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How could $50,000 transform learning? On Pitch Playground, we invite education innovators and social entrepreneurs to throw their best ideas at us. From technologies that build empathy to providing affordable childcare and reimagining the way we learn—this is a place for pitches from visionaries. Each episode features an intrepid edupreneur workshopping a $50,000 project to solve a critical problem in education. With support from mentors, funders, and fellow entrepreneurs we'll explore what it takes to turn dreams into reality.
At the end of the season, we award $50,000 to the best pitch we've heard on the show. We're inviting educators and social entrepreneurs to play in the sandbox with us and share their vision for the future of education. We encourage these visionaries to be BOLD—don't just think outside the box; reshape the box itself. Draw outside the lines. It's about making good ideas last longer and go further.
About the Host, Nicole Jarbo:
Nicole Jarbo is the host of Pitch Playground and the CEO of 4.0. A serial entrepreneur, former educator, and proud 4.0 alum, Nicole has a track record of building impactful ventures across a variety of industries, including education, financial technology, and media. Passionate about storytelling and innovation, she’s sharing the inspiring stories of the 4.0 community and believes in work that makes the world more livable, creative, sustainable, and fun.
About 4.0:
4.0 is a hub for education innovators and social entrepreneurs reimagining the future of learning. Through mentorship, funding, and community support, we empower bold thinkers to turn their dreams into reality. To date, 4.0 has helped spark and invest in over 1,600 ideas, and our alumni have impacted millions of students and families. We envision a future where our education system meets the needs of every family and improves life outcomes for all.
Have a Pitch to Transform the World?
We’d love to hear from you! Whether you're an educator, entrepreneur, or just passionate about changing education, reach out to share your story, ideas, or feedback. Visit us at https://pitchplayground.com/ and subscribe to Pitch Playground wherever you get your podcasts.
Nicole Jarbo:
When Danette Buckley was four years old, she was obsessed with the idea of school.
Danette Buckley:
So I would always walk past and I'm like, "Oh, I want to go to school."
Nicole Jarbo:
Every day she'd walk by and see the bigger kids going in.
Danette Buckley:
They were in uniform and they were going into this building. And of course, curiosity. It's like, "What are they going in there to do? I want that uniform too. I want a book bag." I wanted to do those same things.
Nicole Jarbo:
But every day her grandparents would say the same thing.
Danette Buckley:
No, I'm too young. They only take kids when they're five and every day would just beg and beg.
Nicole Jarbo:
Until one day the urge was too strong. She ran away from her grandmother and ran up to the teacher.
Danette Buckley:
And asked her, "Can I come to school?" And the teacher told me, "No, you're too young. You have to be five." And I just kept asking until they gave in and I went to school. So I've always had that in me from when I was young.
Nicole Jarbo:
With her strong will and drive, Danette went on to launch Dream Tech Academy, a micro-school in Petersburg, Virginia. Danette believes that education should be tailored to the individual needs of students.
Danette Buckley:
I've always had a passion for learning and just a firm believer in one size does not fit all, and that education should be flexible in how students learn when they're learning and where they're learning.
Nicole Jarbo:
I'm your host, Nicole Jarbo, and this is Pitch Playground from 4.0. This season, we'll hear 10 ideas from entrepreneurs reimagining the future of learning, and we'll put them in the hot seat with funders who help them strengthen their pitch. This week, Danette's idea gets vetted by Kelly Smith from Prenda, a company that helps people start and run microschools.
Kelly Smith:
Sometimes people like that, people that have a lot of heart and that care a lot, they might miss the responsibility that they have as the leader of this institution to protect the institution, to make sure it all works.
Nicole Jarbo:
At the end of the season, you, yes, you will cast your vote and one of these ideas will get 50K.
So Danette's passion for education started young, but a lot changed when she immigrated to the US.
Danette Buckley:
So I came here from Jamaica when I was 12 and I was in the sixth grade and I came to America still loving education, still wanted to be a teacher when I grew up. And my first experience, I believe it was my first day in middle school, a student threw a desk and the teacher could not do anything. The only thing he did was ask the student to leave and the student did not want to leave and then security came. To me, that was just unheard of.
