iDesign Lab
Welcome to the iDesign Lab a Podcast where creativity and curiosity meet style and design hosted by Tiffany Woolley an Interior Designer, a style enthusiast along with her serial entrepreneur husband Scott. A place where they explore the rich and vibrant world of interior design and it’s constant evolution in style. iDesign Lab is your ultimate Interior design podcast where we explore the rich and vibrant world of design and it’s constant evolution in style and trends. iDesign lab provides industry insight, discussing the latest trends, styles and everything in between to better help you style your life through advice from trend setters, designers, influences, fabricators and manufacturers as well as personal stories that inspire, motivate and excite. Join us on this elevated, informative and lively journey into the world of all things Design. For more information about iDesign Lab and Tiffany & Scott Woolley visit the website at www.twinteriors.com/podcast.
iDesign Lab
Ali Kaufman's Journey from Gifted Program to Innovative Learning Spaces Redefining Education
The episode centers on Ali Kaufman, an innovator in the field of education, who discusses her transformative school, Space of Mind. We explore how personalized learning experiences can nurture creativity, reduce stress, and foster a love of knowledge, ultimately setting students up for life success.
• Introduction to Ali Kaufman and Space of Mind
• Overview of Ali's educational philosophy and experiences
• Discussion on creating a personalized curriculum for diverse learning styles
• Examination of the emotional impacts of traditional education
• Introduction to the Community Classroom Project and its goals
• Vision for the future of education and plans for expansion
• Closing thoughts on the importance of individualized learning experiences
Learn more at:
https://twinteriors.com/podcast/
https://scottwoolley.com
The following podcast iDesign Lab is an SW Group production in association with Five Star and TW Interiors. This is iDesign Lab, a podcast where creativity and curiosity meet style and design. Curator of interiors, furnishings and lifestyles. Hosted by Tiffany Woolley, an interior designer and a style enthusiast, along with her serial entrepreneur husband Scott, idesign Lab is your ultimate design podcast where we explore the rich and vibrant world of design and its constant evolution in style and trends. Idesign Lab provides industry insight, discussing the latest trends, styles and everything in between to better help you style your life, through advice from trendsetters, designers, influencers, innovators, fabricators and manufacturers, as well as personal stories that inspire, motivate and excite. And join us on this elevated, informative and lively journey into the world of all things design.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the iDesign Lab podcast. Today we're excited to have Allie Kaufman, founder and CEO of Space of Mind, a transformative school in Delray Beach, florida, where she's been designing new ways to make education more engaging and less stressful for over 20 years. Allie has re-imagined the design of learning, promoting creativity and alternative learning styles. She's also the founder of the Community Classroom Project, designing a more inclusive and equitable approach to education. When she's not designing change, allie enjoys life by the ocean with her dog, Oscar.
Speaker 2:Today I am so excited to welcome Allie Kaufman to the iDesign Lab podcast. I'm really excited because this is design on a totally different level.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Designing a curriculum and designing a school. Designing education and designing education, which is so on par with the way we design our life today on every level, from a diet to our home or our lifestyle Curriculum really is something that can be and needs to be designed.
Speaker 3:We sit and talk to a lot of people from all different walks of life with this podcast but, like this is the first time I think we're sitting with someone like what we're going to talk about really matters. It's true, like sitting with a music artist or a decorator or a builder. They're just like things that you know. Education like really. And children, yeah, and you're designing like an education for children. You have this amazing school. First, tell us, I think, tell us about yourself.
Speaker 4:Like how did you get to a? Well, that's like a whole podcast in and of itself, but I grew up with an education that was the way the gifted program was originally designed when I was in elementary school in the early 80s was creative, it was collaborative, it was autonomous. We got to design a lot of what we did based on what we were excited about and our teachers knew enough to get out of our way and let us do that.
Speaker 4:And I was taught early, like in third grade, ms Williams taught us how to run a think tank and what are the rules of brainstorming and we, you know, we were doing project-based learning in this small gifted class in a public school in Boca, where there was a group of us that, for whatever reason, we kind of hit this jackpot and got pulled out of our regular classes for half a day in elementary school and we stayed kind of a learning team in middle school and then in high school and we got really lucky.
Speaker 4:We had the continuity of care with our teachers who knew us throughout all those years. We knew each other, nurtured, we were nurtured and we were, you know, without sounding ego-y, we were told and taught that we were special, like we were given leadership skills, we were growing up with confidence and, you know, we were taught to advocate in all the best ways, right, like, oh, you have this idea, let's go figure out who in the administration can help us make it possible. And because we were given access to these leadership skills and taught to communicate and also make mistakes, given the space to do that, we had these different opportunities. So it's not an accident as we all found ourselves again in the Facebook age and many of us stayed friends all these years that two things seem to be very true.
Speaker 4:One, most of us were diagnosed as adults with some kind of attention or anxiety or autistic situation, and also most of us were doing very entrepreneurial, leadership based things and designing careers for ourselves that were really based on the passion that we were taught to stoke all those years and that's what kind of inspired me to come back around and that's the that's the stuff I pull from, but it doesn't. That gifted program doesn't exist anymore it's been sort of rewired into a. You know all about rigor and and stress.
Speaker 3:So did you come out of school like going into an education job or where? Did you start like in your career.
Speaker 4:I went to college, I wanted to be a rabbi. Really I didn't want to like have a synagogue or anything. That's sort of more of a, I think you know kind of a political position, almost you know.
Speaker 4:But I wanted to work with youth and I grew up, I spent 17 summers at Sleepaway Camp and youth group and, just like the communal relationships and you know where you're taught in those settings and I think even in my educational setting to have faith in yourself. Right Like I got to college I realized I don't think a religious career was for me. But I never lost that passion for working with kids. So even in college I was running an after-school program for kids in the town where my school was. I was always tutoring on the side or babysitting or running a youth group. I would have never made it in a traditional school. I would have quit or been fired.
Speaker 3:So where did you end up after college?
Speaker 4:So I worked in the restaurant industry after college. I opened a number of cheesecake factories around the country that's so interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I loved it.
Speaker 4:It was so much fun. My parents were freaking out Like we paid for you to go to Brandeis and now you're like working in restaurants. I'm like it's all going to come together.
