Petal Modeste: What if every one of the approximately 2.4 billion children in the world under the age of 18 could go to school? And what if those schools could be true sanctuaries? Safe havens that recognized every child’s uniqueness and provided student-centric instruction, curricula that fostered critical thinking, creativity, inclusivity, a lifelong love of learning and the skills each student needed to thrive in the 21st century? What would this kind of educational experience mean for the future? Our guest today, Shiren Ratitgan, has some answers. Shiren is the founder of Colossal Academy, a progressive micro school for middle and high school students, which provides individualized learner- centric education through an award-winning curriculum that, in addition to numeracy and literacy, has a focus on future skills. Shiren  is here today to tell us about Colossal Academy and how micro schools and similar future forward education models may be just what our world needs if we are to ensure a future where every child can thrive. Welcome, Shiren to Parenting for the Future. It’s an honor to have you here.

Shiren Rattigan: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to have these conversations around education, especially parenting and anything futuristic. So, thank you for having me here.

Petal Modeste: You’re welcome. So,  let’s start with a little bit about your background. You are a 5th generation teacher. Tell us a little bit about your ancestors who were called to teach, and who consciously or subconsciously, influenced your professional path.

Shiren Rattigan: Yeah. My great-great aunt was a  one-room schoolhouse, traveling teacher. My great grandmother was a one room schoolhouse teacher on a farm. My grandfather was a superintendent of schools in rural Illinois. My mother moved to the city of Chicago and became a special education teacher for over 35 years in a high need, impoverished city outside of Chicago. And then came me, and I was like, I’m not doing that. I would like to make money. My mom was the type of ma teacher that would take kids home for the weekend or Thanksgiving. We’d have people sleeping in our guest room. She would have Christmas stockings for kids who, she knew wouldn’t have things, or she would have deodorant and toiletries. And I’m like, Mom, we kind of need that stuff. Can you stop giving our stuff away? We didn’t have a house we didn’t have wealth we didn’t have. We didn’t accumulate a lot of things. And this is true for many teachers, and I really wanted to be the person that broke that cycle. but whatever you’re destined to do; your destiny will bring you to it. So, I began teaching because it was easy for me to teach math and really anything So, I would do it so that I could make some money so that I can go to college, But I always got brought back to the classroom somehow. So, I finally went and got my license in the State of Illinois and taught. I was working at public schools, and I was breaking up fights.  Safety-wise, I was 8 months pregnant, and I’m like, what am I doing? like this is not safe for us as teachers. It’s not the environment I want to be working at. Surely at private schools, rich, very expensive, very elite.  It’s going to be different. I get their same curriculum, same books. The difference was a lot of neglect, right? So, they would send their nannies or their drivers to come to parent teacher conferences.  And I was like. You know what we need, nature. They’re missing some kind of connection. Surely, Montessori. But the issue with Montessori is that it’s not developed in the middle school years, and I am a middle school teacher. I am meant to teach adolescents, and I felt like it wasn’t future forward enough. I mean AI wasn’t a thing. But being able to have access to computer competencies, being able to create real world projects that weren’t simulations or cardboard cutout for something I felt was really missing.  Which led me to Colossal Academy. I saw, there was a huge gap and the education I wanted for my own children I had to go create it.  I can’t wait for the system to pivot in order for my own children to have the education I know they deserve and need.  So that is the long story.

Petal Modeste: Now I will say this. I think I read somewhere that you struggled with dyslexia as a child. What role did that experience – how did it influence your ideas about schools as sanctuaries, schools as safe havens, even as you started to think about more future forward curricula, and so on.

Shiren Rattigan: Yeah, I grew up with a very Caribbean father, and we don’t have learning disability. What do you mean you have learning disabilities? Just do it again. Do it right, do it the way it’s supposed to be done. You’re being lazy, you know. So, some of that came from home, even though my mom’s a teacher. Some of that pressure came from my own home right and having to deal with like what is going on here. Why can’t I just do this easily where it was not easy. And my mom definitely was the hugest advocate for me and really taught me that my skill set lied outside of being able to read and write swiftly. The thing about being first generation is, I knew what it took to sacrifice to get here, and what my obligation was to the household.  

