Ep 107: Why School Fails--And What Can Families Do Now. Matt Bowman,Co-founder of OpenEd
Is traditional school no longer working for your child? In this powerful conversation, we sit down with Matt Bowman, former teacher and co-founder of OpenEd (formerly MyTechHigh), to explore how personalized, project-based education can give families real freedom.
We dive into how Matt and his wife Amy built a learning model that honors kids' creativity, family values, and faith — all while breaking free from the one-size-fits-all system. Whether you’re exploring homeschooling, unschooling, or just need a better option, this episode will inspire you to take the lead.
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Transcripts
00:00 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Hello my friends and welcome back.
00:02
I'm so excited to have Matt Bowman today. He is the founder, with his wife, of OpenEd, formerly known as MyTechHigh. Opened is in several states. But a little bit more about Matt. He is an innovator in education and technology and is deeply dedicated in transforming the way children learn. He and his wife, amy, co-founded OpenEd together, and the Bowmans have spent over three decades championing personalized education, combining cutting-edge technology with an entrepreneurial spirit to help students thrive in a rapidly changing world. He also has five children, all who are married, and four grandchildren, so you've been around the block a little bit.
00:48 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Yeah, I have Janae, Great to be here with you today. Thank you.
00:52 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Thank you for coming, and today we're going to be talking a little bit about open education and his new book that just came out Open Education how to Reimagine Learning, ignite Curiosity and Prepare your Kids for Success. So I'm super excited to have you today to talk about everything. So let's get started. First of all, how did you get interested in the topic of education in the first place?
01:19 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Well, it goes back to my mom. My mom was a high school teacher and so I really have education in my blood and I actually started my first education company when I was 17. I ran a summer camp for kids teaching them sports something I love and so I realized early on how much I love kids and love teaching and love helping kids learn stuff, and so that was really the foundation. I then got my degree in elementary education and taught sixth grade up in Washington State and just loved it and it was just super exciting I love the light bulbs that go on. But then I started seeing the system just not really be flexible enough for the diverse needs of kids. I ended up getting a grant to bring this new thing called the internet into my classroom in 1996, janae, so that was a long, long time ago and the very start of online learning. I was there from the beginning and I saw what that allowed for in terms of flexible education models for kids.
02:25 - Janae Daniels (Host)
So then let's transition. What happened with that transition, like, how did you then jump from I'm a teacher and I've got the internet? Then what happened?
02:36 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
So then I actually left the classroom. I got a job offer from a tech company to run their online education programs globally, and so I jumped into the high tech industry and loved it. I was there for 13 years and during that time we were raising our five children all in the same house, the exact house with the same routines and expectations, and you know cadences and family nights, and everything was just, you know, the same. And all five children were different. And we started realizing that, oh, I wonder if their education ought to be customized and figure out each a solution for each child, for their education. So that's what started those wheels turning.
03:21
Our oldest ended up wanting to go to a charter school. That was brand new and something that no one did in our area. So we said, sure, ended up wanting to go to a charter school. That was brand new and something that no one did in our area. So we said, sure, if he wants to go there, let's go there. And we got criticized and attacked for giving up on the local district school. And we weren't anti-public school at all, we were very much supporters of just finding the right school for each of our children. So all five of our kids ended up doing something very different along the way from each other, and we thought I wonder if other families are experiencing the same feeling that their kids are all different and maybe their education design needs to be different. And so that's what led us to start MyTechHigh back in the day and now called OpenEd.
04:05 - Janae Daniels (Host)
I love it. Now, how old was your oldest at the time when he was like I want to go to a charter school?
04:11 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Twelve.
04:12 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Okay, so he's, I mean Still young.
04:15 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Yeah, we gave him a voice, though that's one of the chapters in the book is give your child a voice. And we were criticized by others that said, oh, you should step in as the adult and do what you know is right. We're like, well, our son is asking to go to this charter school and he's excited about it. Let's honor that voice, and so that's something we really believe in. We ended up then every year asking our children each summer hey, what would you like your education to be this fall? And having conversations all the way down to the seven or eight year olds, right, and at least listening to them and hearing what they valued or cared about helped us then say, well, we can design this, we can have you do this, we can do a hybrid, we can do you know part whatever. And that conversation in and of itself is valuable, even if you just intentionally and appropriately choose your boundary district school.
