Melanie Wilson (00:01)
Matt, thank you so much for joining me here on the Home School Sanity Show. I am excited to talk about Open Ed, but before we do that, I would love to have you tell us more about you and your family.

Matt Bowman (00:13)
Great to be here with you, Melanie. We really appreciate it. so I'll start. So my wife and I have five children. And as we were raising them, and it's exciting, all five are married now. And we have four grandkids with two on the way. So that's a little bit about me is I'm a dad first, grandpa second. My grandkids call me pops. So I like that and just having a fun time.

Melanie Wilson (00:33)
You

Aww.

Matt Bowman (00:39)
So as we were raising our children, realized what all parents realize is that every child is different. They're each unique. And so we concluded that each of them also needed a different education plan. And so we felt overwhelmed by that task of trying to figure out how do you customize ⁓ an education plan for five different children. And so we just said, let's just try it.

We started figuring out what each of them would want and need and benefit from, and ended up doing a mix of everything, homeschool, hybrid, micro, online, private, you name it. And that was really the foundation for Open Education, kind of the movement that we saw. Other parents wanted that too. And so we started ⁓ an organization that partners with school districts to do that on their behalf. So that was really the foundation story of Open Ed.

Melanie Wilson (01:35)
Okay, so can you tell us a little bit more about what OpenEd actually is specifically?

Matt Bowman (01:43)
Yeah, so Open Ed is we contract with public schools, so districts and charters, and then we turn around and provide a personalized education platform to families, help them design it, help them pick from all the world's best curriculum resources, vet through all that, navigate all that, and include community-based education too. Karate lessons, pianos, music, arts, sports, everything that kids love.

And entrepreneurship, that's a key theme of ours is we love kids starting businesses. There's so much to learn in that category. And so we kind of just design, help parents design a personalized education plan that's approved by our district partners. So then it's free to families. So they don't have any out of pocket costs. We cover all the expenses, pay for their karate lessons or whatever, museum passes, those kinds of things.

Melanie Wilson (02:13)
Hmm.

Matt Bowman (02:38)
to help them access a personalized education plan that's tailor-fit for each child.

Melanie Wilson (02:44)
Wow. And so where is this available to families?

Matt Bowman (02:50)
We're in about 10 states right now, Missouri not being one of them yet. ⁓ And so we're just slowly finding superintendents and district leaders around the country that have started to see that something's changing in education. As you're well aware, the movement towards just doing something a little different is just picking up so much steam lately and districts are starting to pay attention to say, hey, we better.

adapt a little bit of what we're doing and figure out how to serve families that want something different, better. And they're really not equipped to do that. So they contract with the organization like ours to do it for them. And it works out well for the family, for us, and for the district.

Melanie Wilson (03:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, and so you mentioned something about vetting. Can you give me a little bit more information about that? Because I know that trying to decide what curriculum to use, what classes to take, what activities to participate in for your child is probably the hardest part of homeschooling.

Matt Bowman (03:57)
It can be very overwhelming. So yeah, we have a team of experienced teachers, curriculum developers, ⁓ homeschool parents themselves, many of them that just kind of visit with the family and say, hey, what does your child need? And try to help them get a demo access to an account and let them use it for a couple of days. it can go pretty quickly if a child is engaged or not.

you know, I like to share this story that often you'll hear someone say, kid say, I'm just not good at math. And I like to say, actually it's the adults fault. We haven't found the curriculum that jives with your brain yet. It's not you, it's us. So let us help try a thousand different versions of math curriculum to try to find the one that fits for you. And once it clicks, the child says, ⁓ I can do that.

Melanie Wilson (04:30)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (04:54)
It just wasn't in their language before. And so being able to figure that out is really exciting.

Melanie Wilson (05:00)
That is, I love the way that you described that. I would just hope that you wouldn't have to go through a thousand. ⁓ I don't think you would, but I do love it. Yeah. Right. You would do it. You are that committed. And ⁓ I know many, many homeschooling parents who do have that kind of commitment.

Matt Bowman (05:11)
We hope we don't, but I say that to say for a child we would. We will keep going. Yeah.

Melanie Wilson (05:28)
to their child. I like to think that I had that kind of commitment to my kids, but I love that you are coming alongside families to make the process faster and smoother and less frustrating.

