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The Brainy Moms
The Brainy Moms is a parenting podcast with smart ideas to help moms and kids thrive! Hosted by cognitive psychologist Dr. Amy Moore along with rotating co-hosts Sandy Zamalis, Teri Miller, and Dr. Jody Jedlicka, this weekly show features conversations about parenting, psychology, child development, education, and medicine with practical tips to help moms navigate the ups and downs of parenthood. We're smart moms helping make moms smarter...one episode at a time!
The Brainy Moms
Your Child Deserves a Learning Path as Unique as They Are | Matt Bowman
Homeschooling or thinking about it? Wondering if 'open education' is right for your homeschooled child? What if everything we thought we knew about education was designed for a world that no longer exists? Matt Bowman, founder of OpenEd and international bestselling author, joins Dr. Amy and Sandy on this episode of The Brainy Moms Podcast to challenge the foundations of traditional education and offer a refreshingly practical alternative for today's families who are homeschooling or even considering it.
After watching all five of his children develop in completely different ways despite growing up in the same household, Matt realized that education shouldn't be one-size-fits-all—it should be as unique as each child.
The conversation dives deep into why standard education often fails to meet individual needs. Matt explains how our current system was originally modeled after military training methods imported from Europe over 200 years ago—designed to produce obedient soldiers rather than creative, independent thinkers. This standardization approach stands in stark contrast to how children actually learn and develop.
"The real tragedy," Matt shares, "is that this system not only fails to measure what matters in education—creativity, continuous progress, critical thinking, skill development—it actively works against it." For parents whose children are struggling, unhappy, or just not thriving, Matt offers a revolutionary yet simple starting point: take two weeks to try something different. Give your child space to explore their interests without pressure, and watch what naturally emerges.
One of the most powerful insights Matt shares is reframing our understanding of failure. While traditional education treats failure as something to avoid at all costs, successful athletes, musicians, and entrepreneurs embrace it as essential to growth. Teaching children to see challenges as "not yet" rather than failure fundamentally transforms their relationship with learning.
With AI rapidly changing our economic landscape, the skills that matter most aren't standardized test scores but creativity, adaptability, and entrepreneurial thinking. Matt encourages parents to tap into community resources—museums, local businesses, nature, arts programs—and integrate them into core education rather than treating them as mere enrichment.
For families ready to explore alternatives, Matt reminds us that small changes can make an enormous difference. Whether it's adjusting schedules, exploring interests, or incorporating entrepreneurship, the goal isn't to replicate school at home but to create learning experiences that honor each child's unique path.
Join us to get inspired about personalizing an education that works for your unique child.
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Hi, smart moms and dads. Welcome to this episode of the Brainy Moms podcast brought to you today by LearningRx Brain Training Centers. I'm Dr Amy Moore here with Sandy Zamalis. Sandy and I are going to have a conversation with Matt Bowman. Let me tell you a little bit about him. So Matt is an international bestselling author and the founder of OpenEd.
Dr. Amy Moore:For over 30 years, matt has been reimagining education for the digital age. He's a former sixth grade teacher, turned tech executive and education entrepreneur. Matt saw firsthand how the traditional education system often fails to meet the unique needs of individual learners. So, together with his wife, amy, matt founded OpenEd, which has served more than 100,000 students across multiple states, including military families, worldwide. Their approach focuses on blending personalized learning with technology and entrepreneurship skills, giving students the flexibility to learn in ways that work best for them. So Matt holds multiple degrees in education, including the Executive Business Management Program at Stanford. He lives in the mountains of Utah, where he and Amy enjoy spending time with their five married children and four grandchildren, and counting. Matt is here today to talk to us about open education. Welcome, matt. How are you today? Great to us about open?
Matt Bowman:education. Welcome, Matt. How are you today? Great to see both of you.
Dr. Amy Moore:Good to see you too. We're excited to talk to you today.
Matt Bowman:It's an honor to be with you too, so thank you.
Dr. Amy Moore:I just love your mission, I love what you're doing. We're in the homeschool space and so I mean, from a personal perspective of curating what, especially with my youngest, curating his educational journey I wish I had known that your resources existed at the time, because I was just winging it. And that's okay. It worked out because, like, after reading your book, I feel like I hit all of those right, like I'm going to look at his passions and his interests and his strengths and we're just going to go with it and it's okay. And I didn't care what other people said. And you know my like, my mom has a doctorate in education and she thought I was crazy for unschooling my youngest kid. What are you doing? What do you mean? What are you doing? What about socialization? Are you right? And I'm like you need to just leave it because this is what my kid needs, so anyway. So I was super excited just that your philosophy aligns with what we do and how we support homeschool families.
Matt Bowman:I was reading through your stuff. I mean we're very much aligned, like just get out of the way and help the kids thrive, right.
Sandy Zamalis:Yeah, exactly.
Matt Bowman:And what are your ages, your kids, Sandra?
Sandy Zamalis:Oh, my kids are older. We're old. Our kids are out of school. We still serve families, so you know I work with a lot of families. That have kids all ages? Yeah, mine are. I'm an empty nester now and you're in.