Shiren Rattigan: But at the school I went to, my mom was incredible in getting me into a magnet school by elementary school years, and they had a greenhouse, and that was my sanctuary. 

Petal Modeste: Awesome. So Colossal Academy actually started as a pandemic pod. There are several values that drive your work, including student advocacy, diversity of thought, commitment to student learning, integrity, inclusion, equity, and passion. How do you stay true to these values? For instance, when you look for teachers and instructors and the staff, how do you keep through true to those values? And I understand that in some of the locations teachers are the actual owners of the Academy. So, I want you to explain how that works for us.

Shiren Rattigan: Yeah, so part of it is training. Right? I’m looking for the right kind of teacher. I’m looking for someone who is passionate about their subject area. They’re passionate about students and can understand how to bridge real world like, why are we learning this quadratic formula? Why would we learn that? You also have to be passionate about your subject. It might not be my passion, but  I listen to the history teacher and I’m like, that’s so amazing. I never would have known. He’s so passionate, and he’s a storyteller, and he’s able to hook students in, and he really loves and cares for our young people. So, it’s really finding the right people who this is their calling. They are meant and designed to be a teacher. The other part is the training and really staff development. Around what are our pillars?  We truly believe in rigor. I don’t think that leaving behind language arts and math as core subjects is what the future of education looks like. I do believe in the deep rigor. The other thing is when people are interested in looking, opening their own Colossal Academy. I spend a lot of time saying “no”. I really blow a lot of holes into their theories, and if they come out victorious from that gauntlet, then that tends to be the person that can make it. I spend a lot of time making sure that they’re what they say they are. We have two other locations within Florida, we have an online school, and we have one in Mexico. And so, what I’m offering is here’s the package,   so that you can take off and start to build your own space. 

Petal Modeste: So, is it a franchise?  

Shiren Rattigan: Kind of like a franchise. It’s a network license. Yes.

Petal Modeste: OK. What about the families that come to Colossal? What are their mindsets? I once heard you say in an interview that the kids you serve have an “adverse” quote, unquote, reaction to traditional education. So, explain.

Shiren Rattigan: Yeah, these are the students that are bullied.  These are our anime kids. These are our art kids. These are not the ones that not that they don’t have a desire to do this, but their main focus is not to be the cheerleader and be on the football team. Their main focus is artistic, deep, interactive. They’re business minded. Our parents are all over the board, as far as career choices, but I find that they tend to be highly entrepreneurial and highly artistic. And they see why these skills are needed for their child. So they get why we need to be out of the classroom and making deep connections within the community, and why it’s important for us to have our own T-shirt business, or they’re doing film festival or doing these very large dynamic projects because they get that’s really what’s going to be needed for you to build your own pathway in the future. 

Petal Modeste: It actually does make a lot of sense to me that the parents are similarly focused or minded. Let’s talk a little bit about the size of the Colossal Academies. Based on what I’ve read, there are no more than about 30 kids in each location. How does the size of the program help you stay true to your values? Do you see it expanding in each location, or is 30 sort of the magic number? 

Shiren Rattigan: I feel like under 50 is really the magic number. What ends up happening is if you get too large, you’re just working on people management which pulls away from our intention of being able to do deep dives. We’re dynamic and  the larger you get, the more you have to make sweeping decisions about every single student. And so really, we’re going to cap Colossal, Fort Lauderdale at 50. We have a high school location, and we have a middle school location, 25 in the middle school, which is  6th 7th and 8th grade, and then 9 through 12. Those are separate. They’re little houses next to each other. But they’re separate locations.  Any larger than that we can’t do the work that we need to do, which is like, okay, let’s walk down the street and go talk to the pizza man. Okay, let’s just interview the mailman as he comes by, right? Those kinds of emergent moments can exist.  So, I don’t want to ever get to that point where we’re making decisions of management versus what’s the best thing for the child.

Petal Modeste: What about the online program? 