Nicole Jarbo:
In Jamaica, she said that discipline and respect for your elders was much more enforced, but in America, she saw right away teachers don't have resources or time, they're spread way too thin to really get control of their classrooms.
Danette Buckley:
It changed my perspective on education and I actually decided that no, this is not what I want to do anymore if this is what I'm going to experience.
Nicole Jarbo:
Instead, she continued to be an overachieving student.
Danette Buckley:
I had a math teacher, Mrs. Silverman, and she would teach us, and then I would say to her, "Do you have any extra worksheets?" And she would give me whatever extra worksheets she had until there was a point where she would have a separate stack where whenever I was done with my worksheet, be like, "Okay, this is your stack. You can go there and take whatever you want." And she is just imprinted on my heart because I know there are times in the classroom where you have kids who are more advanced or kids who are early finishers and providing those opportunities to be challenged and not just sit there and be bored.
Nicole Jarbo:
After school she took a career path outside of education. That was, until she had her own kids.
Danette Buckley:
But then when I had my own children, just seeing my kids learn and I introduced them to books from a very young age, it was still fun. It was still enjoyable for them, even though for me it was like, you have to know your ABCs. You have to know how to count. You're talking, you have to learn this stuff. So that's when I went back to teaching. That's when my love came back.
Nicole Jarbo:
So she started teaching and got to experience the challenges of the education system, both as a parent and a teacher.
Danette Buckley:
A teacher has 20, 25 students that they need to reach every day and those 25 students are all at different levels.
Nicole Jarbo:
Some students are like Danette, overachievers who are way ahead and some students need more time and attention to get there. The problem that happens is sometimes called teaching to the middle, meaning that a teacher is teaching to the average student level in the classroom, which means many students are bored, can't relate, and sometimes fall behind. It's almost impossible for that one teacher to tailor the lesson to all the different needs in the classroom. This problem became even more apparent to Danette when tragedy struck her family.
Danette Buckley:
My youngest daughter was diagnosed with leukemia, so she was seven at the time. And that experience kind of, I couldn't do my job as a teacher. We were in the hospital literally 24/7 for weeks going through that process. But once she was well enough to come back to school, she would go to class and I think she was able to stay there for an hour at a time and she would just be exhausted. And then she started to literally beg me to homeschool her.
Nicole Jarbo:
The school system as it was set up, wasn't working for her daughter's needs.
Danette Buckley:
And she just kept on, "Why aren't you homeschooling me?" And just tugged at my heart string. I'm like, "Okay, why am I not homeschooling her?" And then eventually we decided, okay, we were going to homeschool. So it was her, my other two kids and my son and his best friend wanted to join him. So it was just us four for a while, and I went hunting and searching for a curriculum that would be flexible enough where she could do it and not be exhausted for the whole day. I couldn't find anything like that and eventually decided, "Okay, this is not working. I just need to develop something that's more flexible for her."
Nicole Jarbo:
So for her little homeschooled group of four, Danette built a flexible curriculum. Teachers would refer struggling students to Danette to tutor on the side.
Danette Buckley:
And then the parent would see improvements and said, "Well, can they come full-time? Can we enroll them with you?" And so it started with just converting the kids that I was tutoring. We started to gain additional students.
Nicole Jarbo:
And over time the group grew and grew and a school was born that now serves 42 students. She called it Dream Tech. Dream being an acronym for developing readiness, educating all minds, and tech because she's using technology to do it, incorporating digital tools into her lesson plans.
Danette Buckley:
And basically Dream Tech has been tweaked over the years being flexible enough to change with the kids that we did receive and that's how we're here.
Nicole Jarbo:
It all came back to her looking out for her daughter's unique needs. How does it feel knowing that she helped spark this little mini movement of you being able to help and support other kids and families?
Danette Buckley:
Well, she's used to being my Guinea pig, so she's used to me testing ideas out on her from public school, so she wasn't surprised. We still struggle with her feeling exhausted at the end of the day, but she helps me now. She works as my office assistant who works at her own time, so she'll help me with laminating things and printing things and keeping my files organized. So she still plays her role today.