Dr. Amy Moore:Utah.
Matt Bowman:I'm based in Utah, yep.
Dr. Amy Moore:Okay, my husband just got back from a 10-day fishing trip in Utah last week.
Matt Bowman:What part Do you know?
Dr. Amy Moore:The Green River, the northeast corner, yeah yeah, usually go to Montana. He has a group of friends that usually go to Montana for 10 days, but the rivers, the water level was too low for fishing and so the week before they sort of had to drop back in punt and go okay, where are we going instead? And so they went to Utah and now they're saying maybe that's where they want to go next, because it was phenomenal, the fish were huge. I mean, I can't believe how fat these trout were.
Matt Bowman:So are you, I do not fish yeah, me neither.
Dr. Amy Moore:Yeah, I don't either, but he's an avid fly fisherman and I'm just not.
Matt Bowman:I don't have the patience for how often I get tangled up in the weeds and have to start over again.
Dr. Amy Moore:Yeah, well, I think that's part of their. Yeah, they're like OK, well, whatever, so anyway.
Sandy Zamalis:OK, we're so glad you're here. I love this topic. I'm very much a we need to rethink the education system for our kids person. Huge advocate for homeschooling, I homeschooled my kids as well. So did I know Amy did as well. And so let's jump in there. How did you get started in this space of just trying to rethink education for families?
Matt Bowman:trying to rethink education for families, starting as being a parent five children, right, you guys would appreciate that. So my wife and I were raising our five children in the same household. The same expectations, same job charts and cadences and schedules, and all five were different. And we started realizing, huh, if they're so different from each other personalities, interests, likes, dislikes their education should probably be tailored a little differently for them as well. You can't just in a box serve all kids. And so we started thinking what can we do for each child? Every year we'd say what should their education program look like this year? Look like this year?
Matt Bowman:And we realized soon that other families were dealing with the same question and the same challenge of how do you adapt education to each child, and the system's not set up to do that. And so we realized well, let's try to figure out how do we help families. And we tap. You know, the message of open education is not just one version of another. Schooling is better like don't get pigeonholed into the label of even public or charter or district or micro or homeschool or unschool. Tap into all of them. You figure out what your child needs and say what are the resources that we need to tap into so. So we started doing that at scale and realized just tens of thousands of families needed that same support structure is just how do I navigate a traditionally standardized system with a very unique child? So that's where it all started.
Sandy Zamalis:I love that.
Dr. Amy Moore:Yeah, I do too. I always wondered as adults, we do a whole bunch of different things with our lives. Right? Our careers are really individualized and so diverse, so why do we educate children for 12 years in the exact same way? I agree, right. And you talk about that in your book right, you talk about that. You know a horseman adopting this. You know European idea of training up obedient soldiers Right. And he brought it back to America and said this is how we should educate kids. And I thought do people not know that?
Matt Bowman:It's been around for 200 years, but I would say just within the last few years, people are starting to really realize that maybe that's not the right model and in fact AI is adding to that right. So recently, in the last year, ai has disrupted so many future traditional plans. You can't just be guaranteed a diploma to a college, to a work, to a job for life. Ai has said don't plan on that at all. So it's making parents ask themselves well, what is education? What should I be thinking about as they're adults? And then you start saying, well, what should I be thinking about when they're K-12? Also right, and so it really is. Just over the last few years, the momentum is just building so much around parents saying there's got to be a different way.
Sandy Zamalis:Yeah, I'm sure so many parents seek you out because they're looking for something like this. They're looking for a way to think outside the box. Let's start there. How do you help parents sort of de-school, because that's part of the problem, right? You know we have a view or perception of what school should look like, and so we almost have to de-school ourselves as parents in order to rethink what it looks like for our student. How do you help with that?
Matt Bowman:Yeah, you're absolutely right, sandra, that is the starting point is that we're so ingrained in one version of what schooling looks like that it's really hard to think outside of that. But it's so funny, once you do, once you see it, you can't unsee it right. You start to say, oh wow, you know what, maybe I can just do a little more flexibility in a structure to start, and then just start adding flexibilities to that. So yeah, to your point. The first thing is just to acknowledge or ask yourself is my child happy, like? I like to just start with that question.
Matt Bowman:If you and your children are happily enjoying their current education program, great, keep doing it. I'm not here to say whatever you're doing is wrong, change it. No, it's opposite. If your child is thriving, doing well, enjoys everything about it and you're comfortable with it, you're good with the schedule and the routines, and then keep doing it. But if there's some unhappiness or some stress or some anxiety or some little thing that's niggling at you that says you know what something's off a little bit, just stop and say, okay, what could I do differently? And number one recommendation is don't start everything at once, right, so just start small.
Matt Bowman:I like to tell parents, you know, maybe take two weeks off. Just write a letter. You know your school may not like it or whatever, but write a little letter that says my child's gonna be gone for two weeks. He's safe, he's well, he just you know he can't come for two weeks and just kind of let see what happens.
