Cheryl Dodge With Time4Learning

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in South Florida. It’s time for South Florida Business Radio.

[00:00:08] Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Lee Kantor here another episode of South Florida Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Diaz Trade Law, your customs expert today on South Florida Business Radio, we have Cheryl Dodge with Time4Learning. Welcome, Cheryl.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:00:33] Hi there. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:34] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about time for learning. How are you serving folks?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:00:40] Sure. So Time for Learning is an organization that started in South Florida actually almost 20 years ago. And we are a home education organization, which means we offer software and services to families who are educating their children at home. So predominantly that means families who are homeschooling their children and this is pre-K to 12 in all 50 states as well as internationally.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:04] So what was the genesis of the idea? How did this get started?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:01:08] Yeah, our founder, John Edelson, years ago had spent time in the Silicon Valley, sort of in that that crew of people who were making lots of changes in the way that we use technology, particularly in gaming. And when he came out of an experience where he’d worked on building some games just for fun, he had this thought that he wanted to do something that was a little more value to society, something that would perhaps help others. So he took what he knew about the gaming industry and he came up with this idea of creating a curriculum, a program that was going to be served up online. This was in the early 2000 before people were really doing this, too. And it would give family access to a full curriculum so that they could educate their children at home. But he would do it in a way that the experience would be engaging, similar to some of the game design principles of those early years in the early 2000.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:05] And then that started locally and then just grew from there.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:02:08] It did. It started off with just a pre-K program, and then as the team built the program up, they added on additional grade levels until they got to all the way to 12th grade. So now we serve pre-K through 12th grade and it took a few years to do that, but it’s definitely been a program that has added value to families lives because of the flexibility it offers them, as well as the anytime, anywhere learning experience. So it’s become particularly during the pandemic, it was a great resource for families who were looking for an alternative experience for ensuring their kids had learning in the home when they couldn’t be in their brick and mortar.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:48] So how did the pandemic affect your company? Did that accelerate growth?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:02:54] Oh yeah, it absolutely accelerated growth. And the interesting thing is that years past, a lot of families thought that homeschooling wasn’t for them. That was perhaps more of a thing that only certain kinds of families could do, and they really didn’t have an awareness of how it could be so applicable to their particular family interests. And how their family values. And so through the pandemic, not only did our program grow exponentially, but I think parents awareness, they became much more savvy. They began to understand what they could do differently and that they actually had agency over their kids learning. So now that we’re coming, you know, we’ve come out of the pandemic, families are still homeschooling. In fact, while we’ve seen some settling, if you will, what we would call sort of recalibration, we’re seeing a lot of families who before the pandemic would never have considered themselves as a homeschooling family, are sticking with it because they love what it offers their children and what offers their family.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:52] For the person that has a child and is maybe considering homeschooling. Can you explain maybe some of the tradeoffs, some of the pros and cons of homeschooling versus traditional?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:04:02] Yeah. So I think there’s some misconceptions about homeschooling that I would love to disseminate because I think those can oftentimes make families think that homeschooling isn’t for them. So sort of on the face value, of course, homeschooling means you’re at home, you’re not in a brick and mortar setting. And so the first challenge that parents are very curious about and concerned about is socialization. The one thing that we always talk about with homeschooling is because it can be anytime, anywhere. Socialization is happening all the time. So through homeschooling groups, through homeschooling pods and meetups, sports arts, other types of activities, neighborhood friends. So the homeschooling families we serve, they really don’t complain about socialization being a problem. And in fact they find richer relationships because they create space and time for their children to have really rewarding connections. I think the biggest difference between traditional brick and mortar and homeschooling is in a traditional school. You have a classroom teacher or a set of teachers, depending on your student’s grade level, and that teacher is responsible for delivering the curriculum to your child and the learning experience. When you’re at home, you’re the teacher of record. And so. It’s your responsibility to do that. But with our program, one of the cool things is because we’re a structured homeschooling program, all the instruction is built into the courses.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:05:21] So for families who may be another potential barrier might have been fear or, gosh, I don’t know if I can teach chemistry, we can help them alleviate those very easily because the curriculum itself is fantastic and really supportive of the parents. I think the last thing about homeschooling that’s different from the traditional brick and mortar setting is that homeschooling is incredibly flexible and very efficient. So most of our families really only sit in front of a computer maybe 2 to 3 hours a day and their kids complete, if not the same amount of curriculum that their peer would in a brick and mortar setting, they oftentimes complete more. And the reason for that is that there’s efficiency in what they’re learning. There’s the ability for them to focus, and then that allows them time to do all kinds of other things. So, you know, they work on a farm. If they’ve got homeschooling groups that they go to, if their family takes them to museums and local areas of interest, if they have sports, they can play, It really creates a lot of flexibility for them to explore their passions and interests in ways that sometimes in a brick and mortar setting, they don’t really have the time to do that during the learning day.