Shiren Rattigan: We have a large waiting list for Colossal, Fort Lauderdale. So, what we decided to do is do a hybrid where students are learning with live teachers. You’re not just like scrolling and taking a test that self-graded. These are live professional teachers with all these great dynamic projects. And then we meet up once a month, so to launch their businesses. And then we meet up quarterly for like a dance or a beach cleanup, or some kind of activity within the community that both families and students can be a part of, so that the families also have community. Right? So, it’s not an isolated online program. It’s really this, like, next leap into, you know, next, Gen. Ed.

Petal Modeste: What about your after-school program? Is that just an extended day for the students at Colossal? Or is it a different set of students who come in? How long is the program, and what are some of the offerings?

Shiren Rattigan: We partner with a theater program, and they come in and then they’ll do after school theater. As students ask for something. Then we find something. So, it might be robotics. It might be film. It just depends on where the interests lie. And it’s usually for our students outside, homeschooling students who just want to come in for some kind of interaction with peers their age.

Petal Modeste: Okay. So, I mentioned in the introduction that your curriculum has won various awards and grants, including a “Next Step” grant a “Yaz” prize quarter finalist nod, a “Villa Micro Grant”. Your stated mission again is to provide a 21st century education where students and not tests are at the center of their learning. But what do you consider to be 21st century foundational skills? 

Shiren Rattigan: We believe and understand that the future competencies that are going to be needed are your core subjects, that what you talked about. Being in touch with the earth and having a good sense of nature. Students don’t know where food comes from and they have to be in touch with growing their own food and  the ability to be patient enough to see a season happen. So, from going from seed until when you eat, that’s the slowing down.  So that looks like nature walks. That’s like being on the beach. We teach the students how to surf and skate on Friday. They’re cooking their own vegetables and then the last part is entrepreneurship. We know that they’re going to have to be highly adaptive. They’re going to create their own jobs or multi-side hustles. There are also careers that they could never, ever imagine in a 50 million years like who would have said, I want to be the CEO of an Amazon, or an Uber or an Airbnb. There’s no way to have ever predicted that. So, we have to give them moments where they’re able to start to pivot quickly, make decisions, test a product put it on onto the marketplace. Adapt the product. Try again. Learn the analytics of a website, work on marketing. These are all skills that they have to have moving into the future.

Petal Modeste: So, what does a typical day look like for a student at Colossal Academy? 

Shiren Rattigan: Sure. So, we have a 5-day and a 3-day program. We know some people cannot do people for 5 days a week. They can only do people for 3 days a week. So, generally speaking, our mornings are full of high academic rigor where they’re learning their math or their language. They’re reading and writing – that’s happening in the morning time. We like to get them fresh and ready to go, with some breaks throughout the day. And then at lunch they unplug. They completely unplug. Nothing online, nothing, no screen. They also have to hand in their phones when they walk in. So that’s the other piece, and they take off their shoes when they come into the schoolhouse.

Petal Modeste: I like it.

Shiren Rattigan: And then they go for a walk. We walk about a mile every day, so they go half a mile, half a mile back. And then we do a thing called introspection, which is a hard reset in the day, which is quiet. No screens kind of like a nap time where we just reset, and we are quiet and on our own, and really reflecting internally  – that could be journaling that can be taking a nap. Some students take a nap that can be sitting and looking at the walls, paying with fidgets. I mean, it’s really just a quiet moment. And then we get into our extracurricular activities. This year it was chess, and they made their own T-shirt line. So, they were learning entrepreneurship and business through drop shipping. It could be fashion. We worked on sewing. They’re learning how to fish and make decks; how to get their boat captain license. All of those like skill setting happens in the afternoons. And then on Fridays we go to surf and skate. Everybody learns how to surf, and everybody learns how to skateboard. And that’s really for adolescents. Their brains are designed to seek thrill at this time. And so, we’re like, okay, bring that same energy to the skateboard. And so that’s why we stay micro, too, because we can’t do those dynamic, deep, projects if we have 150 kids.

Petal Modeste: You also have a focus on cultural and civic literacy. So, let’s start with cultural. How do you teach this? And how do you harness the wisdom and traditions of the students themselves, their families, or your entire community, in your efforts to teach cultural literacy?