Matt Bowman:And if you have multiple children, maybe do it one at a time, right? So you have, you know, one child at home for a couple of weeks and just spend some time with them and see what they discover, see what they're like, you know, and then if they are longing to go back to the structure that they had, yeah, send them back. You've only taken two weeks out. That's great, right? So literally just start small and then start saying, okay, what could I plug in? Or you know, then eventually maybe it's oh, I'm just going to take them home at noon every day. They're going to go to school in the mornings and then at noon I'm going to pick them up and we're going to go explore the world or start a business or entrepreneurship I love for kids, you know that kind of thing.
Dr. Amy Moore:So just find ways that you can trial it and see if there is some steps you start uncovering that are really powerful between you and your child and your child, yeah, and I think that one-on-one time and that time of low pressure, low stress really then gives your child an opportunity to explore what it is that they even want to talk to you about, right, that they have this space to dream and to think and, you know, to share, and I think that's beautiful.
Matt Bowman:Yeah, and we haven't. I put in the book tactical activities. You could do whether, whatever time you want to start. And we start with just what are your children's interests? And, as you know, so many parents said I don't know. I have no idea what my child really likes, and it's often because they're over-structured, their schedule's too busy. They haven't ever had a chance to show you what they would do if they don't have anything to do, right. So you want some downtime, you want some unstructured time and then start with just watching what they think about when they don't have to think about anything, and you know.
Matt Bowman:So we start with interests, but then we couch that under needs. So we also you know it's not just a blank slate do whatever you're interested in. We have to sync that with child needs, parent needs, sibling needs, home, you know home management needs. Then we turn to the neighborhood, where the neighborhood needs, where the community needs, and as you start kind of mixing the interests with needs, something really beautiful happens. You start to see, realize that your children have interests that might solve a need in the community and if you marry those together, natural learning starts to occur and joy returns and the stress goes down and like it's really pretty magical. So it's fun to see that.
Dr. Amy Moore:Absolutely. And then I would think too, on the opposite end, you've got some kids who are really struggling, and so they have their neurodivergent, or they have special needs, or they are dealing with a learning disability, and it's my contention that struggling learners are under chronic stress, as it does to acute trauma, and so these kids who are struggling are in this fight or flight mode, and so, of course, they can't think about what it is that they're interested in or passionate about, because they're just trying to survive.
Matt Bowman:I think that's really well said and I believe you, and that's grounded in science and grounded in research and fact that those kids just can't they're, they're just, uh, you know, just in a, in a mode of fight and and survival, that they just can't be freed up to think about interests that they might have. Like, it's just is, you can't do it Do it Right.
Dr. Amy Moore:And the reality is a parent could say, okay, well too bad, right, you still have to go to school. These are still the requirements. This is the legal requirement. This is what we do. We go to school, but if we are in fight or flight then our amygdala has hijacked our prefrontal cortex and we can't think and learn anyway, and so just pushing our child through that isn't going to work. We have to make a change. We have to be able to recognize that, pull back, decompress, give our child some breathing room, so that then we can say, okay, how can I best support my child?
Matt Bowman:Yeah, and I'll add that, like it or not, parents in today's world have to take that step of caring. They just can't no longer just outsource that to the public school or whatever. Parents again, whether you like it or not, the time's changed enough now that you need to take that forward step and say, ok, my child's struggling. The schools sometimes aren't equipped to help your child in the way that you know that they need it, so you're going to have to step up a little bit more and do something, and so that's where we kind of just want to bring all the resources to the table to help parents navigate that challenge that maybe they didn't feel like they signed up for, you know, 20 years ago or 10 years ago. So it but time is now and it's exciting to be able to help families see that light bulb go on and what they can do, and there's more flexibility than you think when you look at all these regulations and expectations.
Sandy Zamalis:I think a lot of parents maybe feel unqualified and that's kind of the hiccup that they have when this, you know this, the child is struggling, they're not sure what to do, and so there's, there's definitely a thread in our society that says you know there are, you know the school is qualified, and what I'm hearing you say is not all, not always. I mean yes, in some respects, but they might not have the resources and they aren't going to move at the speed Right.
Dr. Amy Moore:Qualified but not necessarily equipped right.
Sandy Zamalis:Right. They're not going to move at the speed you need them to move. It's going to take them years to address the issue. So talk about that a little bit. What is, you know, the program that you guys do? What do you do to help equip parents so that they do feel like they have, if not the qualifications, the resources available to them?
Matt Bowman:Yeah. So we have a couple different program models. So one is where we partner with school districts to tap into their resources and bring those resources to the family at home. So that's what we've been doing for 17 years now. That was the genesis of it is I wanted it to be accessible to all. There wasn't a private tuition threshold that only the rich could access it. So we've really been working, for again, this is our 17th year that we've been delivering a program in partnership with school districts around the country, and if we're in your state, we can bring to you resources at no cost to you. So that's where we start. We say, okay, where's your child, what does he or she need? And then let's tap into curriculum, teachers, technology, tutors, you know, student clubs, virtual, you know, teams, those kinds of things just to bring together a community of families and educators and parents to be able to help children wherever they are.