Matt Bowman (05:43)
Yes, and I'll also add, you know, we are in only 10 states, ⁓ but we did launch this fall because of parent demand a private academy. And so a very affordable, but personalized online private academy that's available to anyone across the country. And I think we're looking at Missouri to be a place that we want to really launch that as there aren't that many public school choice options available there yet.

and a private academy could be very well received there. It's like $2,900 a year, so very low cost and full of rich resources and support and connectedness with student clubs and virtual field trips and all those things that just kind of add onto that experience for families.

Melanie Wilson (06:31)
Very, very exciting. Well, thank you for explaining that. I wanted to shift gears a little bit because I want to talk with you about all things education. That's really your expertise is, is really, ⁓ advancing the educational, ⁓ model to line up with, the future with all the resources that we now have available to us that

simply weren't there when I started homeschooling my kids. So let's first talk about standardized testing. When I started homeschooling my kids ⁓ in my area, we had a homeschool group, a co-op. It's not really a co-op, it's more like a support group, I should call it that. A support group that offered standardized.

testing every year to homeschoolers who wanted to participate in that and I made the decision to have my kids do standardized testing around the sixth grade so that anything that I identified where any areas where I felt like they were struggling ⁓ Then I would have those middle school years to address those areas before they started high school

That is the approach that I chose to use. But you have said that the standardized testing model itself is broken. Can you talk more about that?

Matt Bowman (08:11)
Sure, and we could spend a whole day on this topic, Melanie, so I'll keep it short. But in a nutshell, ⁓ assessments are valuable. There's a role for assessments in life. I have no objection to being assessed and identifying the needs that children have or adults have or whatever, right? So assessment is not the bad thing. What's broken is how standardized testing is used in the system.

Melanie Wilson (08:13)
Yeah.

Matt Bowman (08:40)
⁓ It's just not used to be an assessment to help a teacher help a child or a parent help a child. It's used for a lot of political reasons that really make it unusable and really untrustworthy. Like it doesn't even make sense on how our test scores are used, how they're delivered. You know, I think, you know, I was chatting with a tech test maker and they said,

based on the standards that a state publishes, it would require a 10 to 15 hour test to actually do a statistically valid test. And nobody will do that. And so we have to whittle it down to a two to four hour test still way too long. And so even on face value, it's not all that telling, right? And so then you layer on the fact that I say in my book,

Melanie Wilson (09:17)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (09:36)
Actually standardized testing is testing more of what the child is learning outside of school than inside of school. And by what I mean by that is that you can map for the most part standardized test scores to associate economic value. And so what that means is the kids who are gaining education outside of the school, again, after school clubs, lessons, field trips, travel.

Melanie Wilson (10:04)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (10:04)
You name it, all those things

are aiding that child more so than what is happening inside the school. And so if you layer on that and realize that we're standardized tests or testing what kids are accessing beyond the classroom, it makes it even more unequal and, and, and, and uninformative. ⁓ and so just that whole model, I just think is, is ridiculous. Teachers don't like it. They, they are held to a.

you know, a standard based on a random set of kids they get from who knows where they came from. you know, teachers don't like being test preppers. I was a school teacher. We want to inspire kids to think creatively and have that light bulb moment. Test prep does not do that. And so, again, I love your point that parents should be able to opt in if they want that ⁓ assessment model. They should be able to opt out if they think it's not the right fit for their child.

Melanie Wilson (10:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (11:03)
and teachers and districts should be able to say that's not helping us, we want to do something different. So that's in a nutshell what I'd say about that topic.

Melanie Wilson (11:13)
Okay,

well I was very interested in the fact that you talk about learning sprints instead of having rigid schedules. Can you tell me more about that?

Matt Bowman (11:27)
love the learning sprint model. And it's really a good step for any parent who wants to just dip their toe in the water of open education is you don't have to change everything overnight. In fact, don't. It can be too overwhelming. But a little baby step is to create a ⁓ two-week learning sprint. And we call it a learner-driven sprint. And it can be as simple as this sentence. Invite your child to learn about something they're interested in, and in two weeks, tell you about it.

Melanie Wilson (11:57)
Mmm. That's it.

Matt Bowman (11:58)
That's it. So start

as basic as that. Don't overcomplicate it. And as your child starts to learn stuff and you start to see what they're interested in learning, you can feed them some resources. Hey, I found a book at the library on this topic. Or, hey, did you see this podcast? Or whatever. You can start to feed them resources. But be cautious not to overwhelm them because sometimes the parent takes over the sprint.