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:25] Now, if the family has more than one child at a different levels, like, say, first grade and seventh grade, is it possible to utilize time for learning to teach both of them and so that each of the children can learn at, you know, separately but together?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:06:42] Absolutely. We have different models that we suggest to families. The first one is if your family is capable of doing it and able, you get them each their own individual laptop so that they can be working at the same time. If that’s not possible, if the family’s finances don’t allow for that, you just stagger who’s on the laptop, at which time and when one student is doing their time for learning curriculum, another student could be doing their 20 minutes of reading. They could be working on an offline project. They could be doing chores around the house. They could be working on a passion or an interest activity. And so because the homeschooling structure is so flexible, it’s really not a problem for families. And the curriculum we offer is graded curriculum, grade level curriculum. And so families have no problem if they have multiple children having all of their kids use the curriculum. Each kid gets their their own access to their grade level content. And so parents, it’s very easy for them to track what their kids are doing, no matter what grade level they’re in and how many children they have.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:43] And then the experience would be accredited so they would be getting the same types of credit they would be if they went to a traditional brick and mortar school.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:07:53] There is a great question. So homeschooling is not an accredited school. So when a parent takes on homeschooling, they become the teacher of record. It is legal in all 50 states to homeschool, but that’s different than an accredited school. An accredited school is where a and it can be a virtual school. It can be a brick and mortar where kids go face to face. It could be a hybrid situation. In an accredited school, there’s a certain type of certification that comes from different governing bodies that basically looks at the overall program and deems it appropriate for that particular grade level. But the United States doesn’t require that for families. So homeschooling allows families to do their learning at home or anywhere they want to be on the road, have the same level of rigor that you would if you were in a brick and mortar classroom. In terms of the how challenging the content is for kids, but then the flexibility sort of sort of live their lives, That main difference is if families want an accredited solution, then that would be in a virtual school or a brick and mortar school, which could be private or public.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:57] So what if so if they’re part of time for learning, at some point, do they have to take a test or how do they get a high school degree and how do they get into colleges and all that stuff?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:09:08] Questions. So there’s a few different pieces to this. So every curriculum has curriculum based assessments, so it’s basically we remember those as, you know, those quizzes and tests you have to take. And there’s different ways because the program is sort of a interactive dynamic program. There’s different ways that we assess kids where it feels fun and exciting to them, and they would have to say, that doesn’t even feel like an assessment maybe that we remember back when we were in school. So that’s one way we know how kids are doing, and that information goes to parents in the form of reports so parents can look and see how their child is doing. They can have kids repeat lessons or chapters within the courses that they’re taking. It’s really up to the parent in terms of graduating. Every state has different requirements, so it’s up to the parents to make sure that the courses that they’re using from time for learning align to what the graduation requirements are in their state. And then the parent keeps a student portfolio and they are required by each state to show some level of evidence of learning.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:10:06] And when they do that, then the state basically says, okay, mom or dad, whoever’s been the primary parent in the. Teacher record. Show us what your child has completed. And so we just offer some templates for families to use. And so the parents actually responsible for recording all of their courses, both the courses that they use within Typekit learning and anything they’ve done offline, for example. So maybe they’ve taken a music class somewhere else or a dance class in a studio. Those can all count towards their graduation requirements. And then those transcripts are used to be sent to colleges of interest that children are looking to apply to and as well as to file with their respective school district or their state for making sure that they’re complying with any state regulations. It’s pretty easy for parents in most states. There are a few states that are a little more challenging in terms of the documentation, but it’s also very well received by colleges these days. So kids who go through homeschooling and they decide to go on to college generally do very, very well in college scenarios.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:06] So you have children that have gone through the whole K through 12, maybe not all one person, the whole 12, 13 years, but you’ve had people graduate and get into college and, you know, live successful lives.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:11:20] Absolutely. In fact, we have some of the students who used to be time for learning. Students actually work for us. Now, some of them have gone straight to career. Some have gone to college for the last few years. We’ve offered a graduation celebration. So we have an opportunity to celebrate all of the kid’s accomplishments. So we do a graduation celebration for our high school students, our middle school, our kids who are moving up into the middle school and then our kindergartners. So a great opportunity for parents to celebrate those developmental milestones. But those high schoolers absolutely go off and do amazing things in college and career and pretty much there’s no limitation on them. It’s really what they’ve done at home in terms of their interests and passions that help them decide what their options are.