Speaker 1:I don't know what it's going to look like yet, but just let me do this.
Speaker 4:And then after that I was running some small businesses for other small business owners. One of them was actually an interior design company, and so I saw how that all worked. I always imagined I would have my own business before I was 30. But I landed in a corporate software development world at sort of the height of the tech boom in Boston and this company had been. It was called Rational Software and they had created the unified modeling language and the lifecycle that all software developers use universally to design software. So I had a poster on my wall of the software lifecycle process and I was in corporate communications. I was writing about how software was changing the world. But I, you know, I loved hanging out with the programmers and everyone was so creative and it was really exciting time to be in tech and and the software development lifecycle. The testing phase of the lifecycle cycle is the largest phase. It takes the longest and the developers are doing everything they can to get the product to fail the test right.
Speaker 4:With the understanding that they're trying to know, understand what they don't yet know, to make the product better. And at the same time, I was working with a family. I lived in Cambridge, massachusetts at the time and I was working with a family down the block who had three kids and it was a very cluttered home. A lot of hoarding was going on there and chaos, and one of the kids had autism and was really struggling with test anxiety in school and for whatever reason. One day it clicked. I was staring at the poster and I realized that when developers are developing, they get the product to as good as it's going to get, they release it and they immediately start working on the next version so there's never an expectation of perfection in the design life cycle right
Speaker 4:and in school it's totally the opposite. You get one shot, you pass the test, you fail the test, but no teacher is taking the time generally to pull you aside and be like you know, before we move on, let's go over what you didn't get right. I want to make sure you understand it. So kids are being forced to move forward without the whole picture. And then there's all the emotions that go with that, like a sense of failure, a sense of you know frustration, whatever it. You know frustration, whatever it is. And so I kind of put that together, started understanding. You know, life coaching was sort of becoming a path at that point and this was like 2002, I guess and just started sort of understanding that there's a way to make the learning process better.
Speaker 4:And really understanding because I was diagnosed at the end of college with ADHD and did a deep dive into what that meant or yeah, into my own brain like right because I remember when I was a kid, certain things were so easy and other things were really hard for me and easier for my friends, and I was always told that I was smart. But I didn't always get the best grades because, you know, homework was not my jam.
Speaker 4:And so you know it was a lot of reconciling my whole life at that point too. So I started to really take this. You know all the neurology and you know working memory and understanding how even my time in the restaurant industry I was, so I was working out my working memory every day. Right, our working memory is the brain's ability to remember, to pay attention to what you're paying attention to, and in the restaurant industry it's how I made my money. I would wow tables of like 10 by like, taking their whole order and never writing anything down, and sometimes, if I thought they were cool, I would ask them to double down on their tip if I didn't forget anything.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it. Then we would just play a little game, right.
Speaker 4:So, and it was. It kept me on my toes but I, you know, I was working out my brain in that, in that field. So I understood a lot about how there are strengths and weaknesses to attention and organization and how anxiety played into all of that. So it just sort of evolved to come to Space of Mind and start off the company which I started in 2004, moving back to Florida as a coaching company. So my first group of clients were actually CEOs.
Speaker 3:But what made you pick up? Move from Boston to?
Speaker 2:The weather, I mean, I regret it every day, I'm not kidding, I miss.
Speaker 4:Boston, so much.
Speaker 1:I love Boston too.
Speaker 4:I would move back tomorrow, but I don't regret it really. I moved back for my family At the time.
Speaker 3:my dad was sick and my grandmothers were doing great, but you decide you're now going to design your life around coaching people yeah, well, actually I had come down with the idea of opening um.
Speaker 4:I had been running this designer clothing consignment shop for a couple of years before um I moved back and because the tech company had been sold to IBM and I wasn't really down with that. I wasn't big corporate girl, I'm more like indie and so I was out one night at a bar actually wearing this really cool denim jacket it's vintage jacket and the manager of the store where I bought it recognized it and it came from this designer consignment shop in Harvard Square and we got into talking and it turned out she was leaving the job, so I just took the job the next day.
Speaker 2:It was really a random pivot for me. Isn't that amazing, though, allowing life to just play out that leads you to things like that.
Speaker 4:And I've met so many professors and students and really cool people in that role. But I was running this business for the owner, who kind of let me alone, so it was a great opportunity to really take everything I learned to that point. But it was time for me to come back to Florida. I just felt it personally.
Speaker 4:So I took a summer off. After I left the shop and wrote my business plan in the Harvard Library my friend would like sneak me in and came back and started. And well, I came home between hurricanes Francis and Jean. So I you know I got home like around after Labor Day and then really kicked things off in November.
Speaker 2:And was it called space of mind, and how did that name come so?
Speaker 4:initially I was going to open a consignment shop called Too Good to Be New and offer coaching from the shop, because I was working with up in Boston, women primarily who were really cluttered in their closets, who were shopping sometimes for all the wrong stuff and sometimes for all the right stuff, but they didn't know how to organize it and getting dressed in the morning was really stressful.
Speaker 4:So I would go to their homes and help them organize. And then obviously it brought in more clothes to the store which was like you know, we could do fun parties and things like that. So I really came home with the idea of doing that. And then, right before I was going to sign a lease for a shop on Atlantic Avenue, I was like I don't want to deal with season and retail and all of that. So you know, we just did kind of consignment on the side and I was just going and working with people in their homes. But my initial clients actually, you know I was working with, you know, women in their clothing closets. I was working with a group of CEOs most all men really and flying around the country and going to their spots, and then I was working with hoarders and so I had these three groups.
Speaker 4:Hoarders how fascinating, oh my God. That was my favorite part of the work but ultimately I was getting physically sick. It wasn't like the healthiest environment always to be in. But I really think I got like a PhD in psychology from these, from working in all three types of groups. I was having the same conversation whether it was a CEO with ADD who couldn't communicate well with their executive assistant, who was very like you know like a straight and great type A, or a busy mom who was trying to get like a household of different types of learners to work together.
Speaker 4:And then I had, you know, my clients who were hoarders, who were really living in desperate situations.
Speaker 3:How do you get clients like that?
Speaker 4:Word of mouth.
Speaker 3:Is it word of mouth?