Melanie Wilson (12:18)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (12:25)
You don't want to do that. So you want the child just to feel like they have access to resources where they can learn about dinosaurs or space or dolphins or whatever they decide they want to learn about for two weeks. And then what's even more fun is inviting them to, if you repeat it often, have them do some variety of their return reports. It could be a traditional science fair, threefold, whatever. It could be a PowerPoint slide. It could be then, you know,

Melanie Wilson (12:46)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (12:55)
They create a board game or they create a little video or they create a podcast series on that topic, you know, of 30 seconds each or, you know, YouTube videos or whatever they, they, they come up with, but have them or have them build a, you know, physical tower that represents something in their, ⁓ in their learning sprint or a Minecraft model inside a mind or whatever they like and enjoy, have it be partly learning and then demonstrating your learning is also

Melanie Wilson (12:57)
Woo!

Hmm. Hmm.

Matt Bowman (13:25)
a whole bunch of learning that happens. You're learning Adobe Creative Suites. You're learning video editing or word documenting, then to print little cards for your board games or whatever. And so there's a whole lot of learning that happens both in the topic and in the presentation of your knowledge.

Melanie Wilson (13:44)
Absolutely. And you know, as you were mentioning the different ways that they can demonstrate their learning, I was thinking about the fact that once our kids are adults, that is exactly what they're going to do in their personal lives or their work lives. Even they're going to gravitate to the things that they enjoy. And so we might as well allow them to start doing that.

in ⁓ their elementary years and even their high school years ⁓ to use the preferred ⁓ learning expression modality that they enjoy. mean, it might even turn into a future career, but if it doesn't, that's okay too. Hobbies are wonderful.

Matt Bowman (14:35)
Yeah, for sure.

No, I love that idea that we sometimes treat the K-12 experience as something so different from adulthood. And we then are shocked that our kids aren't ready for adulthood. Because we treat them in a very prescribed obedience and compliance mode, and they have no choice, autonomy to do anything. And then we...

Melanie Wilson (14:46)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm... Hmm...

Matt Bowman (15:04)
throw them at 18 into the world and say, okay, now go navigate your own choices. And it's like, well, I've never had choice before. What do I do with choice? And so the more we can introduce what we call in a book, give your child a voice as early as you can, depending on the child's maturity and development, could be more young than you think, younger than you think. Because children who start practicing

Melanie Wilson (15:10)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (15:33)
having a voice in their decisions of education in particular, and then extend that to beyond the other things of their schedule or their interests or whatever, they can practice having choice. So when they're older, they know how to do that.

Melanie Wilson (15:47)
Mm-hmm. I love it. I love it. It's it is really exciting to see your kids take their gifts and then the the things that they're learning ⁓ and incorporate it all together into something maybe even completely new that inspires you I've certainly had my kids inspire me with all the things that they are learning and are into so that is a great ⁓ path forward I think

for us as parents.

Matt Bowman (16:17)
Yeah.

And then I'll add, you know, I mentioned entrepreneurship and that can take lots of varieties, we say basically start with find a problem in your home or neighborhood that you can solve. And to us, that's the category of entrepreneurship, whether it's for profit or nonprofit or whatever, it doesn't matter. Step up as a leader, practice some leadership skills to go find a problem, solve a problem with value.

Melanie Wilson (16:21)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (16:46)
and see what that experience is like. And as you do that, that'll open up doors that you've never had open before, because you start to see the world in a different way. It's less depressing in many ways, because you can say, ⁓ that's a problem. I bet if we spend an hour on it, we could solve it, you know, or at least start to solve it. And so that gives some confidence to this young generation to say, it's not all doom and gloom. We can actually step up and make an impact for good. And, you know, I'd say,

Melanie Wilson (17:02)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Matt Bowman (17:15)
Don't worry about the world problems and maybe even ignore the national problems for now. Those can get a little bit hairy and overwhelming. Let the adults still deal with that. But kids solve community challenges in city, state, you know, your local area that you can really make an impact. And that's what we want society to do is return to your communities and make it the best place you can live and not worry about all this other chaos and stress that's happening around the world.

Melanie Wilson (17:20)
Mm-hmm.

You

Such great advice. mean, I think adults could take that advice too. I love it. Okay, so I know that you have served military families and that you have learned a lot about how to serve all different types of families as a result. Can you talk with us about that?

Matt Bowman (17:47)
.

I agree. I try to apply it in my life too.

