successful. The need for preschool was there, and growing with our kids from preschool up seemed much more doable from a business model, which is why we started in preschool, but always had the want and the direction to move up with our kids.

Anthony Codispoti (49:18.014)
Where does the school go from here? Are you feeling good about where you are with the curriculum, with the size, are there growth plans, are there new things that you want to introduce?

Ryanne (49:29.048)
would love to go to high school, but every time we’ve taken that jump, we’ve really talked to the parents. When they were leaving preschool, we talked to that graduating class and said, do you want to come with us? Do you want this education? And if the community said yes, then we’d go. So will the community say that now? I don’t know. High school is a very different beast. And we have been growing fast. Curriculum -wise,

Because we stay with kids where they are academically, I already have kids in high school curriculum. So we are already curriculum mapped through high school. So that’s not a concern for me in terms of meeting those kids’ needs. We’re accredited, and part of that process of being accredited was so that our kids could get college credit in high school. And so we’re already working with two colleges to implement that for high school.

But the question for me is part of the high school program really involves longer term internships and apprenticeships. And so the work that that is in partnering with communities is a lot to do.

It just depends on what our community wants and how many people want to come on board to support that for their kids and if this is the time to do it. My oldest daughter is going into eighth grade. So she’s kind of been the upper class. So we’ll have to see what we do there as well.

Anthony Codispoti (51:06.996)
because next year she may go to a non -mom school for the first time.

Ryanne (51:12.61)
Yes, which

which she doesn’t she says to me, how could she says, how could you do that to me showing me what education could be, and then you’re going to stick me in a desk. And I joke that it might be good for her to really understand what what the system is. We take the kids to Costa Rica every year, because part of our Spanish immersion program is that they learn in Costa Rica for three weeks and study in a traditional school in Costa Rica.

Anthony Codispoti (51:20.105)
Hahaha.

Anthony Codispoti (51:41.79)
Sorry, you take your own children, your biological children, or your students as well. wow.

Ryanne (51:46.786)
the students as well. And so she’s gotten a taste of

Wonderful school. love this school and they only speak Spanish So it really enhances our kids Spanish and living a life in the shoes of somebody else is so important for our kids with empathy and all of those good things, but She’s had a taste then of what a traditional school is and it’s a shorter day. You know, our day is long It’s 830 our schools open from 8 to 6 and so a lot of kids are there that time and Most schools close at 2 30 and this school in Costa Rica closes at 2 30

And she, you know, and her friends have said, it’s so much shorter, but it feels so much longer and our butts hurt sitting in the chair. And I think our kids used to that system have just gotten so used to it that it’s just the way of life. And should it be, and are we serving our kids the best should be the questions we’re asking.

Anthony Codispoti (52:50.096)
And so this is a good time to sort of dive into a little bit more about how that daily school experience is different for children going to your school than a traditional one. We kind of touched on it a little bit. Some of the stuff we went over in the intro and early on, but I’d like for you to paint a little bit more of a picture.

Ryanne (53:09.486)
So our classes are 90 minutes long.

And usually there’s a 15 minute break in that class period. But we do that to enable the real project work that happens in each class. So our kids do tests. They test a lot. They’re assessed a lot. Because remind you, we’re following our kids in where they are academically. So in order to do that, we really have to know if they’ve mastered a subject matter or not. The thing is, they’re not taking the same test as everybody else is. They might be doing the same thing as another two or three kids in the class. But it’s very rare for a whole class to be

the same study subject matter. So they’re taking a test just for them to know how they’ve done and for the teacher to be able to assess they’ve mastered this or we need more time in this area. And then the other part of that class is project -based whether that is

Like one of our Spanish classes is Stuart Little class. So they’re reading Stuart Little in Spanish. In the end, they watch the movie in Spanish and tell the difference between the book and the movie. But they’re also in groups, and their goal is to do, they study group Goldberg, the machines, the dominoes that hit the marble. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (54:23.89)
crazy contraptions to get some things very simple done.

Ryanne (54:27.83)
And so they have to get their certain criteria for the machine they have to build, but it’s getting their little Stuart little mouse from one side of the room to the other. And they’re using Spanish as the way that they need to communicate in order to work together to build this contraption. So they’re also learning engineering and design, which gets brought into that class. our teachers really communicate and partner with each other on different projects. And so they’re not sitting in a desk regurgitating information from the teacher.

the whole class period. There may be 20 minutes of a class period where the teacher is in front of the room having a discussion or something like that but then they break up into groups and they have one -on -one time with the teacher for a small group with the teacher so they get that time which which isn’t a normal thing in a traditional classroom. Our classes in elementary school are only eight to nine kids in a class and 10 or 11 in middle school.

In our design and engineering room, our kids are real toys, not toys, real tools. They are not toys. It should not be treated as such. But in order to do that, they need the teacher to be very closely monitoring how they’re using those tools to build real things, whether it’s a go -kart that they’re going to be racing in. Our kids this past year built a submarine to go down underwater with them in their scuba classes.

So our kids take scuba diving as part of their math and science curriculum. And they can only go to 40 feet at this age. And so they built this submarine to take them with them that could go farther than them in the water and collect data and samples for them to be able to take up. And so that was the real world activities they were doing. And that’s what their class was. And so.

Anthony Codispoti (56:23.781)
That’s pretty cool. How would you describe a good fit for your school, whether you’re thinking about the individual student or the family, all together?

Ryanne (56:36.75)
That’s a good question. I would say our school is a good fit for almost any child or any student.

Ryanne (56:49.25)
Right now we are not a special needs school. So I would love to add that support to the school, but we travel a lot. So we need students that are able to follow directions and get on and off a bus and self -regulate appropriately as we travel the world. So outside of that.