Speaker 4:I mean it was was eventually but my first few clients. I went to Barnes and Noble and I put myself in the self-help section and I just talked to anyone who grabbed a book really yeah unbelievable yeah so that and then, like you, have the gift of talking to anybody.
Speaker 4:I obviously I like talking, I like learning about people and I, yeah, and also when you're like, I moved home at age 29 into my parents' house, so it was like, how fast can I get out of here, right? So I was, you know, really ready to.
Speaker 3:So how long were you doing that? Until you started to put together what we know as Space of Mind today, about four?
Speaker 4:years. We know his space of mind. Today, about four years, I started to really in 2008, understand that it was school-related stress. That was the piece that I was passionate about. So I was still working with some people in each of those three core groups, but the hoarders I was getting sick. That wasn't sustainable and, um, working in the executive environment wasn't always fun and I found that like, honestly, boring it wasn't boring, but it was frustrating. They weren't willing to move, they weren't willing to change.
Speaker 4:Yeah, right like ceos and I'm one of them like we're kind of stubborn, so working in the family, like in the home. A couple of things were true for me. The dads would come into the conversation right when, if you're doing something in a therapeutic setting, it's usually like one parent is driving the kids to therapy and like the other parent isn't really getting the whole situation.
Speaker 1:Same with like a school meeting right.
Speaker 4:You don't always get both parents fully present or present physically at a school meeting either.
Speaker 4:But I would be able to go to a home and sit with an entire family on a Saturday morning. And because it was a novel thing, because this wasn't therapy we could all just talk about, like how to make life at home easier. Where were all the hot spots, like, was it homework time, was it bedtime, was it early morning? Right, like what was happening and what could we work on? And what I found was that and this is the same for the breakdown in classrooms, the parent is usually communicating or leading from the way that they learn and communicate. So if you're a verbal person, you're going to be verbally telling your kids what you want.
Speaker 4:But if your kids are visual or kinesthetic or require all three you can't expect that. They've heard you right. So then things tend to blow up, or if you pile something on that weird counter desk in everyone's kitchen that nobody really knows what to do with.
Speaker 3:I call it the junk shop.
Speaker 4:So families were going and they were getting a $5,000 psychological assessment on the kid, trying to fix the kid, because all the problems were perceived to be coming from the child. It's actually the system right and it's everyone within the system, but then they're paying five grand to get this testing done and I would find the report in the middle of the pile of papers on the weird like did you even read this?
Speaker 4:no, and the report's 50 pages so you know, and the important stuff is at the end. So parents are usually reading from the front and it's scary and and you know, and then the back is like here's all the recommendations of what to do. So I was finding that these families weren't actually taking the recommendations they paid for. So we started there. Most of the time, the families had information on what could make their lives better, but they had forgotten they had it or were not sure how to start with it. And eventually I started, you know, becoming a liaison to the therapists or the teachers and going into IEP meetings in the schools and.
Speaker 4:I'm not afraid to go where I've never gone before.
Speaker 3:So even though I was, sort of coming at this from. That's a good entrepreneur.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and so I was coming at this from all. Right, I'm going to figure it out. Right, and I really saw the disconnect that therapists didn't have the whole picture, pediatricians didn't have the whole picture, the teachers didn't have the whole picture the tutors, the grandparents, everybody who was part of the nuclear and extended system, right, family and team.
Speaker 4:They needed to have certain information that was stuck in that desk file essentially and so as I started to be able to be the one to help them map out where things should be, not just physically but emotionally and mentally, it started to make changes and families were fighting less and um accomplishing more, and I would work with the kids in their bedrooms and even sometimes with interior designers. Like here's a way. Like every kid knows how to organize their room.
Speaker 4:They just don't want to or or they don't know where to start right, and so most of the time where our creativity gets stifled is with the blank page, and so I I really think that, ultimately, the coaching was really around releasing someone's creativity. Kids know what works for them when they're kids. It's why they're good at learning things when they're so young. Right there's a working memory is fresh.
Speaker 4:There's no fear. There's no preconceived belief systems. Everything is is possible. But along the way, some teacher says you're bad at math or only use blue pen, when you're writing in this notebook that you didn't pick out for yourself, like right. So there's all this structure that's given to you. Nobody really asks a kid if it's working for them, right. But when I was in school, my notebooks were bright colors, my notes were in doodles. Sometimes they were spiraled all around the page. Yeah, but I knew that by doing that I had a visual memory.
Speaker 2:You were releasing.
Speaker 4:I would remember where on the page something was, and no teacher, or certainly my parents, ever told me the way that I did it was wrong. And I think a lot of things go wrong when we tell kids that their instinct isn't correct and then you get afraid of like well, if what I think isn't right, I need somebody to tell me. And that's scary for kids.
Speaker 2:Well, and I feel like just listening to what you just said, it's like such an aha moment, even for me, because in our life, obviously we're married, we have three children. It's not as easy as the old system used to be, meaning like dad worked, mom stayed home. Our economy is not set up for that anymore, and yet you want three children and, yes, you have three children and they're all learning. Especially in our life, we have three completely different individuals who all have unique needs and unique talents, and it is a blessing for people who could have somebody like you in their pocket to come and explain that to the grandparents, who are very opinionated and wasn't done like that back in their day. Why do you need all this kind of thing?
Speaker 3:You're missing two other important things.
Speaker 2:What's that?
Speaker 3:Social media and the cell phone. Well, that was like a whole other component.
Speaker 2:We'll get to that in a minute. But it's just like you found a niche that truly is so necessary in this digital noisy.
Speaker 3:Our world is full of noise, but at what point did the aha moment of I'm going gonna do this school?
Speaker 4:so in 2008 is when the social media sites really became a problem. Um, we had sites that were allowing kids to put up anonymous, anonymous quizzes, right like um, that were really bullying right so um, we had a you know tumblr which was starting to glorify things like eating disorders and cutting and you know, and school refusal really started around that time.
Speaker 4:Um, there was software called edline, which is how the teachers would report grades. Um, sometimes not all the teachers updated them at the same pace, so a parent would immediately wake up in the morning and start yelling at their kid why didn't you turn in your assignment?