Matt Bowman:And you know here's a funny example that sometimes what I've learned over the years is that when a kid says I'm not good at math, I, you know which is a common? You hear that that's a common sentence. And what's funny is I say, oh, you know what which is a common. You hear that that's a common state sentence and what's funny is I say, oh, you know what? That's the adult's fault. It's not that you're not good at math. We haven't found the math curriculum that clicks with the way your brain learns math and they're like, oh, you mean, it's not me, it's the, it's the curriculum choice right Cause there's dozens, if not hundreds, of different ways to teach math. And when you can finally find that clicking light bulb for a kid when they learn math, the way that their brain is wired, it's exciting, it's thrilling and it's great. They're no longer bad at math because we've been able to find the resource that taps into it.
Matt Bowman:And that's what really is our program. That's so different is that we didn't say here's the curriculum that y'all have to do. We say let's start with a child and find the curriculum that helps them, and that kind of backwards approach has really been well received by families. To create this kind of marketplace embedded curriculum. Try some, try another, you know, figure out if that works for you and if it doesn't, drop it, don't force it. If it's not working well, don't use it right and there's other options. And pair that along with a really caring, experienced teacher that's there to help you, as the parent and the child, navigate what they need to learn and what they want to learn. And then you know, add to that technology resources, software, adobe licenses, you know, minecraft licenses, lego licenses, whatever right. So just flood the child with whatever resources they need to be able to pursue the passion and purpose they have in their life.
Dr. Amy Moore:I love that. So that starts with a questionnaire or a conversation, or how? How do you help parents determine the right path for their child?
Matt Bowman:So it starts on our technology platform where parents are given kind of this free range to start building what are some activities, what are some things I want to do this year.
Matt Bowman:So they start just kind of putting that on their education plan and then we have some prompts that fill that in with oh, this curriculum might help with that, or this set of options might support that plan that you have. So it starts with what are some ideas and interests that my family has to learn this year and then we populate that with some ideas of curriculum options that they could use. And then it's tap into our parent support staff and our teachers and really take the next level down and say, okay, now that you've chosen this category or this area that you want to study, what do you think about this curriculum? And you've chosen that one and what can we do as a teacher or resource to help with that plan? So that's really just kind of starts there and builds the education plan. You know we we say we want to help parents become education designers and that's what our platform starts with. Is that premise that let's help parents navigate the world? You know unlimited options is overwhelming right. And so we try to just Say what's your plan and just introduce two or three different options at a time. Let them demo it, trial, you know, have a trial version of something, or we'll shift them books or whatever they need.
Matt Bowman:And the other thing that we do in our program really well is we embrace the community aspect of education. And so there's so many, as you both know, raising your children. There's so much education available in the community that sometimes we set aside as, oh, there's so much education available in the community that sometimes we set aside as, oh, that's just after school or that's just enrichment or that's just seasonal or whatever. But you know what, bring that into the daytime and say what if that was part of our plan? You know math museum or Sylvan learning centers, or you know ballet classes or piano lessons or karate studios or sports leagues or like, let's not just have that be an and after, let's have that be part of education. And there's so much learning that can happen when you bundle in the community education aspect of museums and zoos and planetariums and you know all those things are so amazing to help round out that experience.
Matt Bowman:And then again I mentioned entrepreneurship. I love kids of all ages. I've helped kids as young as six, go start a business. So go out in the community and say in my neighborhood, what problem can I solve that someone will pay me something for? And if you don't want to go profit focused, then go, be service oriented. That you're trying to. I'm going to raise money for this cause and so I'm going to do these services or bring you these products or cookies or whatever Right, so you can do both entrepreneurship for profit and nonprofit. It's really just the idea of adding value to a problem in your community and see if you can help be a leader in solving that and see if you can help be a leader in solving that.
Dr. Amy Moore:So I want to talk a little bit about how, even though you're helping parents curate an education program or collection of opportunities that meet their child's individual needs, you aren't trying to approximate a public school or private school classroom, because you're trying to break parents out of that idea that your child needs to learn this. Then you assess them, they get a grade and then you move on to the next thing. You're trying to totally change the mindset of what mastery looks like right, of what mastery looks like right. And I know that in your book you give examples of athletes and their completion percentages and how if they were graded on their completion percentages, then people like LeBron James and Michael Jordan would not be considered elite athletes, right?
Matt Bowman:And you talk about I've got to insert there, dr Amy, that I had to do it. One of my chapters starts with LeBron. Lebron James is a failure. Dot dot dots. He's not One of the greatest athletes and basketball players of all time, but the dot dot dot is. If we graded him like we grade kids in school yes, and he would His stats would be a failure, right 56% or something like that, his stats would be a failure, right, 56% or something like that.