05:15 - Janae Daniels (Host)
I never say there's anything wrong with that, just intentionally choose that if you're going to yes, well, and I think it's scary as a parent when we've been so conditioned that this is how we do things and this is the expectation of a child to allow the children to actually have freedom and have a voice to say something. There's something very terrifying.
05:36 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
It's terrifying, yes.
05:38 - Janae Daniels (Host)
What if they choose video games? I hear that all the time they're going to play video games the whole day. That's what they'll choose, and I'm like you'd be surprised.
05:51 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
You know that's a great answer, janae is that people people who, kids who have been in a highly structured kind of intense test prep environment, that's their natural out because they're they're they're so unengaged by learning. Once they get over that and have some detox time and be able to reignite the joy of learning, they want to learn stuff, they are interested in learning. It's a fun experience and it's really that fear of they'll just play video games all day is because they have been too structured in that environment and not given enough freedom or voice in what they choose to learn.
06:26 - Janae Daniels (Host)
It's true, it's true. So how did this play out with your kids then over the years? Because you had the first one. First one goes to a charter school. What was his experience with the charter school?
06:37 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
He loved it. Our second. Then we said, okay, we're, we're all in in this charter school, right, that was our thought when the old and it started at seventh grade. And so all of our kids, when they turn in seventh grade, they're all gonna start going to this charter school. We're gonna all in with the family. So our second went and he enjoyed it. He had a great time.
06:57
Our third one went when he got to seventh grade, went for a year and said no way, that is not for me, I'm out. And we thought to ourselves no, you know, this is what we're going to be doing. And then we realized, okay, the third's out, you know. And then it's that guilty feeling like, well, why are we keeping the other two in if it's not a good fit for the third? Right. And people say, oh, you see that it's not good because your third didn't choose it. Well, no, it wasn't good for him, right.
07:27
And so then we had, I think at the time, five kids in four different schools, right. And so you can. And then it's just becomes carpool management, right. And so our third said no, I'm never going there again. I'm never going there again. And so then our fourth came and she's like I don't want to go there either. I want to follow my brother who went back to his district school. And then the third did, the fifth did the same. So we ended up two of ours ended up graduating from that charter school went all seventh through 12th grade. The other ones went a mix of of online and district school kind of hybrid models, mix of of online and district school kind of hybrid models. Our fifth, finally, finally, after all these years, said I want to just completely do stuff flexible.
08:12
So she ended up doing her associate degree online at home in the mornings, going at lunchtime to her district school with her friends, stayed for a release time seminary program and then a ceramics class, and she was a three-sport athlete.
08:29
So it was funny, though, janae, no one knew that she wasn't there in the mornings, right I mean because, like these kids are barely you know, they're waking up by noon, they're going to lunch, and they just thought they weren't in the same class that she had that morning, whatever, right. So she had zero, like people didn't even know. So she was just fully integrated into her high school experience with sports and dances and whatever, but she did her associate degree, she did her schooling in the mornings and then went and hung out at the school from in the afternoons and did her sports practices and would come home at six, have no homework and have no stress because she just did her schooling in the mornings and it was just such a fun time for us. She ended up hanging out with us more than her friends because they were all just stressed out about college prep and tests and studying and she ended up getting her associate degree and was very low stress. It was really exciting to see.
09:28 - Janae Daniels (Host)
I love that. So then, how many of your kids decided to go on and do either college or tech school or entrepreneur, like what? What happened with the kids then at that point?
09:38 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Yeah. So at the time our four we got our four oldest all decided they wanted to go to BYU. At the time our four oldest all decided they wanted to go to BYU and so they all got into BYU and then only two stayed and one of those two reluctantly stayed right just because he wanted to be a teacher and he was already through the path and it was, you know, to get his license. So we say go to college if it answers your why. And so we say go to college if it answers your why, if you have to go there for a license for you know, any type of college, a trade school or an academic university, whatever gets you your license or your why. But then two of the kids were there and just was not the right fit for them and they ended up doing a competency-based online degree, one through our partner with Southern New Hampshire, which is fantastic, and another one through Western Governors and and so those two finished online degrees and we didn't say they needed to or whatever, they just chose to wrap that up online. The youngest then finished her associate degree and then went on LDS mission and came home and said I'm never going to college again, I just want to work and learn and start, you know, explore my own business pursuits and that kind of stuff.