Shiren Rattigan: So, for instance, our students were really into Japan. And this was something that  our director, had identified. They’re all like eating pocky. And they’re having sushi. And they’re reading Anime. And so, she designed this beautiful unit where we did a deep dive into Japan. We went to the Morikami  Museum and the gardens, and we talked to the Embassy.  And they all took on a piece of the culture that they wanted to look into. Some students just did a whole exposé about Hello Kitty, somebody did the bullet train in Japan, and how fast it goes, the quantum mechanics, because that’s what he’s interested in. All 40 of our students picked their own topic, and then they presented to each other. So, it was almost like a display of the culture through their own lens. That’s one way, for instance. Our civic action really just comes again out of, “what does our community need? This last year in Broward County we saw that three skate parks were shut down. And so, we got to be a part of going to Pompano Beach, one of the cities in Broward County, to advocate for opening of a skate park. They spoke to elected officials about what skating means to them, and they got to watch it pass. There was another opportunity. The students go on this walk every day, and there wasn’t a crosswalk, and you have to walk in the crosswalk. That’s our rule, and there wasn’t a crosswalk, so they to get to a crosswalk, they had to go out of the way. It was not convenient. So, they went to the city of Fort Lauderdale and petitioned for a crosswalk, and then they were turned down. And they were explained that you have to do a traffic study. It’s going to be three years before we can get it. So, then they were enraged because we’re like “it’s two lines!”. Why can’t you? So, then they did their own traffic study. They reported how many cars were there between these hours and then they went back to city. We haven’t got the crosswalk, but they also need to see that not everything’s a win.

Petal Modeste: Yeah. So, although you don’t center your teaching around tests, Colossal Academy students presumably will still at some point need the ACTS or the SATS? How do you prepare them for these standardized tests that they may then need to take for college, and so on?

Shiren Rattigan: Yeah. So, we don’t do a lot of test prep, we actually don’t do any test prep within the middle school, and we’re seeing that their test scores are soaring. Because the pressure isn’t there. I just remind them that this is just a thermometer. We just want to know what you know. Your identity is not enrolled into the test score. This is not a very dynamic or holistic test. So, we do have conversations around that.  They do take the MAP test every year. 

Petal Modeste: What’s the MAP test?

Shiren Rattigan: The MAP is a norm reference test, and it checks within peers of their own age,  nationally. It’s interesting for me to know, our kids are in Fort Lauderdale but how are they scoring compared to New York kids or Chicago, or LA, what does that look like? And they’re doing an amazing job. For our high schoolers, there is SAT, prep. We also understand that they’re building beautiful portfolios. They have their own website. They own their own name for their domain so, they curate what the Internet’s going to say. They have, LinkedIn. They have to connect with two people every week and write personalized messages. They have to write their own blog. And then they make their own website, and their website is a portfolio of what they’re doing and accomplishing. So, SAT is great. But it doesn’t show the whole picture. So, it allows them to be great both on the standardized test, but really shine in who they are.

Petal Modeste: What does it cost to attend Colossal? And have you been able? I know Florida has some State scholarships. Are those accessible to students?

Shiren Rattigan: I want my own children to have this kind of education. So, I needed to make it at a price point that made sense for regular everyday teachers could afford this right. Our tuition at Colossal Fort Lauderdale is $15,300. We have, we are participants in the ESA funding which covers about half, if not a little bit more. I have a family pay $78 a month, and all the way up to around $700 a month. We do a lot of work behind the scenes with philanthropic donations, to make sure that the child whose mom works at Walmart can still come to a Colossal. It will never be 0 out of pocket, but we try to make it as affordable as possible by doing a lot of fundraising, so that we have in-house scholarships to be able to offer the students who can’t afford the full tuition price.

Petal Modeste: That’s wonderful. So, we talked a little bit about this Shiren, that our goal on this podcast is to give all who parent a new lens through which to understand the forces shaping the future as well as cutting edge, parenting, tools and resources, all of which they can leverage as they raise the next generation of hopefully purposeful people. Even though for the first time in in our history,  we have the wealth, the technology, the knowledge to educate every child, millions of children are not getting an education. Actually, I think, UNESCO tags it at around 250 million children are not even getting an education. But even with all of this. You don’t have a doomsday mindset. 

Shiren Rattigan: I don’t.