Dr. Amy Moore:Right, like, yeah, well, and so I love then how you bring professional musicians in and you know, you, just you talk about how you attempt something, you fail at it, then you make this adjustment, then you try again, right, that that mastery isn't a one and done grading process. And so it made me think. So my youngest son and his fiance are music performance majors at CSU and she's a cellist, he's a flutist, flutist, flute player, okay, so they are actually performing a piece together this semester and I watched them workshop it over the weekend and there were measures of music of them playing together that were straight out of heaven, beautiful synergy in how they play. And then there were these measures of failure and I say music, I mean by music measures on the staff, right where they just were out of sync, complete failures, hitting the wrong notes, and they would stop each other. You know, correct, each other, yell at each other, and then they would play beautifully again.
Dr. Amy Moore:And so I watched this process of this was great. Oh, you failed. This was great. Oh, you failed. And that was okay, because that is the process of learning and and beginning to perfect it and beginning to master it, but knowing that you're going to fall over flat on your face and fail multiple times before you get it right, and that's OK.
Matt Bowman:I love that. I love that example. I in the book and in my life. I love the phrase not yet and that's really what we focus on. Is that it's we're all a bunch of not yets and we have a bunch of not yets in our life. We have some of these mastered, maybe close to masterly proficient in what we do, but we have a lot of not yets as adults.
Matt Bowman:And yet we tell kids they can't have not yets. You know that's just ridiculous on face value. And then we threaten kids that like failure is so bad. If you don't do what I say, I'm going to fail you. What does that teach the kid about failure? It's something you avoid at all costs and it's a punishment, Whereas you meet artists and musicians and athletes and failure is like the rewarding part because you tried something that you failed at and you're going to try to do better at it. Right, so that's like the beautiful thing of failure. And we raise kids thinking that failure is a threatening thing that we have to avoid at all costs and you're a bad kid if you fail, and that's just the opposite of what these kids need.
Sandy Zamalis:Yeah, you talk a lot about the average student myth and just you know, and all that standardization, all the testing that we do to our kids, this kind of falls in line with kind of what you're saying here, is. You know, we're priming our kids from a very early age that they've. If they don't do it perfectly, they are failures and they don't get to practice and enjoy the process.
Matt Bowman:Or they're being right. I mean, that's a phrase that just drives me crazy.
Sandy Zamalis:Yeah, talk more about that yeah.
Matt Bowman:Yeah. So I mean we have a whole chapter on. There's no such thing of an average child than the. You know the myth of an average child and I think, dr Amy, I read that you, you know your husband's a Air Force pilot or retired or something, and we use that example from the 40s or 50s.
Matt Bowman:So the Air Force sought out to design the perfect cockpit seat for Air Force pilots to make them more safe and more efficient, and it turned out, you know. So they measured like across 100 different characteristics of these pilots and designed the perfect average seat. And it fit nobody. Not one person fit the average seat and it ended up actually like deaths occurred because they weren't able to eject properly or reach the right controls or whatever, like lives that were at stake there because they put average seats in the, in the, in the airplanes. So then that led to adjustable seats. Go figure, right, we need. You know, everybody's different, and so let's have a seat that can adjust and forward and backwards. We can't imagine cars or chairs these days that don't adjust Right.
Matt Bowman:And so, because everybody's style is so different, and so that's the premise of, we've ignored that truth in a very standardized public ed system, to say every child at third grade and four months should be at this level or else they're behind. And it's just ridiculous. On all child development research that says that's not true, you know. And then don't even get me started on the difference between boys and girls, right? I mean, every child development expert would say girls are 18 months ahead, if not more, for many of the early years. And yet we put a boy and a girl on the same third grade and eight months reading scale and say, oh, the boys must just not, you know they, they must need medication or no recess to read more, and like the opposite of all that is needed for those kids, right?
Matt Bowman:And so and I love one of the things we focus on with boys in particular there's research out there that you know, you can validate or challenge, that says boys need to be exhausted before their brains are ready to learn. So they just make them run for an hour or two hours or three hours before you try to squeeze in 10 minutes of math. Right, let their bodies be exhausted and more learning will occur in that 10 minutes than if you focus an hour and a half on the math. I just love that. We're all different, every child's different. Embrace the unique. Children need unique options.
Dr. Amy Moore:Yeah, yeah, absolutely Okay. So I want to read you a quote from your book and have you speak to it, because I highlighted it, because it was so impactful. And so this is talking about how we assess learning and measure learning in the school system and what we get wrong. Okay, here we go from your book. You say the real tragedy is that this system not only fails to measure what matters in education creativity, continuous progress, critical thinking, skill development and more. It actively works against it. While politicians and policymakers debate solutions based on test scores, the fundamental needs of children to move, play, socially interact and experience genuine discovery continue to be sacrificed. This disconnect demonstrates the system's own failure to understand how children actually develop and learn. So these experts who have created the system of measuring progress and growth don't even understand fundamentally how children learn and develop. Is what you're saying.