Speaker 4:But maybe it was turned in, but there were fights because the parents didn't believe the kids right or whatever it was. There was stuff that started in around 2008 that school refusal was really becoming a problem. So my phone was ringing. Now I have these relationships with therapists and I was starting to work with a lot more families with therapists and I was starting to work with a lot more families and I was already really acutely aware of how school-related stress was impacting the family dynamic.
Speaker 4:So you know, I went to a house with one of an elementary school girl who had the FSA testing and she was so scared because the teacher or substitute who was proctoring test said I don't know if you're going to get your color transparency to use on the answer sheet because I'm new and I'm not sure if they're going to give you your accommodation, so then that just shut her down.
Speaker 4:But the regular teacher had said, if you don't pass this test, I'm going to lose my job, was like how she was trying to motivate these kids. So this little girl pitched a tent on her bed and locked herself in her bedroom and wouldn't come out for testing. And I spent, you know, one day on the outside of her bedroom door just talking to her through it, and then the next day she let me in and we uncovered that it was these two comments the one teacher saying if you don't do well, I'm going to lose my job, and the person that was proctoring days or weeks later saying I don't know how to get you your accommodations. So she, this little nine-year-old, put together well, if I don't have this accommodation that I need, how am I going to do well, and I'm going to be the reason my teacher gets fired. And so she just was like I'm not going to go take the test.
Speaker 4:So there's stuff like that that a parent isn't. I could say the same thing to your three kids that you both say, and I will get an entirely different result, because they are not my kids, and so that's just an unfortunate side effect, I think, of being parents. But the reality was, is that the parents were so anxious about not knowing why their kid is locked in her bedroom that they couldn't be calm and curious enough to get her to share what was wrong, because she didn't know, she didn't even really know that it was the two things that prompted her to be so scared.
Speaker 4:So, you know, school related stresses runs really deep and around that time I was really seeing kids who were like begging not to go to school and this was even before school shootings were, you know, on everyone's mind. This was really just from the early social media and grades and tests. So In 2009-10, I had a group of coaching clients who were really struggling to get to school. So I started searching. I toured about 20 or 25 private schools in Miami-Dade, broward, palm Beach and Martin Counties just trying to see what other people were offering as a way of referring my clients to other schools were offering as a way of referring my clients to other schools and everyone was kind of offering, saying the right things.
Speaker 4:But then I would walk in the classroom and I had this background in a non-traditional education that I knew was the way to handle a non-traditional brain and I was seeing this very traditional environment that didn't quite match up. So I figured out how homeschooling worked and long before COVID and pods and micro schools and all of that Right.
Speaker 2:And I started definitely ahead of the curve.
Speaker 4:So fall of 2010,. Three of my private coaching clients were the first Space of Mind students and we actually started in the Delray beach library and then we started to grow, so they came to my house every day. Um, and then after january of that year, I moved and didn't want them in my new house, so we became nomads in delray and we would like be in the library and we would be in the park and we would be all over um, and then in april of 2011, was that like full-time tutoring, like yeah, they came to my house.
Speaker 4:The first two years we used or about year and a half we used florida virtual school. It was the easiest, safest option. If this great experiment didn't work, I knew the grades would transfer to any school that those kids were and I like that, and so it gave the parents, who I still still to this day, those first three families. I thank them every day for the faith and trust.
Speaker 4:I was like, yeah, just you know, write me this, check and come to my house and we'll just do school. And it was amazing and it worked, and so they that early. You know, faith really set us on this course. And then, yeah, we moved into the Clark House in 2011, which is Delray's oldest house 1896.
Speaker 2:Which, when you walk in there itself, you realize the density of what's happening there, because it's such a wonder and it's an organized wonder which always, you know I appreciate being a type A person. But how did that all come into the like? All the stuff and the evolution of designing this space.
Speaker 3:When you say stuff like because each room is very unique and very well designed, thank you. It's like design on steroids when you say stuff, because each room is very unique and very well designed.
Speaker 2:Thank you. It's like design on steroids some of the rooms, but that each little space would have its purpose and I'm sure it evolved.
Speaker 4:I mean I'm sure it was a work in process.
Speaker 2:Oh my God.
Speaker 4:When we took the first building, the Clark House, it was actually a crime scene.
Speaker 2:I know I remember you saying it's so crazy, it was a pill mill.
Speaker 4:It's so crazy and I recently was watching one of the documentaries on the pill mill and pain industry and they showed the clip of the arrest of the doctor in our parking lot and I was cracking up.
Speaker 3:In that building. Yeah, the white building.
Speaker 4:Oh, yeah, it was full on crime scene still when I took it. Oh wow, so all their stuff was still there, the crime scene.
Speaker 3:It was hilarious I knew a bunch of guys who had a business there that did multi-level marketing yeah, that was before them.
Speaker 4:yeah, yeah, um, we got their mail too, uh. So, yeah, when I took it over, we had to perform basically an exorcism because the energy in that building was just horrific, but the bones of that building were amazing and the first resident of that building coach clark, was the first resident of that building. Coach Clark was apparently the first football coach as lore has it for Delray High School, and so he grew up in that house and the house is really just a really cool spot. So, yeah, it had many early iterations. In fact, it's our 20th year of the company, so we're putting together a timeline of the early years right now. So I was cracking up the other night pulling out those old pictures of how many different ways each room has evolved oh my God, it's crazy Iterations.
Speaker 4:Yes, so many iterations, and then we joke. Like you know, it's change of mind also, right? So everything's flexible and movable and the buildings change each year, you each year, as we grow and create.
Speaker 3:I read somewhere the school is kind of classified. I'm not sure what this means. Transformative.
Speaker 4:I mean, I would say, we're transformative.
Speaker 3:What does that mean?
Speaker 4:Just that look. I mean, I think we are a place where the environment is safe and nurturing for you to be your whole self.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 4:I think the biggest thing that is holding kids and adults back right now is with social media, with this instant gratification that we have. We don't give ourselves enough time to develop, to percolate, to learn, to make mistakes, to try a bunch of stuff and see what you love. And you know the root of learning is that it's curiosity. And you know my dad actually, before he passed he told us this story that he always believed that education was the highest form of prayer.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 4:I think that's like right to be in that space mentally, where you can be in prayer with whatever, whoever you believe in. You have to feel comfortable in your skin and comfortable in a way that is, you know, is truly precious, and so that is set sets the culture of our space. So it doesn't matter what it looks like, it comes from the culture that forms it. And then obviously, I like cool stuff and I like color and I like things that have multiple functions, and so over the years, you know the the spaces have come together with a lot of. You know the creative flair that everyone brings to the table, but also thinking about the utilitarian needs of what we have too.