10:55
So but then, with that said, two of our two of our children, our first and third, became public school teachers. So they currently work as public school teachers and we always said that's great, you'll always have to be an entrepreneur on the side. That's a given you you work 180 days and you're done at two, you know three o'clock or three, 30. And you probably need to come up with some sort of entrepreneurial pursuit on the side in the summers and after school. And they have and so they enjoy having a kind of a steady experience with teaching and then having entrepreneurship side businesses and I think that's great. That's what I did. I was a sixth grade teacher. One year I had seven different jobs I was doing when, when school started in August, just to make ends meet, my wife stayed home with our kids and and anyway it was a lot of fun.
11:45 - Janae Daniels (Host)
That's so fun. So at that point, because I mean, obviously your kids all took very, very, very different paths, did that play into developing my tech high, or was that happening simultaneously?
12:00 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
It was all happening at the same time. So our kids I think our oldest was 14 or 15 when we started open ed, so our kids were from 15 down to, you know, eight or whatever. During that time when we started and we just started realizing and you'd appreciate this we started seeing what families were doing in our program, the custom designs they were doing for their children. My wife and I turned to each other. Well, we should start doing some of that for our kids. We learned from the parents that we were actually enrolling in our program so our kids benefited from the many parents who were the pioneers of our program to help really see what's possible. When you take off kind of those shackles of a structure and just design for kids, it's amazing what can happen.
12:51 - Janae Daniels (Host)
I love that. No, because one of the things I read in the book is that initially you set up open ed for like 16, 17 year olds and then that shifted. Talk about that. That a little bit.
13:02 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Yeah. So our first, you know, business plan that we wrote down was, you know, this was 2009. So there was a lot in the tech world and, you know, coding was a big thing and tech founders were, you know, turning businesses into billion dollar valuations and and we thought, know, turning businesses into billion dollar valuations? And and we thought, oh, let's just start a kind of a tech incubator. That was our original design. Let's get 16 or 17 year olds to start businesses and we can turn them into tech, you know, gurus and startups and be on Fortune and Inc and whatever, right. So that was the idea at the time and it was legit, like I thought we could really do that. Our first year, the average age was nine years old and so we said, oh, wow, that's a little young to start having them. You know, go look for investments or start coding or whatever. And so I I did my best those for a few first few years chatting with the 16 or 17 year olds sharing this vision, because I thought, OK, we have a small subset, but let's do it. And at the time I couldn't get any of their attention except for ACT, sat prep, early college, what's my credit? What's my? What's my transcripts going to look like when am I going to go to call it? That was the only conversation those kids could have and I realized I turned to the 10 to 14-year-olds, which is where I taught sixth grade, and I thought, oh, I wonder if they're interested and they were so eager to. We had 10-year-olds starting businesses and running fun stuff and we would seed them with some money and highlight them with business plans. And they were just. They couldn't get enough of what we were feeding them in terms of entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity, build your own games, build your own websites, like that. That was just so fun for them, but they weren't ready to become you know ink entrepreneurs fun for them, but they weren't ready to become you know ink entrepreneurs. And so we kind of gave up and pivoted and said we're going to put all this energy into the 10 to 14 year old.
15:08
And still today, like our average age, I think, is nine or 10 across you know, tens of thousands of families over the years and it's super interesting to see that age group. And it was funny because my master's degree in education, my focus, was the 10 to 14 year old forgotten child, because we often don't. We clump them in as high schoolers or we clump them in as elementary kids and they're just not. They're just this middle age group that is so fun, so much energy. They're so different from each other that it's just stark revelation that they aren't all the same.
15:45
Like the 10 year old to the 14 year old, they could all be exactly the developmentally normal. And one is six, four and the other is four, six and the other's one's shaving and one's never even seen a hair on his face right, and so they're so different from each other and yet we think a public system can assess and test and educate them exactly the same. You know and talk about the difference between boys and girls. At that age Girls are just so much more mature, typically, and just feel so much more grown up than some of the their peer boys that are just so different from each other. And we think they should all be exact same reading level, the same month and date. Like it makes zero sense developmentally.
16:34 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Well, yeah, and then, and then you throw in and you're going to read this material that some person decided was interesting for you, and the boys are like what? Not interested yeah not not reading that, and so it's true. So so for those of, for for my listeners, can you explain what Open Ed is?
