Jeff Sandefer lives a dual life as an entrepreneur and a Socratic Guide.

As an entrepreneur, he founded his first company at age 16 and went on to found or co-found seven successful businesses.

As a Socratic teacher at the University of Texas, Jeff’s students five times voted him the school’s Outstanding Teacher and Businessweek named him one of the top Entrepreneurship professors in America. Jeff went on to co-found the Acton School of Business, an MBA program perennially ranked by the Princeton Review among the best in the nation. In 2012 The Economist honored him as one of the top fifteen Business School professors in the world.

Jeff is a graduate of the Harvard Business School, where he served for over twenty years on the school’s governing committees. He was a longtime director of the Philanthropy Roundtable and National Review magazine and one of the youngest members ever elected to the Texas Business Hall of Fame.

Sandefer has worked with entrepreneur-teachers to build a nationally acclaimed entrepreneurship program, winning numerous teaching honors in the process. But ask him about success, and he makes it clear that money and awards aren’t what matter.

Key Takeaways:

00:09 What is your favorite thing about working with young learners?

00:47 What is Acton Academy?

02:23 Acton’s Origin Story

07:15 How prescriptive is Acton in terms of methodology and rules?

08:38 What makes a successful Acton Academy affiliate?

16:02 What do Acton Learners do after graduation?

20:05 Acton and Montessori

36:05 Metaphor on comparing Conventional School with Acton

Quotes:

“We want them (young learners) to be game-makers in their own lives, and we hope that they find that hero’s journey in life, that they find a calling that will change the world.”

“We are parents who wanted something better for our children.”

“You just can’t imagine what young people can do. And adults often underestimate that.”

“It’s whether our graduates need college at all. They can get into high-end colleges, but the question is, do they need to go?”

“It’s the growth mindset. Heroes never give up.”

Social Links:

Website – https://www.acton.org/about/author/jeff-sandefer

Acton Academy – https://www.launchactonacademy.com/about

Courage to Grow by Laura Sandefer 

Garrett Smiley is the Co-Founder of Sora Schools, an education startup based in Atlanta. Sora is a virtual, project-based high school where students explore their interests, learn however is best for them, and gain exposure to future careers and fields of work

Prior to Sora, Garrett co-founded a charity which built wells in developing nations called Drops of Love. Garret also directed a university startup incubator called Core Founders at Georgia Tech, and started an education non-profit that worked with foster children to develop financial literacy called Flip. Garrett studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech. Garrett also worked as a Venture Partner at Contrary Capital where he scouted, invested in, and mentored startups in the Atlanta area

Key Takeaways:

00:21 What’s your Elevator Pitch?

00:58 What’s your Origin Story?

07:54 All About Sora Schools

14:15 What are your typical students there?

15:42 What’s the application and first day like in Sora?

19:32 Requirements in order to graduate from Sora

22:00 Roles of the Adults in Sora

25:34 Getting into College

27:01 Is Internship part of your high school experience?

32:49 Metaphor comparing Sora School and Conventional Education

Quotes:

“How do you solve a system issue, you create another system, right?”

“We take a really different approach to education, but we don’t instead make people sit and, you know, control their seat time, if you will.”

“They should have in-person interaction, but why are we shipping kids off at school just that they can receive a human YouTube video lecture?”

“We’re hoping to create a lot more paths out of high school. So families have more options.”

“Before COVID happened, we were having to do meet ups. So we’re hosting meetups every once in a while they are going to museums together, and this is something we want to continue to do.”

“It’s so funny. People don’t realize, like this is a fairly recent invention, like in the grand scheme of things of what we consider schooling is still novel and, and it worked. But unfortunately, the whole world has changed.”

Social Links:

LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwsmiley/

Twitter – https://twitter.com/gw_smiles

Sora Schools – https://www.linkedin.com/company/soraschools/

Website – https://soraschools.com/

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Charles Wheelan is the Founder and Co-Chair of Unite America. He is a senior lecturer and policy fellow at the Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College, a former correspondent for The Economist. He has been selected as one of Dartmouth’s ten best professors by three different graduating classes. He teaches courses on education policy, health care, tax policy, income inequality, and related topics.

Wheelan teaches the Practicum in Global Policy Leadership in which he travels with students to examine an international policy topic. In years past, the class has visited India, Israel, Jordan, Liberia, Turkey, Rwanda, Madagascar, Northern Ireland, Brazil, Liberia, and Colombia.

From 2004 to 2012, Wheelan was a senior lecturer in public policy at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

Unite America is a political organization dedicated to bridging the growing partisan divide and fostering a more representative and functional government. From debt ceiling standoffs to single-digit Congress approval ratings, America’s political system has never been more polarized—or paralyzed—than it is today. Unite America grew out of Wheelan’s 2013 book The Centrist Manifesto

In 2013, Wheelan published Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data (W.W. Norton). Shortly after publication, the book reached the New York Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction. The New York Times called the book “sparkling and intensely readable.” The same year, he published The Centrist Manifesto, which calls for a new political party “of the middle.

Key Takeaways:

01:23 Nine Months. Six Continents. Three Teenagers.

07:00 How was the planning of your trip?

14:17  What were your biggest challenges on the road?

20:54 What does this do for your family?

24:08 Taking economics students traveling and learn by experience

27:13 Advice to families who want to try the same learning journey

33:30 Alternative schooling and college

38:58 Learning is all about the journey

Quotes:

“Find your comfort zone to bite off as much as you think you can chew.”

“Plan far in advance and don’t let the planning overwhelm you. Just take one challenge at a time.”

“You have to be completely mobile while carrying all of your stuff.”

“I think people can choose their own path, but I would urge as many people as possible to take a gap year. Just just one form of being unconventional because too many of the students I see are burned out or they just feel like they’ve been running on this education treadmill for too long.”

“I’m a big believer in the journey, not the destination.”

Social Links:

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-wheelan-a6220911/

Website https://charleswheelan.com/

Twitter https://twitter.com/charleswheelan

Amazon

The New York Times: Meet a Family Who Spent 9 Months Traveling the Globe, Pre-Plague