Speaker 3:So what is the typical student?
Speaker 4:What type of students does you know it's funny, we really don't have a typical type of student other than to say we love working with kids with busy brains, I love that. Who are, you know, and families who are able to be in a nontraditional paradigm.
Speaker 3:Right, because education is kind of out of the box, the way in which it's delivered.
Speaker 4:Ours is yeah so, but we have all kinds of kids.
Speaker 3:I feel it's like almost created for each individual kid. It is.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's super customized to each student and really we have lots of different kids. We've got kids who see the world in multiple different ways and that's what makes it so unique. So we're just a microcosm of a larger group of kids. You take 50 kids randomly from any large group of school with 4,000 kids, you'll get a little of everyone, and that's what we have and that's what makes it so special. But the curriculum is really what allows us to meet each student where they are, and so about the fourth year we started writing our own curriculum for every student. And what does?
Speaker 2:that look like, Like where does that process even come? Yeah, come from.
Speaker 4:So you remember the choose your own adventure books when we were kids. Like, if you get to page 32? It asks you a question like do you want to go this way? Turned page 50? If you, want it to go to this other page. So that was. Those are my favorite books as a kid and our curriculum. We write a brand new curriculum every summer for the following year.
Speaker 2:And they're always creative. Super creative really current themes and very curated yeah, Every detail along the way.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's what keeps it fresh for our team. Right. We're all, as educators, lifelong learners, and I think one of the places where traditional schools really missed it is that we've made classroom teachers more like administrators. There's data.
Speaker 1:There's you know this, you have to follow this roadmap like right you it's.
Speaker 4:They've removed creativity from the process, um, and so I think it's really important for our team to feel that they have autonomy in what they're teaching and that they also have the flexibility to throw the lesson plan out the window if the kids get a better idea right.
Speaker 4:And that's what keeps everything super fresh. So we come into the curriculum season with a grid. Essentially, All the classes are designed every year to be interdisciplinary. So science is a different theme every year, Humanity is a different theme and we are able to integrate all the character habits into the academics. So the social, emotional and life skills are all part of the academic process. And then there's room for the kids. If you think about our lesson plans, kind of like Mad Libs, right.
Speaker 4:The narratives where you have a blank and fill in the blank with like whatever you want.
Speaker 4:So that's sort of how the unit studies are for the kids. We give them like the here's the guideline and everything's based on the state standards. We're always kind of covering ourselves to make sure that there's no doubt that we're hitting the material that you would get anywhere else. We just do it in a more fun way. But with that MATLIB approach the kids then can be like five kids in a learning group and they all five will be doing a different variation on the subject. And because we use the project-based learning lifecycle, by the end of that unit study and at the end of each trimester the kids present to each other and then at the end of the trimester to each other and their parents on what they've learned. And that's the best way to gauge what they know, not from a test or a quiz.
Speaker 2:I know, and it's such a big thing for a parent, or I mean and I'm saying this as a parent to accept that, do you know what I mean? We're so conditioned to think all right, this is a test, this is how many tests you need to have, and the tests have to have this many questions. So then, I guess you must know this information.
Speaker 4:But as a designer you're tested when you get all the furniture placed Right and it's all there on time and in the right condition and the client's happy. You're not given a piece of paper by your client saying prove to me what you know about design. You prove it by can you get the job done on time and do it well, and that's project-based learning Right.
Speaker 3:Well, we have three kids. One of us goes to Space of Mind. A big difference for people listening and watching to this podcast is for our two kids that go to have been at other schools once or twice a year we meet with the teacher the teacher gives us an overview of what's been happening at space of mind. We do the same thing. We come in, we meet all the coaches yeah but you also have our daughter stand up in front of all the coaches and us yeah and do a whole presentation on what she just learned and was doing that semester super important no other school does that.
Speaker 2:No, it's really priceless, which is a shame.
Speaker 4:I mean it's a lot so we take out a few days each trimester to do it, but it makes so much sense.
Speaker 3:But as parents, to get to see and see the excitement on their face. Did they really learn it? Did they understand it and what they were learning? It's very unique and unusual.
Speaker 4:And also the presentation skills set our kids up for success right. We have kids that in high school are out in the workforce. We have kids that are graduating, that are doing massively amazing things in the world really contributing in technology and media and law and medicine and music, like doing really cool stuff. Because they got these core entrepreneurial skills that were designed within the curriculum. It's all so that they come out with this opportunity.
Speaker 3:So it ends at 12th grade, but where does the student?
Speaker 2:We're hoping it's going to extend a little bit so we actually don't end in 12th grade.
Speaker 4:We have a young adult workforce training program and gap years.
Speaker 2:Oh, I didn't know that, yep. So we're actually launching it as a residential program now. Which I love.
Speaker 4:And I've already told people about that the youngest is kindergarten and our oldest participant right now is 21. And we're adding a residential part of the gap year and workforce training program, so we'll be able to recruit from around the country, which is going to be amazing.
Speaker 4:It really is We've now got one of our full-time staff members. Has been at Space of Mind since first grade, left for a few years, went back to Pennsylvania and then came back and now he's working in our kitchen full-time. But he worked at farmer's table um leading up to taking this job with us. Um got experience out in the world um and went through our gap year program to to get that opportunity and now we've hired him.
Speaker 2:So so, now that you brought up the kitchen, obviously the, the schoolhouse kitchen, and the what do you call it? The learning the hub the hub yeah, was a big. Is a big part of your curriculum, I mean not only second building, yeah, the second building, but I always, even with the campus like have appreciated the curation of the actual menu every day, and we eat well there is yeah there's such a focus on food and it's all healthy and clean, and now you do have this amazing facility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what brought that to the forefront, as I shared.
Speaker 4:I started in the restaurant industry right Like. I really think everyone by law should have to work in a restaurant at least one time in their life.
Speaker 3:Why is that?