Nicole Jarbo:
Okay. She put herself to work.
Danette Buckley:
She did.
Nicole Jarbo:
I like that. That entrepreneurial blood. It's running strong.
Danette Buckley:
Oh goodness.
Nicole Jarbo:
So what is the elevator pitch for Dream Tech Academy?
Danette Buckley:
Okay, so I would say we are a learning environment that caters to really meeting students where they are. We believe in having a flexible curriculum and a flexible school day where we are meeting students at their level and we're grouping students and teaching students based on those levels
Nicole Jarbo:
Rather than grouping students just based on age, she's grouping them based on their comprehension.
Danette Buckley:
And by doing so, we're able to see faster growth in academic achievements because within those groupings, students are not reaching levels of frustration and those who are excelling, they are feeling challenged because the groups are at the same level. So we're getting kids who are thinking similarly. And also you're getting a teacher who can focus on one group at a time and not having to split their attention at different levels.
Nicole Jarbo:
I asked her to walk me through a day in the life of a Dream Tech student.
Danette Buckley:
So our students arrive and for the first 30 minutes, they just relax, talk to their friends. If they want to have breakfast, they can, but it's basically a period of just socializing. We think that's important because it kind of calms them down and get them ready for the day. After that period of time, we all get together in what we call our cafe. So we get together, we do announcements, we do reminders of expectations, and then we do the pledge and we basically tell each other to have a great day, and then we're off to different classrooms.
Nicole Jarbo:
And remember, these are leveled classes, so students at similar math or reading levels will spend an hour with their cohort and in the classes, they encourage discussion as a group, conversations about what they did yesterday and what they're going to do next.
Danette Buckley:
In between the first block and the second block, we meet again in the cafe where we just chit-chat, get relaxed because we think the kids need a break from structured learning before they get into rigor again. So we break up our day like that.
Nicole Jarbo:
They have another class, then have lunch, teachers and students all together.
Danette Buckley:
After lunch, we have some kind of free play. If it's a good day, we'll all go outside. The teachers play with the kids, so we'll challenge each other and we'll race each other. We'll do volleyball together. But in all of these activities, there's a teacher doing it with the kids, which they love and enjoy beating us at certain things.
Nicole Jarbo:
Danette even says they build in parties throughout the month, so the kids have rewards to look forward to.
Danette Buckley:
When we get back, we're doing projects, we're doing hands-on science experiments. We do a lot of mini projects in reading, science, and history in particular.
Nicole Jarbo:
And then towards the end of the day, they have their exploration block where kids choose a subject to explore.
Danette Buckley:
So we have sewing, cooking, dancing, we do art as well, opportunity for them to go and explore something. So each six weeks they have to try something else. It's up to them, but they can't do the same thing all year, because we want them to test everything, and that's like a typical day.
Nicole Jarbo:
That's great. I'm jealous. Parties, snacks, dancing, art, do whatever you want and get back and learn. It's great. I want to hear about a couple of students that Dream Tech Academy has positively impacted and how.
Danette Buckley:
The first one is a student who came to us from public school in the fourth grade. Could not read at all. No special learning needs, no disabilities, just an average general ed student, which when he came in was just shocking. And we were concerned because, fourth grade, how are we going to do this? You're in a big body and you're lacking the foundational skills. So we would have to group you with children who were smaller bodies just learning these fundamental skills.
Nicole Jarbo:
But because Danette divides classes by level, not by age, this new student didn't stick out at Dream Tech.
Danette Buckley:
It did not bother this child at all that he was sitting next to a five-year-old. The five-year-old was not concerned with, "Why is this big kid in our classroom?" So just that alone, the environment, the culture that we've created allowed the student to not feel embarrassed about sitting with kids who were younger than him.
Nicole Jarbo:
And because they've bypassed all the blockers that come with fear and embarrassment, the student was able to thrive.
Danette Buckley:
This year, he's with kids who are reading at a third, fourth grade level. So he's one story that we are truly proud of because I know that if the setting was different, this student would see it as something to be ashamed of, which kind of prevents you from even trying.