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:06] Moving beyond that now, is there a time for learning community amongst the people who are on the platform in each locality so they can get together and maybe, you know, go to that museum together or do things like that?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:12:20] Yeah. So we do have Facebook Families group of over 50,000 members, and that is a families group where families seek out other families in their locale. So someone might say, Hey, I live in New Jersey, does anyone else live here? Are you interested in doing some kind of meetup? So they have an opportunity to interact that way. They also use that space for doing activities together or finding connections. So the location is not a barrier to their community that they create amongst each other. And oftentimes because it is online, they’re able to make connections with families, you know, in other states that they otherwise may not have had access to were they just looking for local families. So they use it for both. They use it for creating local meetups as well as creating online meetups for children, whether it be from an activity they want to do for fun or just help they might need on a particular subject or extracurricular types of activities they want to engage in.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:19] Now, is the curriculum secular or is there a religious component to it?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:13:24] The curriculum is secular and the families who use our program are both secular and faith based families, and they modify it based on their their family values and their family needs. But yes, it’s a secular program, so it’s based on standards, so state standards, it’s aligned to the top standards across the country. And so they’re very much in alignment with any particular state. In fact, one of the questions you asked before about, you know, how do students do with testing? There’s a lot of states require kids to take their state test at the end of the year. So homeschooling kids generally do quite well, if not better, than their peers in the brick and mortar setting.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:07] So what do you if you looked in your crystal ball, what do you see for the future of EdTech and companies like Time for Learning?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:14:15] Well, I, I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about AI, but actually love to talk a little bit about the future of the student first and then I’ll wrap it up with AI. It’s interesting because I think we really have to think about how kids are different today from how they’ve been in years past. So I’ll tell you a quick little story. It’s really cute. Years ago, I was helping my son’s. Classmates. They were volunteering at a field day event and the kids responsibility was to provide these little envelopes to their classmates so their classmates could get their tickets to go and do these these field day activities. And I was watching the kids as the student would come up and give their last name, try to find the envelope with the child’s last name in it. And it occurred to me as I was watching them that, you know, for example, a kid would come up with the last name Moreno, and the kids who were volunteering would go and start with the A, and they’d work their way through the envelopes till they got to the M, And they did this over and over. It didn’t matter what the letter was. They always started from the A and I realized, wow, that generation, those are zoomers, right? Or Gen Z kids are different. They are not linear thinkers, right? They’ve been raised with, you know, using search terms and looking for patterns and relationships to find things on the Internet.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:15:27] And that generation is definitely a different kind of kid. And then you look beyond them. You look at the generation Alpha, the next generation after them. Those kids are even more different because all they know is working in immersive virtual worlds like Roblox and Fortnite and Minecraft. So they’ve been using those types of programs as their primary medium for exploration and online socialization and creation and gameplay. So when I think about the kids of today, I think about how we’ve shifted from this like really linear thinking model to that more network based model of our Generation Z kids. And to this new one, I would call it more like a canvas, whereas no beginning and end. Why this matters is that in EdTech we’re seeing a lot of innovation happening and because of AI, we’re going to see it happen pretty rapidly. I think what’s going to happen is that we’re going to move to a place where learning becomes really dynamic. It’s going to be based in these immersive worlds and that no two learning experiences will be the same. So we don’t know how fast this will go, but I definitely think that with the onset of AI and all the tools that are available to us now, it’ll be in short order that will be creating really different personalized learning experiences for kids that we can’t even possibly imagine today.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:42] Now I’m glad you mentioned AI, because a lot of people have expressed a fear of AI, especially in terms of education when it comes to writing essays for for an assignment or something along those lines. What’s your take on that from, you know, is that a fear that’s reasonable or is it something that or is this just another tool for people to use to be more productive, faster?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:17:09] I think there’s always a fear when a new tool comes out about how kids are going to apply it. You know, back in the day it was with the calculator and then it was the, you know, word processors and then computers. So every generation that has new technology always comes about with a place and a concern of, gosh, is this thing going to be okay for us? Is this going to be something that our students can use in a productive and safe way? I think I there’s a lot of components to it that we have to be really thoughtful of in terms of the safety and security of kids. But I think as a productivity and a creativity tool, I think sky’s the limit and it’s a wonderful opportunity. I really think it’s up to us as educators to really think about how we can apply it in ways that are going back to what I said about kids that really match where they are and what kind of thinkers they are today. So that sort of canvas ideas, how can we use AI to be more supportive of them and use it as a tool and not be afraid of of how it’s just changing the way kids learn and how we need to.