Any any child would do well at our school. We have kids that are logical and linguistic learners, which is more how we grew up and we’re taught. We have kids that are more kinesthetic or auditory or visually. All of us are all of those things, by the way, but we tend to lean into some of those areas more easier than others, right? So it’s our job to help our kids figure out how they learn best and support that. Now families.

Families, if they know education and research, they want us. But a lot of families are uncomfortable with things changing. think people, we are uncomfortable with change. so if you want a really traditional, if you feel really comfortable.

in a traditional setting where your child is learning the same way you did in a desk in a classroom with a teacher in the front, you’re going to struggle with not seeing that. You know, I’ve a lot, not a lot, but I’ve had families come in who know the research and know we need to do something different. But then, then they’ll come to me and said, say something fishy is going on. My child is loving school.

And I’ll say, that’s great. And they’ll say they’ve never loved school. They’re talking to the kids down the street about how they love their school. They must not be learning, you know, and prove to me how they’re learning.

Anthony Codispoti (58:52.144)
Because learning is painful, right? That’s how we all came up. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah, go ahead. What a terrible thing to hear your kids say. I love my school.

Ryanne (58:56.918)
Is it that? Yes.

Ryanne (59:02.958)
And the concern was so real. And we had kids building a pond for a bit and studying perimeter and area. And they were messing it up and then had to rebuild it and learned a lot of math and how to do those dimensions. the parents were like, all we’re seeing is pictures of our kids digging a pond. When does the learning happen?

And so the hardest part is there’s such a big education component to what learning is and what it looks like that it almost needs to happen first before we can do the work that I’ve realized more and more.

as we’ve gone through this process. Because if I ask you, what does learning look like? There’s probably some image that comes to your mind. I mean, you’re an entrepreneur, and so assuming there are some different things that you might have in mind, then others, yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (59:56.835)
much so. Yeah, I’ve got I’m taking notes here in our conversations, follow up questions and to me this is what learning looks like. It is sitting down, this pen and paper, maybe today it’s a tablet or a computer. That’s my visual of what learning looks like.

Ryanne (01:00:13.612)
Yeah, and so when we define what that looks like, and that is learning, that is learning, right? We’re taking notes, we’re hearing and listening. But is learning also building a pond? And is learning also a kid figuring out how to work a robot? And is that the same and equal to a kid memorizing different equations? Is one better than the other? And

Ryanne (01:00:42.86)
and how much time do we give to each and what’s the goal? that becomes the questions, right? Is our goal and should our goal be anymore for our kids to be memorizing all this information to pass certain tests? That’s the question. Do you remember all those tests you took growing up?

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:13.494)
No, know, if looking back, I have some awareness and some realization that the best things I learned were a little bit more of what I would call the soft skills. Like I took a speech class in high school, which was so beneficial for so many things I would do later on. I took a typing class in middle school, which continues to serve me well to this day.

And I don’t want to say that social studies or, well, I will say that calculus was useless for me. But, you know, not that social studies was useless, helpful to understand what’s going on in the world and where we came from. But those are the things that were sort of less applicable to me as I got out of school and started to sort of live my real life. What I wish I would have gotten better at.

was and that I continue to work on today is just better at the process of learning new things, whatever that may be and learning it so that I can apply it and use it, not just learning it so that I can retain it for the next 60 minutes to pass the test.

Ryanne (01:02:27.392)
And there’s the difference, right? I mean, you look at some core things, our multiplication tables. Important for us to know, really memorization is the best way for our kids to do that. So we’re not saying all or nothing. I think there are very few things that are all one thing or all another. But things need to change for those skills you’re talking about to be essential and for our kids to get as they become adults in our world.

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:56.919)
Yeah, I like that. Ryan, I just have one more question for you, but before I ask it, I want to do two things. If you’re listening today and you like today’s content, please hit the subscribe, like or share button on your favorite podcast app. Ryan, I also want to tell people the best way to get in touch with you. You shared a lot of really interesting ideas, whether somebody is interested in maybe getting on the wait list for your school or they just want to talk to you about some of your approaches to education. What’s the best way for them to connect with you?

Ryanne (01:03:26.582)
site has my email and our teachers email and staff so it’s probably the best way.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:32.482)
TheArgoSchool .com and we’ll put it in the show notes. Okay, last question for you, Ryan. I’m curious, how do you see your industry evolving in the next five years? I’ve talked with several preschools and education centers in California. I know that there’s a lot of challenges in place now. How do you see things evolving and changing?

Ryanne (01:03:56.598)
Education is changing. It has to. The system is broken in many ways and we have no choice but to embark on that change. How we change is the question. COVID really shined a light, I think, for many about the system and caused a lot of distrust between the education system and families. I think we have…

more distrust than we have in a long time between parents and teachers and families in the school system. And a part of that is good because our kids need more in the classroom and we’re not delivering what we should be to our kids. So that’s good. The hard part is we all need to work together in pursuit of our students’ success in order for us to be successful in changing the system. And we’re struggling with that right now. I hope as the pendulum

all the way one way and all the way you the next that we come to a point where we’re able to work together and provide our kids what we already know they need. It’s not research we have to uncover. We know more about neuroscience than ever before because of technology. We know how brains work and how our kids learn better than we ever have before. So it becomes a question about when we’re going to implement that and when we’re going to make that a priority

anything else.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:27.702)
That’s terrific. Ryan, I want to be the first one for thanking you for sharing both your time and your story today. I really appreciate it.

Ryanne (01:05:36.376)
was so nice talking with you, Ambani. Thank you for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (01:05:39.456)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.