Nicole Jarbo:
And now they're a proud reader.
Danette Buckley:
He would come to me and say, "Oh, Ms. Buckley, look, I can read this book." And then he started to read Cat in the Hat, which became his favorite book. We were so proud we stopped everything. We had a party about it. Everybody celebrated his success.
Nicole Jarbo:
Dream Tech is different in the way it groups learners, but it's also different in the ratio of teacher to student.
Danette Buckley:
Part of the problem with traditional schooling is the classroom sizes are so big that it's near to impossible for a teacher to really see that there's a need 15 feet away. So in my vision and perfect Dream Tech classroom, it's small enough for teachers to recognize and have time to notice what the needs are. You are seeing the teacher working with either one-on-one or two, three students at a time. And I think when you take the time to do that, the students realize that, "Oh, you're different. You're actually spending all this time with me." And I think just boosting their self-confidence, you get so much more out of them. The relationship grows and they feel like you're not just a teacher, but you're somebody who cares.
Nicole Jarbo:
Keeping class sizes small, making sure that teachers are able to give students that focus has worked wonders. But also the school is called Dream Tech for a reason. Danette has employed tech tools like iPads and Chromebooks into her classroom to help her reach each student.
Danette Buckley:
And obviously it was just me when I first started this vision, but I couldn't get to every single student. So I would group them and have technology be my assistant teacher, and that's how it started. And we've grown where I am able to add other human beings to help me do this.
Nicole Jarbo:
As Dream Tech grew, Danette had to find the right people to build out the staff, but this was a new challenge.
Danette Buckley:
So I will tell you, teachers is one of the hardest resources to acquire for us. Because we're small and because we're by tuition, it's hard to be able to pay someone a traditional teacher salary. So the people who've decided to take this journey with us are on board because they believe in what we're doing and they've seen the changes, and they're willing to sacrifice finances to help us make the differences that we believe we can make.
Nicole Jarbo:
Danette's teaching staff doesn't always have a formal education in teaching or a post-secondary education at all, but they're still making huge differences in the lives of their students.
Danette Buckley:
We have one teacher who's been with us for four years, and she has done wonders. It is so amazing. We are talking about five-year-old kindergartners who've come to us and by the end of kindergarten are reading on a third grade level. I don't know what spice and magic she's using, but we're seeing results because she puts in time, effort into the kids, and she decided to go back to school to get her education degree.
Nicole Jarbo:
Dream Tech has already made a huge impact on its students and teachers, but Danette has a vision of making it even better. So I asked her what she would do if she won the 50K.
Danette Buckley:
All right, so in our city, which is Petersburg, Virginia, a lot of our students are one, minorities or two, they are military families who are coming and going with gaps in their learning. I think with those combinations, students need a school that is flexible and can bend with their needs. The median income, I believe is $43,000 a year. So a lot of families don't have the means, but they have the desire to get something else for their kids. So a big part of this would go to offering discounts or scholarships and open up our services to as many students as possible. That would be my top priority. My second goal would be to increase our technology in our school. In particular, being able to afford the security features on Chromebooks or iPads. And then my final piece of the pie would go to increasing our teachers' salary because they're so dedicated and willing to put in the time and effort that bringing them to state required minimum wage at least would be a blessing.
Nicole Jarbo:
Okay, let's get you that money. Danette has big plans to grow and improve Dream Tech Academy. Now we're going to pair her with Kelly Smith who will help Danette make her pitch even stronger. Kelly is the CEO and founder of Prenda, a company that helps people start microschools.
Kelly Smith:
So we've worked with a thousand people or more that have started their own microschools, and it's basically my favorite thing to do.
Nicole Jarbo:
Prenda started because Kelly founded a microschool himself and caught the bug for this way of teaching.
Kelly Smith:
There were moments where I just saw learning come to life for individual kids. There's something recognizable in their face and you can see the fire in their eyes and it's just addictive, I guess.
Nicole Jarbo:
So Kelly is a perfect person to help Danette strengthen her Dream Tech Academy pitch and give her some well-earned advice.
Kelly Smith:
Hi, Danette.
Danette Buckley:
Hi, Kelly.