Yes, I'd love to talk about the military experience we've had. as I've learned over these years, so this is our 17th year in Open Ed, and we've seen every version of everything you can think of, including military families. And as I've researched that more, I've found that even the US military says the number one inhibitor to enrolling someone into a military career is they're worried about the

disruptive nature of their child's education being deployed on a whim or whatever. And so I realized that education is a major stress for military families. And it's an obstacle to even join the military. And once you're in, it's a constant concern. And the reason being is that any disruption in a child's education can set them back multiple school years. And if they're having 12 different things in 12 years,

Melanie Wilson (19:02)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (19:05)
It's really going to impact their education. so what we found in the states that we operate, military families, once they've established their residency in that state, can stay enrolled in our program, even if they go elsewhere or overseas. And so we had a family, for example, that was in our program. their 15-year-old daughter, I remember the story, her dad was deployed to South Korea. And she said, I'm not going.

Melanie Wilson (19:18)
Woo!

Matt Bowman (19:33)
I love my education with OpenEd so much. She was working on an early college program through our platform. She said, I'm loving it. If I need to leave this experience, I'm not going with you. I'm going to find someone else to live with. And mom and dad were like, well, hey, Matt, can we take her with us to South Korea? Can she do exactly what she's doing ⁓ today there? And I checked into it and said, absolutely.

Melanie Wilson (19:55)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (20:00)
And she was thrilled. So the whole family got to stay together. She had zero disruption to her education. She woke up and did the same thing in South Korea as she was doing in her home state. And that allows for this idea that military children can have continuity and not be disruptive, disrupted. And that can really help the whole family be happy and successful.

Melanie Wilson (20:11)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes, so it doesn't matter if you're not a military family, if you have to move for family reasons or a job change, then you can keep your education continuity. That's wonderful. Wow.

Matt Bowman (20:39)
Yeah, that's an important thing as kids

get older, they want some continuity in what they're doing, but it applies for young kids as well, so yes.

Melanie Wilson (20:50)
yes. Okay, so how do you see education evolving in the next 10 years? And I would say specifically as it applies to homeschoolers.

Matt Bowman (21:02)
So right now, the biggest trend that I'm watching out there is the growth of micro, what people are calling micro schools. So it's kind of a homeschool co-op plus, right? So it's the idea that someone is stepping forward and saying, I'm going to organize this entity called a micro school and I'm going to figure out what the parents and kids want. And so that idea of just making it 10 or 12 kids,

Melanie Wilson (21:09)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (21:30)
in a setting, multi-age group setting, you know, in a barn or someone's house or in a local ⁓ rental, you know, you pull together and rent out a space together. More and more, I see that happening a lot and including in rural America. Like often rural districts and advocates for school choice struggle with this idea that there's not much supply in rural America.

But we are seeing it. We're seeing families start with 10 or 12 kids and now have 50 kids in a rural micro school because there's so much demand there. So what I would say is ⁓ any listeners or any parents who want to kind of dip their toe in entrepreneurship and education, try to figure out if there is a micro school model is in your future and create one, spin one up. ⁓ And what's funny too is I was in Wichita, Kansas not too long ago and

Melanie Wilson (22:03)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (22:26)
at a micro school incubator. So it's like a building that has shared space for labs and podcast studio and videos and computers and printers and really cool kind of shared space. And then these kind of pods around the edges that micro schoolers can rent out and then they can share the shared space in between. And ⁓ one of those tenants was a public school magnet program.

Melanie Wilson (22:28)
Hmm.

Matt Bowman (22:55)
So a public school is renting a space from a micro school incubator. And I was like, kudos to Wichita public schools, because they are seeing that there is something here and is worth districts looking into. In Indiana, there's a superintendent that started a entire network of micro schools all under the public school system and advocating for just personalized education at a local level and get rid of the massive standardizedness

Melanie Wilson (23:05)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm, wow.

you

Matt Bowman (23:24)
of schooling and it draws homeschoolers back who says, yes, that's the language I'm talking about. Multi-intrude, personalized based on learner driven interests, flexible. So I can go one day a week or five days a week. Like what is it, you know, what is it that the parent and child need and being able to create a flexible personalized model is what I hope all schools look like in the future.

Melanie Wilson (23:28)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Yes, I mean, that is really interesting. I knew about micro schools, but I did not know about ⁓ this big trend with using a shared space like that. Our local high school just did a very expensive, I'm gonna say the amount of money wrong, so I won't mention it. But the ⁓ school is...