16:55 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
So Open Ed is a program where that helps families chart their own course in their education plan. So it taps into the. We partner with public schools so we bring the resources and and dollars and funding to the family underneath an approved program by the district. So it's a district partner program. They have teachers, curriculum, technology all provided as part of the family. There's no cost to the family to participate in that district partner program. So that's one category of Open Ed. The other one that we're and that's available in seven or eight states this fall.
17:36
The other category is Open Ed Academy, which we're excited to launch this fall, which is a private pay model for people who live in states where we don't operate. So it's out of pocket but it embraces still the personalized education mantra which is take from all of our resources that we have curated, tap into them, see if it helps your family. We've brought the cost down as low as possible. It's $2,900 for K-8 private schooling. It is super affordable and is accredited so you can go all the way through high school. If you want get an official diploma, you can also. Then we have an early college option for $5,000 a year where you can get your associate or bachelor's degree through our partner program, and so we just want to give all those options available to both the district program model and the private pay model, to the world.
18:33 - Janae Daniels (Host)
I love it, and with your college program you partner with other universities. Is that correct, correct?
18:39 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Southern New Hampshire University is one that I tout because it's really the only one that I have found in the world that does competency-based, project-based programs, and it's interdisciplinary, which is also really innovative, like the layers of innovation they've done. No one else has matched In terms of there's not math, english, history, science. It's an integrated project that incorporates all the subjects into one and it's a mastered or not yet rubric grading model. So you submit your project and you get four of the things mastered and two of them not, yet you work on your not yet submit that get the credit when you're done with your you know all your not yets. Instead of waiting for a semester to get your credit, you can just, if you're competent, demonstrate it and move on, instead of just rehashing all semester until you can get the credit.
19:37 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Yeah, well, and I love that. And that's something that I noticed when we started homeschooling with our kids, at how fast some of my kids went through certain things. And and I remember my now 18 year old son at the time he was 13 when we started homeschooling and we did, he went through his math, his math program and he, he came out one day he's like when we very first started and he said, mom, it literally took me 45 minutes to go through three weeks worth of math that I would have done in the public school. Yeah, and I said it's true. And then I have one child who math just I mean as an example, it really struggles with math and so it takes her a little bit longer. And yet in a traditional system they can't. They will stick with what the teacher is doing and when the teacher is doing it, and I love that. New Hampshire university is um Southern New Hampshire, is that right? Southern?
20:31 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
New.
20:32 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Hampshire, you know, does that that where it's okay, you got done. So you got done, which I noticed. We did open ed, our first year of homeschooling, as our enrichment program, which is in the state of Colorado, how it was set up, which I think it's still the same way now, and my son was like you mean, I can zip through these projects on my pace and I'm like that's what it looks like.
20:56 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
And he loved it, isn't that great.
21:03 - Janae Daniels (Host)
And I also loved that one of my younger kids was doing Minecraft and wrapping my head around like a class on Minecraft.
21:11 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Isn't that great.
21:13 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Is that allowed? The public school teacher in me, because I taught middle school, was like can we do that?
21:21 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Right, so I love it. Our book is scattered with references to Lego and Minecraft.
21:28 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Well, and that's what I noticed the co-author, isaac, of the book, talked about that that he would zip through his homeschooling and then spend all this time doing Legos, you know.
21:38 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
It's so true, and even one of his stories of his own son. They tried every parental tactic under the sun to get him to do math and he just would not, he just didn't. And it wasn't until he was 13 years old that this son wanted to go to some program, some co-op or something, and it required him to take a math test to be a grade level. And he wanted that class so much, with his friends or whatever, that he spent a summer starting at kindergarten. He's a 13-year-old and said I'm just going to start at kindergarten math. And he built his way up in a matter of weeks. He went through 13 years, you know, or whatever, like seven grade levels of math facts and he was able to pass the test and get in. Like that. That's the concept of when you're ready, when a learner's ready, learning can stick. Yeah, we think that we're teaching kids just by imposing standards on them every year and that doesn't mean learning is sticky.
22:46 - Janae Daniels (Host)
No, no, not at all. And well, and I think, I think it's true that, like for for children, every child develops differently and they, as you mentioned earlier with the 10 to 14 year olds, some of these, I have a 13 year old who still wears size eight clothes. He's like in kids clothes and he's tiny, right Um. But they, they grow physically, they grow differently. Why do we think that emotionally and academically they're all going to grow exactly at the same pace? I taught, like you. I taught six, seventh and eight. Well, I taught six, seventh and eighth and I was always, I was shocked, you know, watching my seventh graders where they were so tiny and then the boys would come back into eighth grade over the summer and they had grown to six feet and and yet emotionally they weren't there yet, you know like. But the girls were, you know, so tall by sixth grade that emotionally they were more like 14-year-old. You know like, but yeah, but yet we expect that our kids are going to emotionally grow the same. But it's true, it doesn't work that way.