Speaker 4:Well, people let their guard down around food, so you can learn a lot about people. The working memory aspect you have to work a lot of different parts of that restaurant in order to accomplish one thing. The teamwork element the fact that you have to leave your stuff at the door right If you're going to get through your shift. You can't be worrying about what's happening at home, you've got to just be present and you have opportunities to both lead and follow in that environment as well. But I learned a lot of design pieces in that job, like opening Cheesecake Factories.
Speaker 4:David Overton, who's the founder and CEO of Cheesecake. He would be on site for every opening, meticulously managing every detail of the design. And I understood and this really served me when I worked with the hoarding population that where things go matter If the creamers are too far from the coffee cups and it's a pain to get your table coffee servers aren't going to offer coffee service They'll lose 30 bucks on their check right. So little things that people don't think about matter to the bottom line and they matter to the efficiency of the team. So there were. You know, the purposeful placement of things can really make a difference for the proficiency of the team working, so I understood that as well, which was really important. But for me, the restaurant industry really set me on fire. I loved it.
Speaker 3:I had a restaurant for a number of years.
Speaker 4:Did you? I didn't know that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, six years. And there's two other aspects that I've always thought like. I think people being in a restaurant or working is a great thing. Is they the people skills that you have to have or you have to develop? Yeah in the process, because it's all about the people and the customers coming in and them enjoying that experience back, yeah, what's that? And coming back correct, yeah, and the other aspect is is it being on top of your game, do you? You got to be thinking every moment, every second yeah you know, are they ready, are happy?
Speaker 3:Do they want to check? Do they need something? You know what's going on in the kitchen and generally you're doing it with a hangover.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's that?
Speaker 4:I said generally you're also doing it with a hangover, so it was like you know, I was in my 20s and we would drink for two.
Speaker 1:We'd sleep for four and then do it again.
Speaker 4:That you can only do in your 20s though, but yeah.
Speaker 4:So the restaurant world, I think, is an amazing place to grow those skills, but also we learned in COVID that the restaurant industry has to redevelop itself and redesign itself and grow a healthier workforce because of, you know, the propensity to get involved in, you know, drinking or drugs or have mental health stuff that comes from, you know, working those hours, and so there's a lot of room to create a new, inspired workforce in that area. So in 2017, my team and I started the Community Classroom Project, which is our nonprofit organization. It shares the campus with Space of Mind, and we started construction shortly thereafter on the second building on the campus, which is called the Hub, and this kitchen, this commercial teaching kitchen, was sort of the heart of that project, and so we've now extended the workforce training to digital media and music. We've got our own recording studio, which will grow into a record label. We have engineering, we have fine arts, and so the community center offers programs for adults who have, for years, walked onto the campus and said, like I want to come here.
Speaker 4:And families and also for this young adult population which I personally think is our next. I mean, we have a lot of problems to solve in the world right now, but in terms of getting kids out in the world, to you know, succeed as adults.
Speaker 4:We have a real kind of uphill battle right now yeah um you know, making them productive and yeah, well, just individuating right like this is the COVID generation. They they developed different anxieties and attachments to home and and parents their attachments to their kids in the wake of school shootings and things that could literally kill your kids when they leave the house.
Speaker 3:So is that a conversation that comes like there was just one? What yesterday or the day before? Yesterday it seems like every week there's one. Is that a conversation that goes on? It sometimes is Do you have a preparedness program that you have to deal with.
Speaker 4:So we have. After the Douglas shooting, we had kids come to Tour Space of Mind and they would ask how do the doors lock? What do you do? Do you sound the alarm?
Speaker 4:Do you do drills Because we had so many kids with trauma from just the drills right, and I understand liability-wise and all of the rest that you want to prepare kids, but there were kids being traumatized in the preparation right. Interestingly enough, it was kids who had asked those questions kind of first, before their parents would maybe even get there, because the parents are looking at solving the other problem first, which is like school isn't working.
Speaker 4:What is this place going to do for us? But the kids are very acutely aware of what has traumatized them, and so we've had kids walk through on the tour and just start to cry and I'm like, why are you crying? And I never knew someplace like this existed. I never would have thought, right, that school could be this way. And so, yeah, I mean school shootings are real. The access you mentioned before that kids have to technology is terrifying. It is actively traumatizing kids throughout the day too, because they are holding them back in some ways. It's definitely holding back.
Speaker 4:So there's a lot of things now that are kind of at the forefront of how education is reinventing itself.
Speaker 2:So where do you see the growth of space of mine? Like, what's your vision for? Do you see like franchising? So we are set up for that.
Speaker 4:The two years before COVID, I worked with a franchise attorney. We're ready to go the summer of 2020, I talked to a large number of people that reached out to us when we were promoting the opportunity and I realized it wasn't the right time for me or them. You can't start a business when you're running scared which certainly in COVID most people were and this is not the kind of business that you start if you have variables that, could you know, like that aren't settled right. I mean, I started space of mine, I'm single, I don't have kids, like it was, like me and my dog.
Speaker 1:Like I could put everything to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but when you're dealing with kids.
Speaker 2:As you know, it's like serious business, um, and parents are actually sometimes harder than the kids, so it's a lot of people that are counting on you Well, and I feel like this type of education really is the future, because so many kids don't fit in a box anymore and obviously there's more autism and there's, like you said, more anxiety around school. And more competition, I would see something like this being needed in every small town in a big city.
Speaker 4:There's this big movement now towards homeschooling, which, of course, I thought I would be like standing from the rooftops and screaming it in 2020. And it's exciting that we have a more nontraditional ecosystem. I guess that's coming together for learning. There are a lot of things that I joked to someone last night. I'm like. I kind of sometimes feel, though, like Oppenheimer when he said he sort of regretted inventing the bomb, because in some ways I think we're going to lose a lot of kids while this new figure system figures it out because parents aren't really the best ones to teach their kids.
Speaker 4:For the same reason I said I could tell your kid one thing. I agree and get a whole same thing, I agree and it puts a different dynamic into the family it's not the natural dynamic and I know a lot of homeschool parents will scream at me for saying that, but it's definitely, I think, making it harder in a lot of respects for the non-traditional learners to get what they need, because parents are not. They're teaching from the way they were taught. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:And not necessarily for the way their kids need to learn. Curriculum that is out in the market is not tailored to every student. We offer our curriculum for homeschoolers the same way that we write it for our full-time kids, so that it can be tailored to the learner, and that's sort of where I see our growth now is offering that curriculum out into the homeschool world so that it can tie things together.