Petal Modeste: You call yourself an “optimistic edu-futurist”. What does that mean? And how are micro schools, which we didn’t really define? And you might want to do that, how are they fueling that optimism that you have?

Shiren Rattigan: Well, I just feel like as you’ve mentioned. We have enough money to feed everybody. We have enough wealth, have enough land. We have so much food. There’s abundance here. Not only in the United States, but globally. The potential is there. And so, I refuse to participate in a doomsday outcome.

I think there’s a world where everybody’s fed. Everybody has an education. Everybody has a home and healthcare and family connection, and they actualize. That is also a possibility. The outcome is better education of young women across the globe. The outcome is mothers and children and community and the balance between technology and nature that we’re working in harmony with ourselves and with community, and that we actualize. That’s the only outcome that I have my gaze fixed on.  And how we’re trying to do that is to make sure that our classroom, which is a little society. Everything that exists out there exists within our classroom the diversity, the range of diversity within our personal classroom is incredible. Religion gender. Neurodiversity. They’re all out there. And we learn to work within harmony. It’s not always perfect. definitely we have to resolve conflict. There are also adolescents, right? But we learn how to do it in a peaceful way. Where people come out as a win-win, where it doesn’t have to be that I have to compromise in order for the other person to win something. So, we’re doing that within the classroom of just practicing being super intentional with our speech, being peaceful with our language, being peaceful with each other, and then we hope that that will be a ripple effect.

Petal Modeste: That’s an “Optimistic Edu-futurist”. Right there. You also have this innovative educator network, which seems to be a vehicle to support and ultimately expand some of the transformative educational models that we’ve been talking about. Tell us a little bit about the network.

Shiran Rattigan: So, our Innovative Education Network has about 180 members within the South Florida. These are independently owned micro schools. So ,these are people who own the school that they’re working at, or they’re providers. So, my partner, my co-founder, is a provider. She does surf skate science, she is the brains, and  she does one particular service, and she does a deep dive into, you know, science and stem. We have another member who is a doctor of neuroscience but she’s only a science teacher. And so how we kind of identify is, you have to be an independently owned micro school or provider within the state of Florida, and then you have to be doing things that are cutting edge and innovative, not just replicating the same model. What we offer our members is visibility. We offer being able to understand what’s happening in legislation because it’s always shifting. We also offer just community.  This is hard work.  I you know, we call each other all the time. And I’m like, I can’t do this anymore. Me, either. Okay, get back on the horse, go, you know?

Shiren Rattigan: And then, we have like different showcases. So, parents can come and like kind of shop around and see what’s on the market. 

Petal Modeste: What advice do you have for parents listening today, whose kids may also have an adverse reaction to traditional schooling? How might they identify and explore micro schools or similar educational communities that may be better suited for their kids, especially if they live in parts of the world or parts of the country, where micro schooling is not necessarily a thing, yet?

Shiren Rattigan: Yeah, that’s such a great question. You know, we still are emerging. So, visibility sometimes can be difficult. But I want to just really emphasize with parents that if you feel like your child is not thriving, you only have one shot at it. Just please know that you’re not crazy to think that this isn’t working, and why can’t they just fit in? Why can’t they just pivot or move that it’s possible that your child doesn’t fit in, and that they’re going to need an alternative learning environment. And if you don’t see it and you have the vision for it. I’m going to urge you to open it and make that a possibility. It can be super scary. It can be very lonely, but at the end of the day, your responsibility is to your child. And so, find t or create the space that’s going to serve your child in the most brilliant way. So, if they’re deaf and hard of hearing open a deaf and hard of hearing micro school right. Autistic? Open something that’s really going to give them supports. What I learned early on is that as much as I was praying for the school to exist for me as a teacher to be unleashed, there were parents praying for a school, right? And so, if there are enough parents,  you can really get a critical mass to open your own space.

Petal Modeste: Thank you, Shiren.

Shiren: Thank you so much

Petal Modeste: We applaud what you’re doing.

Shiren Rattigan: Thank you so much.

Colossal Academy

Shiren Rattigan

MAP test

Innovative Educators Network

Surf Skate Science

The Rise of Microschools