23:53 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Yeah, I don't know how anyone concluded that was logical.
23:57 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Right? Well, it was nefarious, as you know, in the first place. So thank you, Horace Mann.
24:03 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Well, it was really around efficiency and control, not learning. So I mean, at the end of the day, that is, we have to acknowledge that that's what the system was to do.
24:14 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Right, which and I love, and I love that you bring that up in the book that that Horace Mann was like okay, the Prussian model is efficient, that'll get us. That'll get us the book that that horace man was like okay, the prussian model is efficient, that'll get us. That'll get us the results that we need, which was not minds that are thinking correct ever, not ever, yep so let's talk about. Uh, how did you, when and how did you decide to write open ed?
24:35 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
so open education yeah, so key distinction there. So open education is the broad category, open ed the company and program just is one sliver of open education, gotcha. And so just wanted to be clear about that. A couple years ago, you know, my wife and I well, it probably goes back to COVID so we were growing every year in our program. We've been doing it since 2009. So this is our 16th year and we were growing great and all of a sudden, covid hits and you can imagine just our and I've read your story of just you know that was where things changed for you and your family and that happened for so many. And yet they were telling us that they would only come in, they were only going to do this for a year until things got back to normal. And then the second year, in 2021, they stayed again and said okay, one more year. This is kind of cool. Like I'm kind of liking this, I'm going to go back, I'm going to go back.
25:32
And so we didn't know how to manage our business. Like it was just chaotic during those couple of years. And then all of a sudden, 22 and 23, everybody was just stayed and our enrollment just grew and grew and grew. So then it kind of outpaced what we were able to manage, my wife and I. And so in 2023 and 24, we said, okay, it's time to hire people that know how to run a business. You know we're very much educators and you know passionate parents. But we needed some help and so I stepped down as CEO last last summer.
26:07
So July 1st is the anniversary of our new CEO, which is Isaac Incredible guy, incredible visionary, incredible business manager, leader, just to his core. So we are so thrilled to have Isaac be our CEO, and so, as part of that, we said, okay, we need to start, we need to. Just, he said, first thing, you got to write down everything. You got to write down your story, your, your philosophy, your mindset, right, all that down. And so we had started writing some of that down last year early, but he kind of helped us accelerate that, get it all into the book, and I honestly just could not be more happy with how the book turned out.
26:51
It's everything that my wife and I have tried, failed, tried, succeeded. Like it's not coming from a standpoint of expertise, it's coming from hey, this is what we tried. These are the things that we've learned for ourselves and our children as well as now, collectively over a hundred thousand enrollments over those years. Like we've seen it work and so we can stand from a point of confidence. Hey, family, you're not alone. The fears you have are real, the insecurities are real, but guess what you can do it? You can absolutely help your children thrive, and we put in the book just tactical ways to do that. So that's how it turned out and really it's just, it's our life's work in one place and now that's done.
27:41 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Well, and I love it and I do. I love that you give. I think we learn best through our failures, yeah, but yet in the education system, you're not allowed to fail, you can't fail. Yeah, failure is bad, right, you're not allowed to fail. You can't fail. Failure is bad, right, failure is bad. It's not an option, but yet that's how. That's how the greatest minds who have ever done anything have learned was through the failure, and so I I appreciated the, the different case studies and granted, they were your personal case studies um that you gave and and the um the reassurance that you give to parents, that that it's to parents, that it's okay, and some of the backlash that you're going to get.
28:18 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Yeah, it's a little bit messy. We like the phrase learning out loud. That's what we're doing as we're writing and reading. But give yourself some grace. Give yourself some attempts to just do things wrong and do things right. Your children will benefit from that process, that journey.
28:40 - Janae Daniels (Host)
I love that. What were some of your fears like, especially as your kids were growing up and you're doing a different education model for all of them? What were some of the fears that you and AB experienced?
