MacKenzie Price
@mackenzieprice • 12,707 subscribers
Co-founder, Alpha School and 2HrLearning Transforming K12 | Improving outcomes with 1:1 AI-driven academics and critical life skills for a future-ready next gen
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People have this purist notion that kids should just be self-motivated to do well. For about 5% of them, that's true. But what about every other kid? Motivation is 90% of learning. Our guides figure out what motivates each kid and use it to get them to put in the work. Over time that builds a confidence anchor: the one win where a kid did something hard and hit their goal. Confidence in yourself might be the most valuable thing a kid can build. It changes your entire academic path. And yes, sometimes it starts with an Amazon cart.
MacKenzie Price64,069 Aufrufe • vor 28 Tagen
In traditional school, if your kid is ahead, the only move is to skip a grade. Now, they're the youngest in the class. This still doesn't solve the pacing problem or the fact that kids aren't uniformly advanced. A kid can be flying in math and behind in reading at the same time. At Alpha, a fifth grader doing geometry sits right next to a friend who's catching up on fourth-grade math. Same room, same age, no one pulled out, no one held back. They're just each working on what they actually need.
MacKenzie Price54,399 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
We do not use a chatbot interface in our schools for academics, and here’s the reason: give a kid a chatbot, and they will cheat with it. As much as we’d love to imagine they’re going to get on ChatGPT and engage in a Socratic discussion, they don’t. They copy the question and paste, “What’s the answer?”
MacKenzie Price36,884 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten
I think we managed to capture all the controversies in one video, including dodge ball.
MacKenzie Price27,732 Aufrufe • vor 3 Monaten
Proud beyond words! Two of our GT/Alpha School students, Krish Bhakta and Jaiden Bhakta, just placed 2nd IN THE WORLD and 1st in the U.S. in the Global AI Debates! And our 10-year-old superstar Everest Nevraumont secured 5th place globally! This incredible achievement wasn't just competing against a few schools. They outperformed over 10,000 student participants from around the globe! The Global AI Debates challenge students to tackle complex ethical questions around artificial intelligence, requiring deep tech knowledge, critical thinking, and persuasive communication. Exactly the skills students need in our current world. And what we cultivate daily at Alpha. When students are empowered with real-world tools, rigorous challenges, and meaningful purpose, there's simply no limit to what they can accomplish. This is what happens when we reimagine education.
MacKenzie Price63,815 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
Most people think AI means we don’t need to learn anymore. But that idea crumbled last month when I sat across from Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean, Dan Schwartz. Dan read this to the audience: “The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step; otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many…” No one really understood it. Then he gave them one line of context: “This is about doing laundry.” And suddenly it all made sense. Same paragraph. Same words. But once you *knew* what it was about, your brain could organize the information. Dan looked at the audience and said, “If you don’t know enough, the AI’s output is just words and sentences. You might *think* you understand it, but you don’t.” And he’s right. AI doesn’t eliminate the need to learn—it makes real knowledge more important than ever. This is a conversation we’re constantly having at Alpha. Because when a kid asks ChatGPT a question, how do they know if the answer’s even good? How do they know when to push back or ask more? It all comes back to this: you need knowledge to interpret the output. That’s why we still teach writing. That’s why we teach proportionality. That’s why we want kids to understand germ theory, gravity, and the Bill of Rights. Not because they’ll regurgitate it on a test, but because they’ll need that knowledge to make sense of the world (and the tools) around them. AI will make learning faster, more playful, and more personalized. But it won’t replace the need to learn. It’ll just expose when we haven’t. And as Dan reminded us on stage, the real purpose of education isn’t just facts or grades. It’s helping kids build meaning, curiosity, and the wisdom to use their tools well. Deep thanks to Dean Dan Schwartz for sharing his time and expertise with Alpha and our community.
MacKenzie Price14,491 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr
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