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:11] Teach, right? Like, like you said, like when calculators came out, people were like, Oh, they’ll never be able to add or, you know, the Internet came out and it’s like, Oh, you can’t use Wikipedia as a resource. Like whatever the new technology is. They thought that that was the checkmate, and it’s always eventually just turns into a tool.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:18:32] Absolutely. And one hopefully that think that we can all be proud of because it will allow us to think about learning even differently than we can consider today. And and as a proponent and a very passionate person about the learning experience for kids, I think we just have a wonderful opportunity in front of us. You know, whether you’re homeschooling, if you’re in a traditional brick and mortar, there are so many opportunities to apply AI that will really make learning dynamic for kids. It’s pretty exciting.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:00] So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:19:04] Why do we need more of think What we need more of is the school choice and that we are providing access for kids to the types of learning environments and learning tools and curriculum and content that best meets their needs. So I just think is it from a community standpoint, it’s great when we can be supportive of the programs and opportunities that are out there that support families and making decisions about how they want to educate their children.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:34] So if there’s a parent out there listening, what are some of the maybe symptoms that are happening in their child’s life that might be a clue that, hey, maybe we should check out Time for Learning? What are some signals that maybe that what time for learning has is a better fit than what they have today? Yeah.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:19:53] I think we want to look at it from several different lenses. So the first lens would of course would be academic. Is a child thriving with their academics? Are they engaged with their work at school or are they excited to learn? And, you know, of course all kids have some level of, oh, I’ve got to do homework or school is hard. But if you’re seeing your child’s grades drop, if you’re seeing them not engaging with the learning experience, that might be one indicator that the learning in the environment they’re in isn’t working for them. The second piece is their social emotional learning. How are they doing? You know, obviously, coming out of a pandemic, we’re seeing a lot of mental health issues. So is your kid hanging out in the room by themselves a lot more than maybe your average teenager? Are they despondent? Are they expressing feelings of hopelessness? Are they having challenges with bullies at school? Are they not able to keep up with the pace of the curriculum and the classroom? There’s so many reasons why parents might think about using a home school curriculum and moving to time for learning.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:20:53] But I think it’s really about what do you want your child’s learning experience to be like? And the wonderful thing that we can offer is that the parent gets to shape that. So our curriculum really provides that flexibility and support for parents so parents are successful and that the learning experience can be completely tailored to the specific areas of need and interest of each kid. So my recommendation would be would be for families to do a little research on time for learning, come to our website, look up other programs out there, you know, look up what the requirements are in their state for home schooling laws and start asking around and certainly can call us. We have a wonderful support team that literally coaches parents every single day. People call in and ask, you know, what is the difference between accredited and not accredited? Or how do I know if this is right for me? And we have a lot of home schooling parents who work for our organization, so they are truly experts and give great advice to families and helping them make those decisions.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:48] Now, is this a decision that you have to kind of be all in or can you dip your toe in the water? Is there a way to test this in a smaller scale or do you have to have your kid leave school?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:21:58] Sure. So families can try it over the summer if they want to. You can be 100% fully enrolled in your brick and mortar classroom and still be using time for learning, because time for learning is the curriculum that families use. Because we’re not that school for kids, there’s absolutely no barriers for parents using it right now. In fact, we actually have some families who use what we call a double dose, which is they go to their brick and mortar classroom and then in the afternoons, they use time for learning to shore up some of their learning gaps or some of their learning challenges. And they might just choose maybe two of the subjects, maybe the language arts and the math courses to help support what’s happening in the brick and mortar. So that’s a great way to test to see if it’s good for your kid. Doing it over the summer as a sort of supplemental is another wonderful way. And parents can always come in and out of their brick and mortar classroom. They really do have to check there with their school district and with their state requirements are because if they do decide to come to time for learning and they do, that parent becomes that teacher of record. The parent is responsible for making sure that they’re adhering to certain regulations within their state, in their school district.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:08] So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website?

Cheryl Dodge: [00:23:14] We are at a time for learning.com and the four is the number so super easy to find us. You can go to navigate to our support. You can chat with us, you can call us, you can email, We’re happy to take your call or your chat or your email and help you out.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:31] Well, Cheryl, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Cheryl Dodge: [00:23:36] Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:39] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on South Florida Business Radio.