28:56 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
They're the fears that every parent experiences, which is what if I mess up my kid right? What if I close the door that we wish would have been opened, or whatever? And so those were real emotions we were dealing with, and, as it turns out, a lot of those fears and insecurities are misplaced. When you invest in your children's love of learning and passion around pursuing things of interest, the opposite happens they become more self-reliant, they become more resilient, they become more determined to learn things that they're interested in, and then that learning by itself lets them navigate work learning or school learning or whatever, in a way that's better from someone who has just always been told exactly what they have to do. That that shift from I just follow instructions to I want to take charge of my life and my learning is so amazing and so rewarding to see in children as they become adults that they, they've got this, they, they have confidence in themselves to figure it out, instead of always turning to someone else to guide to, to make that path, you know, forced upon them.
30:18 - Janae Daniels (Host)
I love that. Let's talk a little bit about um, how you started integrating. Um, we are eclectic unschoolers. Um, we're not radical unschoolers. I'm not one of those that's like figure everything out on your own. You want to learn to read well Like figure everything out on your own, you want to learn to read Well.
30:35
Good for you. You know like I'm not helping. Good luck with that. You know I expect my kids to be able to read well, write well and do math, and so I'm like I need help in those areas. So I will employ a curriculum when I need to Right. But yet otherwise we do unschooling and passion driven learning or child learning, and I noticed that that that was something that you that you brought into open ed, both on the business side with with that, and you talk about it a little bit in the book. Can you talk about how you integrate that a little bit?
31:14 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Yeah for sure. And pointing out that our by design the O in open ed in our program, by design our parentheses, not a closed O, and the concept of that is boundaries and some structure, is actually liberating. When it's nothing, when there's no, anything that's actually can be overwhelming and and defeating. And so if you can provide some structure, some brackets and fill in the blank in the middle, that's really the best of of all the worlds. And so that's where I'd start is don't fear that having some structure is anti-open ed or anti-open education like or anti-customizing for your child, like having some brackets is powerful. We also one of the chapters.
32:08
I bring up a phrase that I learned many years ago from a research article love, limits and latitude. Those three are a parental strategy, not just around education, but it applies very well. Fill your children with lots of love. At the same time, give them limits and then at the same time acknowledge latitude. That has to occur when things are a little bit confusing, messy, different. You can't always just stick with the limits, because sometimes those limits don't make sense and you have to adjust.
32:46
And so this balance of love, limits and latitude is, that's a forever quest of parenting, is trying to figure out what the right balance and you mentioned, you know we chatted before uh, parenting 20 something year olds is really challenging and it's because those three elements of love, limits and latitude are all are all different. And you know, on on, not that you're imposing rules on them, but the limits you have in what you advise or what you give, or you know, you have all this love but you got to have some limits. And then you have some latitude that might not be the exactly the same for every child and that's just so hard to navigate. And we're going through that, you know, as we speak. So it's kind of fun.
33:33 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Yeah, and it is, and it is challenging because I found, even with adult kids, I'm like, would you mind if I share some advice, you know? Because because for them one of the limits, is I don't I don't want unsolicited advice from you. You know like I will, you can share on my terms and and so, navigating the adult children, I'm still going. Oh, my goodness, no, we had.
33:56 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
We had to basically say look, we have lots of advice, lots of experience that we are happy to share, but I need to hear the words hey, mom or dad, I'd like your advice on this topic. If I don't hear that, I'm going to. I'm going to want to share, but I'm going to respect that you don't want it until you ask that question. So it's tough.
34:18 - Janae Daniels (Host)
It's true. So yesterday in the Daniels family our 18-year-old had planned with his four best friends, who one is about to graduate and the others have graduated, and some were public schooled and some were homeschooled, and anyway they've they planned a road trip and we found out yesterday morning. They were planning on leaving yesterday afternoon and yesterday morning they're like these are our plans and I'd kind of like kept a little bit of a pulse on their plans. They're like we're going to drive for 10 hours every day for six, for six days. We're going to stop at places and then, uh, do something and then sleep and then drive another 10 hours. And we're like well, one of the stipulations is no one else can drive our son's car for for liability reasons. Well, we didn't find out about this. 10 hours of driving every day, like they told us, like this is where we're going to go.
35:17 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Right the general plan.
35:19 - Janae Daniels (Host)
The general plan. And then yesterday morning our son is like here it is. And we're like no, no, no, no, no, no, you are not driving to the coast of Oregon in California 10, to the coast of Oregon and California 10 hours Anyway.