Kelly Smith:
Excited to be here with you. I'd love to just start out…
Nicole Jarbo:
…off the top, Danette shared her background in education, her goals as a parent and teacher and her desire to offer a flexible alternative to the traditional school system.
Kelly Smith:
You're very well-equipped. I just want to commend you for taking the plunge. Thank you for that. Can we go now to the future? Can you jump five, 10 years ahead and just talk to me about your vision? If you could describe success, what would that look like?
Danette Buckley:
Oh, wow. So it's a tough question to answer because each year our population is so different, but in the ideal world, whether we have 40 kids or 100 kids, the goal is to maintain a culture where the kids feel safe, where learning is top priority, but it's not just one size fits all. That's really important to me that we're not replicating the environment that parents are leaving to come to us for.
Kelly Smith:
Amazing. You rattled off the numbers 40 and 100 recently. Is that roughly how many kids you have in your...
Danette Buckley:
So we have a little over 40 right now, but I believe that we are going to grow as people learn more about microschools and know that we exist.
Kelly Smith:
How many adults for those 40-ish kids?
Danette Buckley:
So right now we have five adults including myself.
Kelly Smith:
Okay. And you're playing a dual role, I would imagine. You're administering things, but also in there with the kids.
Danette Buckley:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Kelly Smith:
You laugh. Yeah, I know the feeling.
Danette Buckley:
I do, I do. Because the younger ones, when you tell them, "Okay, I'm the principal as well as the teacher." They're like, "No, you're my teacher." But I think it's important for them to see that I'm not too far removed. I always want to be in the mix. I want to know what you're learning and I want to see how you're learning so that when I'm making decisions, it's not just from this top level and just telling people what to do, but I'm in there and I know what's happening. So that's also something as you grow, you're like, "Oh no, I don't want to let go of this." But you have to give up some control.
Kelly Smith:
I will just say, and this goes right along with what you're talking about, the very best principals that I've seen are highly connective, and you can feel it just even through the computer screen as we're sitting here talking that that's what you bring. So thank you for being that for children who really need it. So now we've got to talk about nuts and bolts a little bit. One of the analogies, and people don't like this because obviously it's organic and it's human, but you're in a way, setting up machinery. You're putting a contraption in place like, we have this culture, these ideas. Here's how we do it in practice.
Nicole Jarbo:
I love this metaphor of setting up the microschool as setting up machinery. You need all the pieces to work together, the right teachers, the right curriculum, and the right culture and values holding the whole system together. Then and only then can the machine function and produce confident learners. At this stage, Danette says she wants to refine her system before she expands the school too much.
Kelly Smith:
What would be the number one change between what it is right now and that idea of refined that you're working toward?
Danette Buckley:
Well, what comes to mind right away is because we're so small, which I love, there are certain things that I have written down as a policy and that people touch your heart and you're like, "Oh, let me just tweak that policy for you." So I want it to be, we have standards in place and those standards are there for a reason.
Kelly Smith:
Is it things like payments? Are we talking about sort of money issues? Are we talking about commitments like you're going to be here at this time or pick them up or things like that? Give me a little bit better sense of-
Danette Buckley:
Yeah, yes. Those two things in particular. So we kind of changed our policy this year with attendance, and I put that in my contract. Attendance is extremely important, especially when you have small groups. So if you have three kids in a group and two are absent, that's going to create some problems. So we change our policies where there were specific times in the mornings you need to get here before that time. So I find myself in between my policy hours of, "You need to be here by 8:45." The doorbell will ring and I will check my camera and it's little Susie, and I'm like, "Oh my goodness. I can't let little Susie sit out there for 15 minutes because she's going to miss 15 minutes of important instruction." And so my heart gives in and I go and I let little Susie in and I have a conversation with mom. And it's one thing to say to a parent, but then they're looking at you like, "Oh, it's Ms. Buckley, so it's okay." And it's also me following my policies. I need to just say, "Nope, it's not happening."
Kelly Smith:
And then say more about finance.