Matt Bowman (24:10)
Go long.

Melanie Wilson (24:13)
It's just so impressive. You they have a television studio in there. You know, you name it, they have the facility to help kids learn and experience what they are interested in and those skills that they can develop. ⁓ And I love that, but it doesn't help homeschooling families in our area. How much more incredible would it have been

If it was a place where other ⁓ people, other families, ⁓ faith-based ⁓ schools or students who had an interest in using those facilities, ⁓ know, renting them as you're saying, ⁓ I just, I love that concept and I am hopeful to see more of that in the future.

Matt Bowman (25:09)
Yes, and I would actually say it might be worth organizing a large group of families, going to the board meeting and saying, hey, can we split enroll and just take one class from your high school? You'll get the funding. They'll get the funding for the one class. So it should, it should be an actual net gain for them. And we just want to come on Thursday afternoons and use your space and

Melanie Wilson (25:36)
Right.

Matt Bowman (25:38)
see if they're open to it. More more districts are realizing we've got to change a little bit of our all or nothing approach. That's kind of what open education title comes from is stop forcing us into buckets and let us tap into all of them, including public education. And that's where there's so many assets and resources available. We just need to be able to bridge the two worlds and more and more doing that.

Melanie Wilson (25:39)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Matt Bowman (26:07)
There is a possibility, I'd say go see if you can just do a, just call it a part-time enrollment model and not have to be all or nothing.

Melanie Wilson (26:15)
Right, right, I love that. And I was kinda smiling as you were talking because I was remembering when my oldest, who is a very independent, strong-willed guy, when he was in high school in our home school, he was really interested in playing tennis with the public school. And without telling me, he called and talked to

to the coach of the tennis team there at the high school and was asking all about, what would, you know, what would it be, what would be required in order for me to play there? I said, okay, wow. You know, I kind of would have liked to have known.

Matt Bowman (26:47)
Thanks.

Yeah, well, some of the enrollment, yeah.

Well, kudos. Kudos to

you that you trained him up to be an independent, self-directed learner.

Melanie Wilson (27:09)
Absolutely. And you know what? No, there was no harm in that. ⁓ But at the time, well, ⁓ what he was told is that he would pretty much have to be enrolled full time. Now, this was quite a while ago. things are actually different here now. So I think it would have been, I think it would be okay if he was a homeschooler and now wanted to play on the tennis team there. ⁓

Matt Bowman (27:14)
So tell me what happened.

Great.

Peace.

Yeah, most

states have that allowance. If you try out for your boundary district and your homeschool kid, you should be eligible for extracurricular activities. And if not, gather groups together and go change that law. It's possible to make difference. Because that's important. Or at least change the policy of the district. The board has more power than most people think. And you can say, hey, this does not make sense. We want to have

Melanie Wilson (27:38)
Uh-huh.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes.

Matt Bowman (28:04)
you know, enrolled one class or zero and still participate. So lots of opportunities to make change.

Melanie Wilson (28:08)
Right.

I love your boldness ⁓ with this. I really, really do. I appreciate it so much. Okay, so I now wanna know how can our listeners get your book? ⁓ It's excellent. I think you will be inspired by reading it. And so tell us where they can get it and also how they can connect with you online if you are on any social media platforms.

Matt Bowman (28:35)
Yeah, the best place is opened.co. book. So that's our company's name is opened.co and our website is, and then you can find slash book is where all the, have a free download to help you get started. Links to the Amazon page is it's available in audible and audio book as well. And Kindle and all those versions are out there. So get the book and let it.

just be your jumpstart to figuring out your next step. That's what we say is just start somewhere and you can really make a difference and you can do it in a very short period of time. And then connecting just on that site has all of our social media handles of, know, where you can follow OpenEd and we have a great newsletter that comes out. We have a daily newsletter that's helping parents around the country just take baby steps every day. daily newsletter.

weekly podcast that we host as well and lots of articles and resources, ⁓ more than you'll ever be able to consume in a day.

Melanie Wilson (29:43)
I believe you, I believe you. And I'm gonna add those links to the show notes page for this episode. Thank you so much for this interview. It was really interesting for me to talk with you. So I know our listeners are going to love it. ⁓ I know I could talk with you a very long time about this topic because I'm so passionate about education, but thank you.

Matt Bowman (30:01)
Yep.

Thanks Melanie, great to be here.