35:37
So so my, my husband's, like you're not going like this is like if that's the plan which you didn't give us until this morning and, by the way, you're leaving on father's day, what the heck you know? Um, so so the friends all came, they all went to church, they all came home and they came to our house and and I wanted to get really I'm like okay. So I re, while I was sitting in church, I remapped out your whole plan. Right, and you can go as far as one state away.
36:06
You know, and and I'm like here it all is. And my husband's like no, no, rewind, let's give them limits. And the other parents were all on board. They're like we understand, we'll sign a liability waiver for them driving in the car. And so my husband's like step back, here's the limits, kids. I'm like thank you, Because I was ready to take over the whole trip.
36:28 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
And almost go with them.
36:33 - Janae Daniels (Host)
I was going to go with him on the trip and he's like no, no, no, here's the limits. No one else can drive your car, which means therefore, therefore, uh, your drives have to be short, and maybe the first one is long, because you already have a place to stay with us, with an aunt which they uh, we're going to stay with one aunt, and they ended up staying with my sister last night, who I had to call and be like could five boys crash at your house tonight at 2. Am you?
37:00 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
know, right there, that's a latitude Right.
37:04 - Janae Daniels (Host)
And and so they ended up leaving like at four 30,. Got to Utah at two 15 am this morning, which I was watching, and we're like the other limit is that we have to have you on our phone so you have a tracker. Anyway, it all worked out, but I'll tell you, I was livid yesterday morning right before church. I'm like no, this is not happening. But my husband had to pull me back and be like, okay, here are your limits, work within the limits. And they ended up planning a really fun trip. And then they said last night they're like my son said at two o'clock in the morning when I called him, he's like I'm really glad that we ended up deciding to make it shorter driving time, because we realized on our drive that we want to have time to do things at the places that we're at. You're welcome.
38:00 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
You're welcome, anyway, so sorry, long story, it's the idea that and, and you know, your husband's advice was good but hard, which is let them figure out some of that stuff. That's part of that journey. We could easily have jumped in and mapped everything out exactly and would have been a great plan, but part of that learning comes from them having kind of that, those limits and structure, but they figure out the messiness in the middle.
38:30 - Janae Daniels (Host)
I love it. I love it. What, uh, last bit of advice would you give to parents who are homeschooling or they're feeling like, okay, I need something different as far as maybe I don't public school my kids, or maybe I do a current, current enrollment, or like, what advice would you give those parents trying to tailor the child's education? Would you give those parents trying to tailor the child's education which they're not used to? What would you give to those parents?
38:56 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Short answer is start small. Okay, trust your instincts, uh, and, and just see if you can move a little bit towards open education in one area. So don't don't try to hold wholesale change everything in one day, even though you might think you want to just just know that you can start small. Identify, maybe there's. There's an extra enrichment experience I can add to my child to, to expand one step further something that they really are passionate about. So, uh, look for, listen and look for those things that you could maybe add or enhance, uh, in the and.
39:43
The other thing is start maybe with a hybrid model where they stay home for a couple hours of a traditional public school setting and do and have some autonomy over that time at home. Starting with just little baby steps is probably going to help you gain a little bit more confidence than just scrapping everything and trying to build it from scratch. So that's what I would say is start small and engage with people who have done there and experienced some of that. Engage with Janae, engage with your community, find ways to connect with others who are doing it and you can learn from them. That's a great way to start.
40:29 - Janae Daniels (Host)
I love it For those interested in reading the book. The book is Open Education. Again, it's how to Reimagine Learning, ignite Curiosity and Prepare your Kids for Success. By Matt Bowman and Isaac Morehouse, and I will put links to the book so that people can check this out. It was so good. It's a great book for those of you, particularly who are new to this concept of, like, okay, public school isn't working, so what else could I do? What are some other options? And I'm also going to put a link for open ed for those interested in learning more about the open ed program if it's in your state and it sounds like it's being rolled out nationally through private pay Yep.
41:16
I love it. I love it, Matt. Thank you so much for taking the time today coming on and speaking with us about open education and sharing your insight. It has been such a pleasure, so thank you. Book just came out in May. Check it out.
41:30 - Matt Bowman (Guest)
Thanks, janae, and likewise keep up the great work. You're advocating for families to take a leadership role in their child's education, and that's what we all want done. So thank you.
41:40 - Janae Daniels (Host)
Thank you, it's true. So I appreciate you coming on. Mamas and papas, grandmas and grandpas, you are doing so much better than you think you are. You got this. We'll talk next week.
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