Matt Bowman:I agree, and it just sounds so shocking to hear that, doesn't it that we have thought that the experts that design the system are grounded in child development knowledge, and that's just not true. They're grounded in assessment theory or standardization or policy or things that can be measured and controlled in a box. That's how our systems are designed. They're not designed by people that are looking at the child themselves. And so you know, it's really. Yeah. You reminded me by reading that just how far off we are when we don't, when we ignore the human nature of each child instead of just trying to create a system for everything. And again, who to blame on all that? There's layers up and down, and so I was purposeful not to blame too many people, right, like. This is one book that doesn't lash out at some group for some reason, right, lash out at some group for some reason, right, the purpose isn't to blame people. It's to shine a light that this isn't the best way to do it and let's figure out some options.
Matt Bowman:And you know, I read an article yesterday about the national crisis of chronic absenteeism. I'm sure you've seen those headlines, right? Kids are not going to school at the rate they used to, and there's all these now bureaucrats and people trying to solve that problem by looking at the data, and there was one comment somewhere that part of the article said many researchers are saying they're discovering that the answer when they ask parents and kids that question why don't they go to school their answer is school is boring. And I'm like, yeah, we should probably start there. We should probably create an environment where kids want to go there because it's exciting, there's learning and and I tell you as a teacher, former teacher myself I would want that environment to be part of.
Matt Bowman:You know, teachers didn't sign up to be test preppers and just you know, just deliver test prep all the time and standardize everything. Teachers want to inspire and celebrate learning journey that kids go through in their lives and we just don't let them do that, and so it's just so. Yeah, it's something that we really want to, just to help people realize that there are better ways to do this, and it's opening up education to all forms. Embrace it, don't just get pigeonholed into one path.
Sandy Zamalis:I know probably the bigger, like existential problem is is that you know a lot of the policymakers, you know politicians, you know big people in education to put together an education that matches what they think the nation needs. Right, which is how we got into things like STEM. Right, stem was the big thing for you know, like a decade. But you know, what I'm hearing you say is we really need the opposite approach. We really need to look at our individual children. It's almost like the ultimate and true individualized education, where we really look at our individual children. It's almost like the ultimate and true individualized education where we really look at each individualized student and figure out what are their gifts, what are their talents, where do they need some extra skill, support or help. You know, that's where you know Amy and I live.
Sandy Zamalis:We want to help unlock those talents and gifts by helping them strengthen, you know, skills that might be holding them back. So that's what I'm hearing you say. That's like these two worlds where you know we've got the big thinkers who are trying to average out everything based on whatever perceived needs we have as a society, and then we as parents need to kind of totally take that apart and look at each individual student in our home and figure out how to help them build those talents.
Matt Bowman:It's so true, sandra, that's exactly right. And you know people, state officials over the years have said, matt that all sounds great for a few kids. You can't do that at scale, you can't personalize at scale. I you know, I have to deal with a million kids in this state. How can I personalize education for every child? And I think I've been able to challenge that.
Dr. Amy Moore:You're like Peter, hold my beer.
Sandy Zamalis:I'm switching.
Matt Bowman:It's like you know what it can be done at scale. There are things like technology, there are things like platforms, there are things like humans that can connect you know and over you know, over virtual beings, and and dial down to write to the very home, the very child, what they need and it's doable at scale. Uh, like literally it's. It's not something that's just dreamy, it's just you have to want to and that's you know, that's the biggest thing. I'm gonna steal a line from mike rowe.
Matt Bowman:You know a great advocate for skills-based, you know, vocational, uh, our country, that's what our country right now needs a lot of, especially with, with AI.
Matt Bowman:And he says we don't have a skill gap, we have a will gap. I think that same will gap exists in our either legislature or state offices or policymakers or whatever, or even local state boards or school boards or whatever might have a will gap, just they aren't willing to just say let's do something different. Now we're finding the ones who do. We're finding part superintendents and school boards across the country that say you know what, enough of this declining enrollment, nobody wants to come here. What can we do to have them want to come back? And we're like this is what they want and so they're like all right, let's give them that. And we have been coming back in droves, just family after family that comes and says that will help my child. That's what we're talking about, and it's just super exciting to be able to see there are people that want to do the right thing for kids. And and again, there's more flexibility in all state structure and regulations than most people think. You just have to be willing to push it a little bit.
Dr. Amy Moore:Yeah, I agree, and I think you know that this whole attendance issue, I would. I would argue that it isn't just kids saying I'm bored, it's kids saying I can't. And so when you are frustrated because you can't meet an expectation that's unrealistic, because it is beyond your skill set or because it isn't realistic for your age or developmental level, right, then that frustration turns into low self-esteem, it turns into obstinate behavior. Right, it's a domino effect. And so if we don't go back to looking at the root issue you know of why is my child exhibiting school refusal? Right, and it very well may be boredom, right, Because we have kids on that end of the spectrum that are like I'm not being challenged.
Dr. Amy Moore:No, I agree, that's just one of many yes absolutely so, speaking of, we need to take a break and let Sandy read a word from our sponsor.