Danette Buckley:
So in the financial part, it's also, I am very lenient and flexible with finances. I understand when families are having a hard time. I will mend contracts and create separate payment plans to be accommodating. But there are times when you're like, "The contract says A, we can't keep doing B, C, D. You have to try to get back onto A." At the same time, if I punish a parent, I'm punishing the child and I don't want to punish a child. And so just having those boundaries, it's hard when you're the face, you're the teacher, you're the financial person.
Kelly Smith:
Do you have somebody on your staff that's the bad cop to your good cop, so to speak?
Danette Buckley:
Nobody wants to be bad cop with the parents. I have someone for the kids. So it's like, "Okay, you can deliver that harsh news." But not with the parents. They're like, "That's your domain."
Kelly Smith:
Danette, it's clear your heart shines through this work that you're doing. I can feel it through what you're saying, but just to say sometimes people like that, people that have a lot of heart and that care a lot, they might miss the responsibility that they have as the leader of this institution to protect the institution, to make sure it all works and you'll do it in good faith and good heart. But I've literally seen microschools go under, I've seen homeschool co-ops blow up, I've seen large organizations fall down because that rigor's not there, that rigor's not in place. And so I think that's just a blind spot to be aware of as you make decisions about where this thing goes from here. And to not think of it as at odds with your heart, to actually try to find a way that ensuring the success of Dream Tech Academy is your heart, because you need this to exist.
Your community needs this to exist, and it's on you to make sure that you're doing the things that will allow this to exist. Even if that means, and this is where it's tough, saying goodbye to a family that's not making payments, for example, if that's what needs to be done. There are lots of ways to do a very flexible and kind approach to payments. People have sliding scales, people have scholarship funds. But I think what I'm hearing that makes me a little nervous is just the sort of ad hoc or arbitrary nature of making exceptions. And I think instead it needs to be this is the program. We've set it up deliberately. We did this because we want to protect and preserve this institution. This thing's going to be here for 10, 20 years.
So in order for that to be true, I have to make sure that it has the right rules and that we respect those and live by those rules. So I've become much more of a hard noser since running an organization. But I will say finding a partner in this that really can be that. I use the phrase bad cop. It doesn't have to be mean, but somebody that's really looking at the math and that cares just as much as you do about preserving this institution and is willing to kind of say no to you, say no to parents, say no to things that are driven by heart. It could be a good move to balance yourself with somebody like that.
Danette Buckley:
Oh, that's good.
Nicole Jarbo:
The big challenges of a microschool, you're the face of it, the principal, the teacher, and the business leader. If Danette wants Dream Tech to grow and last, she's going to have to put some rules in place and stick to them. I'm grateful to Danette for sharing her pitch and for Kelly's mentorship. Here's some important takeaways. First...
Danette Buckley:
"Do you have any extra worksheets?" And she would give me whatever extra worksheets she had.
Nicole Jarbo:
Be like Mrs. Silverman, Danette's teacher who saw how far ahead she was, was always ready with extra assignments so she didn't get bored or tune out. Second...
Danette Buckley:
The students realize that, "Oh, you're different. You're actually spending all this time with me."
Nicole Jarbo:
The value of one-on-one time with a teacher cannot be overstated. This can be nearly impossible to find in the public school system, but as a part of the magic of the microschool movement. And finally, Danette needs to stick to her policies for the sake of the school's longevity.
Kelly Smith:
And to not think of it as at odds with your heart, to actually try to find a way that ensures the success of Dream Tech Academy is your heart, because you need this to exist, your community needs this to exist.
Nicole Jarbo:
And it's on Danette to set up that machinery so it can continue to thrive for a long, long time. Entrepreneurs, it's on all of you to figure out how to keep the heart of your business alive as you have to make the tough calls. Thanks for tuning into Pitch Playground from 4.0. I'm your host, Nicole Jarbo. Next week we'll be hearing a pitch from Evan Wilson, founder of ScaffoldEd.
Evan Wilson:
We help schools find patterns in family feedback to get kids back in school, and what that really means that we're addressing chronic absenteeism in school. We're trying to drive at the core of the problems, schools, districts. Teachers have told us across the country that they don't really know where to start when it comes to absenteeism, and that's really what we're supplying.