Speaker 2:Not everybody is going to do a full-time program, but I think that is a huge link because when I was researching we were researching for Kensington the homeschool aspect came up all the time and I have to say everybody spoke so amazing. All these kids that I have met that were coming from a homeschool background were exceptional children who eventually resurfaced into mainstream life very well. But I feel like it is a disconnect that, again, not everybody learns the same. And then there are so many of these kids with learning. I mean I hate to even use the word challenges, it's just they learn different. We all have challenges, yeah. And look, make no mistake, I mean I hate to even use the word challenges. It's just they learn different. Everyone just is different. We all have challenges, yeah.
Speaker 4:And look, make no mistake. I think homeschool kids are, by and large, more successful than, oftentimes, traditionally schooled kids, because they're taught to make choices during the day, they're given more autonomy, they're given the opportunity to be out in the community more right.
Speaker 4:We learn how to communicate by talking to people of all different ages and types, and that's where the freedom of homeschooling really is so valuable that you know if you think about, like the Renaissance right, like we learned from, you know, apprenticeships and we had, you know, mentorship and and you know the, that's really what we're coming to right now in education, but there still needs to be, um, I think, some structure and some standardization of what you know that looks like that looks like, and and so right now, at this moment in the homeschool movement, there's sort of a pushback on that Like don't tell me what my kid needs to know.
Speaker 4:Right, like I got this, but it's hard, it's exhausting. Being a homeschool parent without a roadmap is very stressful that you've gained over literally living it working it doing it
Speaker 2:and that you get to imprint to these coaches and to the staff is kind of a hybrid of homeschool and curriculum.
Speaker 4:It totally is. It's just they're coming to us.
Speaker 3:How are you attracting new students?
Speaker 4:Do you have?
Speaker 3:an ad program out there on social media. We've got social media.
Speaker 4:We've got word of mouth. We have a really good sort of network of referrers that know about us. We purposely stayed off the radar for a number of years because you know, in the early years especially, nobody was doing what I was doing. And are you a school, are you not a school? There were zoning questions that we had to deal with.
Speaker 4:So you know, I'm of the do first, apologize later mentality. So we didn't even have a sign out front for a hot minute, like we were just very quiet until we had, you know, our footing and I understood the business model and I understood, like, who we really were. Right, we're essentially a tutoring center for homeschoolers. Right, they come to us full time during the day, but like most micro schools and pods, you know, the parents are the ones, like you've signed the notice of intent as homeschool parents. But we do the heavy lifting to make sure that you're not dealing with the stress of that, that you can still be the parent and not the primary educator. But also, you come and you see and we share with you what the curriculum is like. We're very transparent and we're very flexible. So you know, we have kids that have different interests. Like we had a student a bunch of years ago who didn't want to learn about the human biology, but she really wanted to understand this one random species of beetle.
Speaker 4:So I found a I forget what you're called if you're studying bugs a professor who taught about this beetle and we wrote a class right, so we can get really customized with what we're doing and I think that is helpful. We can also supplement a different homeschool education or supplement curriculum. It doesn't have to all be from us right, but it's about having the connection with the student and the family to make sure that what we're giving the student to learn is what they care about.
Speaker 3:So the school is called Space of Mind.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:How did you come up with the name? What does the name mean?
Speaker 4:So I Because it's not your typical You're going to like this. It's not your typical. You get to use it.
Speaker 2:I love how you have the initials, because we tell people, you know people ask, hey, where's?
Speaker 3:you know, kids go to school and we'll say Space of Mind. What's Space of?
Speaker 2:Mind.
Speaker 4:So in the early years when I was working with families and doing a lot more like around the actual physical space, how things were organized in the home, I got hired by a family in Jacksonville and I went up and like kind of moved in with them. I lived there in their guest room for a week and we went space to space and we just redid the house in a way that matched everyone's learning style and lifestyle and communication style and stuff, everyone's learning style and lifestyle and communication style and stuff. And on the way home I realized that I no longer was tied to this sort of consignment and closet organizing and sort of that niche. It was really about the larger frame of mind that was coming. So I was on the drive home and frame of mind popped into my head and somehow by the time I made it from you know the middle of the state back to south florida.
Speaker 2:It was space of mind, so and it's got so many like I love how the initials are som, and I mean you guys play on all of that all the time yeah, I have a whole list of words that we have that in there but yeah, yeah interesting well, it's really a special place, and we're so grateful that it happens to be in our town, that our daughter gets to benefit from this special place that you've put your lifestyle and life into creating, but we're so.
Speaker 4:I mean, I'm so blessed that you've shared Ken's with us and that every family takes a chance to do something a little different.
Speaker 2:And I pray that they do and we try to spread the word as often as we can. So what's the future.
Speaker 3:Do you have plans in the future? What's new that you're going to bring?
Speaker 4:I want to get our curriculum out there. We want to grow this residential program and the workforce program. I'm really working hard on Community Classroom Project right now.
Speaker 3:Community Classroom Project.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's the nonprofit. And then I'd like to teach, I'd like to write, I'd like to share what I've learned and it's 20 years since I started this, which is crazy, and we've seen a lot of things, and I've learned a lot of things as an entrepreneur, as a human, as a leader, as you know, an educator that I think are important to share, because the perspective that I've had being in someone's home, being in a classroom working with a kid who's really struggling, and then, all of a sudden, you're there when the light bulb goes off, and you know.
Speaker 4:so I really want to be able to share what we've learned, as you know myself and as a team. And I understand you have an endeavor to try to buy, yes, one of the buildings yes, so we have two, these two amazing buildings on our special places one, uh, the white building, um, the clark house is, you know, uh will be space of minds, and then the gray building behind it which is the hub.
Speaker 3:Um, we are raising money through community classroom project to buy it, and I have until june 30th so um, and it's a creative community center for everyone right, so looking for anyone who's interested in anyone helping further the education of children's in a variant unique program yeah, and to make this a show place for delray.