Sandy Zamalis:Are you concerned about your child's reading or spelling performance? Are you worried your child's reading curriculum isn't thorough enough? At LearningRx, we recognize that most learning struggles aren't the result of poor curriculum or instruction. Instead, learning struggles are typically caused by having cognitive skills that need to be strengthened Skills like auditory processing, visual processing, memory and processing speed. Memory and processing speed. Learningrx one-on-one brain training programs are designed to target and strengthen the skills that we rely on for reading, spelling, writing and learning. With experience training more than 130,000 children and adults already, we'd like to help you get your child on the path to a brighter and more confident future too. Give LearningRx a call at 866-BRAIN-01 or visit LearningRxcom. That's LearningRxcom.
Dr. Amy Moore:So, matt, I want to talk about something that we talked about at the top of the hour before we started recording, and that is you say you need to put your kids before your reputation, and I think that that holds a lot of parents back, parents who are considering homeschooling or unschooling or alternative schooling for their kids, but they're afraid of what their family will think, their friends will think Are they doing something that's against societal standards? Are they doing something that's against societal standards? Talk about that and how we can start to dispel that idea or kind of allay that anxiety.
Matt Bowman:You know that's so interesting that we had to dedicate a whole chapter to that topic, right, because we realized that probably is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for any parent getting started into a mindset that's focused on their child's education. It's their reputation is preventing them from that. They want to be able to get the kudos they get or the applaud or praise they get at the grocery store or at the family reunion or Christmas dinner with grandma and grandpa that says, oh, my child's, you know, 4.0 student and they're going to college and they're going to be a doctor gets all this padded praise. And so we sometimes misinterpret that as, oh, I'm doing the right thing. That might not be the right thing, and so we highlight that you have to put your child's needs ahead of your reputation. Take a step back. It can be humbling, it can make you swallow some pride, it can be oh, I wish I could have said that. You know that my child is doing some great thing at you know, research, study at Stanford or whatever, right? So we just have to get past that and say what does that child need? Now, their sibling might need that, right, what we can celebrate.
Matt Bowman:One of the examples that just made it so real in the book was Isaac, our co-author. He was chatting with a mom who had a, I think, a 22, 23 year old daughter who was a college graduate and had done everything that system told her to do Straight. A student went to college, got a degree and then she had an 18 year old son. So these, that's the story. And she was saying, oh, I wish my son were more like my daughter. Right, that's very you know. Because what turns out? The son had dropped out of college after one semester. He was making five grand a month in his business that he began. So he was in his mind, thriving I'm making five grand a month. I started this, my entrepreneurship gig. I'm never going to college, that's a waste of time. And he was off and running in his business pursuit. She couldn't handle that. She would tell her family he's a dropout. And yet her daughter was living back in her basement with like $100,000 in debt, no job prospects, depressed, anxious and not knowing where to go. And the mom was saying I wish my son were more like my daughter. And that's just.
Matt Bowman:That's the epitome of our society. Puts these expectations on parents that if they don't have a direct to a college or a master's or an advanced degree and they're, you know, have all this debt. For some reason, we forget that, that that's okay, whereas kids who start businesses or start on apprenticeships or internships or whatever and have no debt like one of our phrases we sometimes celebrate in our family is 23 and debt free, because our kids have chosen a path that doesn't burden them with debt. And success looks differently for each child, whether it's industry certifications or a skill or apprenticeship or a college degree. I don't care. If that meets what you need, do it, but if it doesn't, don't right, it's that simple. So reputation is a hard one to get over and you just got to do it. You just got to set that aside and say what's best for my child and take the slings and arrows that come from others.
Dr. Amy Moore:Yeah, I agree, and I think that you know for us, I will never forget when we even started considering alternative options, we were sitting in the principal's office the very last day of school and our child had been on an IEP and 504 plan and we were supposed to be alerted to any missing assignments as soon as they were missing things like that. And we got a notification the night before the last day of school that our child, with ADHD, had 21 missing assignments and was going to fail that class if those assignments were not turned in by the next morning. Well, that's not realistic, right, I don't care, I don't care if you have a Ferrari brain, you're not going to do 21 assignments the night before the last day of school. Right, I don't care, I don't care if you have a Ferrari brain, you're not going to do 21 assignments the night before the last day of school. And so my husband and I marched in there the last day of school, demanded to see the principal, said this he is an IEP, this is a requirement. You are required to inform us, right? And that was the conversation for the hour. That was the conversation for the hour. And at the end of the conversation, the guidance counselor looked at us and said, well, I think he fell through the cracks and I said we're going to disenroll him.
Dr. Amy Moore:And my husband and I got in the car, looked at each other with deer caught in headlights because we were like we just disenrolled our middle schooler. What do we do now? Right, and so, as we looked at all of our alternatives, it began this process of saying we need to meet the needs of our child and we're going to care more about his emotional health than his academics. Like that was priority number one and that followed us through all three kids. We're going to hear more about their emotional health than academics, because that's going to fall into place. Like, if we meet those social emotional needs, then the rest is going to fall into place. So I think we, I think parents, need to know what they value. I think they need to identify what they value and then that value needs to be at the forefront of the decision making for their child, because the rest will fall into place. Right.
Matt Bowman:I totally agree. Yeah, the right time, the right things will click. They'll get it. They'll have access to what they need and and they'll want to learn skills to pursue what they're interested in. That's a human trait. If we give the right destructured environment for them to to flourish like that.
Dr. Amy Moore:So Right, and this child is an entrepreneur now.
Sandy Zamalis:Right, and so I think it's an American legacy. Like I really feel like, just as Americans, we have this legacy of entrepreneurship and innovation. Like, if you look at any of the big you know Elon Musk or Bill Gates, all of those guys, none of them followed the path, they went about it in a whole different way and like maybe it's just something we, as parents, need to like also remember and embrace. No, we're innovators. We can think outside the box.
Matt Bowman:I agree. Like it's, our country is founded on those principles of entrepreneurship and innovation and you know I really it's one of those things that, with a few, with the unknown future that AI is creating, I really say entrepreneurship skills are the thing that will help everyone navigate the future. Just start thinking.
Sandy Zamalis:Ai is going to help bridge some of these gaps, right Like AI is going to be able to design a curriculum that you know speaks to your child, who loves baseball, yeah, and can like loop everything around baseball.
Matt Bowman:I totally agree. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Amy Moore:Yeah.
Matt Bowman:So I was at the library yesterday with my five-year-old granddaughter you mentioned in my bio.
Matt Bowman:We have, and counting two of our. Our children are having more children, so they're both. We're expecting two more grandkids in February, so we're excited to add to that total. But I was at the library yesterday with her. Just you know, grandkids in February, so we're excited to add to that total. But I was at the library yesterday with her. Just you know Grandpa Day at the library with her and there was these bundles of books. I thought it was awesome On the shelf they had bundled all these books on dinosaurs or cats or the space, you know, and I thought that's really cool, like just the simple act of the librarian pulling together six or seven books into a little bundle and it was all just in a little strap.
Matt Bowman:You could just pick it up and check out that bundle on space. I was like that's cool, like we have resources and then add that to the eye thing of just creating bundles of information and opportunities and resources on whatever topics our children are interested in, that can help them see the value of learning, get excited about learning and remove kind of that structure and pressure away from it. And you'd be surprised how much they'll enjoy that.
Dr. Amy Moore:Yeah, and you know I've always said, because I was an early childhood educator, you know I've always said, because I was an early childhood educator, I've always said I can teach every single subject through one topic. Yeah, right, so if you are passionate about cats, I can teach every single subject through cats science and math and reading. Yes, and so it can be that simple to start. And yeah, and so it's. It can be that simple to start.
Matt Bowman:So this idea of identifying your interests, what are your family needs and what are the resources around that to help achieve a education plan. It's not more complicated than that. What are you interested in, what do you need and what are the resources?
Dr. Amy Moore:Yeah, and some of those resources are internal and others you're gonna have to seek out right, some are low cost, some are higher cost, but they're all available and I think that's what's beautiful about what you do is that you curate these resources for your families yeah, we say really take a look at all the resources and then just stack, rate them from free to expensive and just go down that, go down that stack until you can't afford it.
Matt Bowman:Right, I mean it's that there's so many available from free to expensive, but if you are tight on budget then stop at free. But there are really so many things available that you can really design a great plan even at a free level.
Dr. Amy Moore:Yeah, all right. So, matt, we are out of time, but what have you not getting getting listen? Maybe I need to go back to school. What have you not gotten to talk about that you would like to leave our listeners with today?
Matt Bowman:I think we've covered everything. Just again the idea I would summarize every child's unique put your children ahead of your reputation. Design a learning landscape. Realize that there's opportunities there. Give your child a voice. Maybe we didn't touch that much on which is let them be part of that discussion. Don't have it be a top-down only. Even as research says, as young as eight or nine years old, they have the ability to have opinions and feedback and care about what's happening in their life, right, so give them a voice in that. And then the last thing we end with is a learner-driven sprint Experiment for two weeks. You can do it. You can do something for two weeks and just see what happens. Have them study cats and then feed them with resources and after two weeks, have them share with the family what they learned Period and that's all. Don't structure more than that and see what happens. So that's where I'd summarize what we've talked about.
Dr. Amy Moore:I love that. Where can our listeners find you and find more about OpenEd?
Matt Bowman:OpenEdco slash book is where you can download a free toolkit to help get started and learn more and connect through there, so that'd be great.
Dr. Amy Moore:All right, fantastic. Matt Bowman, thanks for being with us today.
Matt Bowman:Great to be here, thank you.
Dr. Amy Moore:Listeners. If you want more from us, you can find us at thebrainymoms. com. We are on social media at thebrainymoms. You can find us on Instagram and TikTok. Be sure to visit Sandy at thebraintrainerlady on TikTok if you want to see more about Learning Rx and look. That is all the smart stuff that we have for you today. So we hope, after listening to this episode, you feel a little smarter. We'll catch you next time.