Speaker 4:Right, right, it really is special Adding family retreats. Come from anywhere, stay in our hotels and participate in our programming and eat at our restaurants and we'll curate these family vacations. That's next, all of those things, but I need to make sure we've got this place on lock.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 4:I've put a lot into it. You sure have, so I'm pretty sure this is all going to work out.
Speaker 3:I am too, and you know I've put a lot into it, so I'm pretty sure this is all going to work out. But besides the education and running the school, in space of mine you also have all these community programs for the community to come and get involved and have fun Like you do every year. A big Halloween event. It's like the city of Delray Halloween event.
Speaker 4:Yes, we actually doubled the size of it this year. It was amazing. And the kids put those things on. They're learning how to do real life things. They're learning how to design an event, build it, produce it and then debrief on it. How can you make it better? Um, and so the first trimester of each academic year, they're designing that halloween haunted house and the event, which is really fun.
Speaker 4:what other school gives you, you know, six weeks to build a haunted house and the event, which is really fun? What other school gives you six weeks to build a haunted house? No, but also builds all the curriculum into it right. Correct the haunted house theme always follows our curriculum theme.
Speaker 3:It really is Right. But then you're also what's the? What happens on Saturdays?
Speaker 2:Hub at the Hub oh the community classes oh the garden.
Speaker 4:I mean the green market, Green market so the city of Delray has the green market. Is it just Sundays? It's Saturdays, it's Saturdays.
Speaker 3:But Space of Mind has a setup there where the kids are running the business selling.
Speaker 4:It's called Mason Jar Munchies the product line, and yeah, so they have. Every Saturday they're at the booth and it's run by the kids.
Speaker 2:And it's delicious. It's really great, it really is.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we're launching with the kitchen project. This year we're launching a ghost kitchen that will be run by the students, so takeout dinners Wednesday through Saturday. We've got the meal box project that's relaunching this year through the kitchen, which is, you know, kind of like a blue apron meal box.
Speaker 2:That's so cool.
Speaker 1:You buy one and we donate one to another family in need.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we did it during COVID and we actually had sold about I don't know I think like three or four thousand meal boxes during COVID, and so that was really cool.
Speaker 2:And people just come and pick them up.
Speaker 4:Uh, we would distribute them at the green market or have some of our students who drive, would you know? Earn some money delivering or you could pick them up. Yeah, that's fabulous.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So all of you know there's, the kids are also learning all the entrepreneurial skills and it's working Like. One of our students graduated last year he to um art school, uh, this year and at college he got there and realized that none of the bike shops in milwaukee fixed the electric scooters, so he had worked at rich wagons bike shop here for years um, and he started a business on campus fixing scooters and you know I was doing quite well.
Speaker 4:But he called me like a week into running the business and he's like, yeah, I mean everything I learned about networking, about. He sent me his spreadsheet like where he's tracking all the sales and you know he's he got that through our program and through the access he had to the local businesses who partner with us right, which is also another.
Speaker 2:We could have a whole podcast, just on that I love all of that. Yeah, well, it was really special to have you here today. And as we wrap up, we have like a fun little.
Speaker 3:One or two questions.
Speaker 2:One or two design questions. I have nothing to do with anything that we talked about. Okay, cool.
Speaker 3:I have to do with design, so I'll ask the first one Okay. So is there a restaurant that comes to your mind that you would say wow, that is like the best designed restaurant.
Speaker 4:Okay, so my new favorite is Amar in.
Speaker 2:Delray oh, the new one. We haven't been there yet, Okay wait till.
Speaker 4:You see how beautiful. Nicholas and his team made this restaurant.
Speaker 3:Where is Amar? What is that? It took over the old Mellow. Mushroom. Oh, okay yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and it's just, it's stunning. So that's my quick, easy answer. I like that, though I'm going to give Amar the shot. I love that I give him a plug.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I think this is kind of a great question for you, just because anybody who could go and see Space of Mine, you should check it out online.
Speaker 3:It's just eye candy and it's so design, noteworthy, on every what is your, every aspect, every aspect, yes, what is your favorite like design accessory, like in a home, oh, books.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I use books for everything. Um, I love using books in random ways.
Speaker 2:Like on the wall, like you two, you should see it. They're so fabulous. Yeah, I think books.
Speaker 4:They tell your story, yeah, I love books too.
Speaker 3:You know what we keep saying about space of mind and design on steroids is when you walk through and you see everything. I think we should just kind of like say that like you have a music room.
Speaker 2:All my kids talk about.
Speaker 3:It's a small little teeny room, but it's like you shoved and put everything from the guitar center into that room yeah, you got every instrument on the ceiling. Oh, it's got everything, but just just the walls and how you know what's on the walls and the design and so forth. And then there's another room. I'm not really sure what the room is, but I'm going to guess it's kind of like the science room. But you've got, I mean, you must have a dozen different types of creatures.
Speaker 4:All the little bugs. We have a little bit of a zoo.
Speaker 3:It's like a mini zoo. So for kids we're getting some new zoo animals?
Speaker 4:I think yeah.
Speaker 3:But for a kid, you know, in a room where they're talking about biology and science, what an environment to be in.
Speaker 4:My favorite part of that science room is the copper floor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the copper floor is mine too.
Speaker 4:That's the best part Mine too, mine too we got so lucky with that. It was this horrible vinyl tile and when we picked it up it was this magical copper floor and we just sealed it and it's amazing, it is so cool, but it's like you talked about the copper floor. The ceilings are every ceiling is very unique and the walls are you're walking to each room and you have to spend.
Speaker 4:It was fun seeing it come off my iPad and, like, room by room, come to life. That was really fun and I still am always looking for fun stuff to add to it. Like we're throwing this huge 80s party on Saturday, so like I hope you guys will be there and you'll see like it's going to be transformed and I found some cool stuff that I'll live on in the space for sure, so fun.
Speaker 3:Well, we wish you a continued success with the school. Thank you.
Speaker 4:And with this podcast, this has been fun, thank you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thank you and it was great to have Allie here on the iDesign Lab iDesign Lab's podcast is an SW Group production in association with the Five Star and TW Interiors. To learn more about I Design Lab or TW Interiors, please visit twinteriorscom.
