She Was One of Alpha’s First-Ever Students. Here’s How It Turned Out.

Ten years ago, Elle became one of the very first students at Alpha School, essentially acting like a guinea pig for a brand-new model of school. Now, she’s graduating as valedictorian, heading to Stanford University, and has become the youngest published female author in NATURE science journal.

This is by far one of my favorite conversations on this podcast. It’s fifty-four minutes of raw, honest debrief: what Elle has learned about friends, identity, and confidence over her last decade of unconventional, innovative schooling.

I’ve known Elle since she was a baby. Our families did dinners together, and for two years straight I harassed her parents about giving Alpha a try while they politely declined. What finally changed their minds was when Elle came home from a shadow day at Alpha and asked to cancel summer camp so she could go to school instead.

Tune into the full episode above or catch the most important takeaways below.

As always, thank you for being here.

1. Your kid is carrying a sentence about who they are, and we need to make sure it’s a positive one. Before Alpha, teachers always boasted about how sweet and social Elle was, but when it was time to talk academics, they fell quiet. Some teachers even thought she was dyslexic, when in reality she just didn’t like to read. Elle internalized all of it. In first grade, Elle brought home a family portrait she’d drawn at school: a family of stick figures, everyone labeled in six-year-old handwriting. She labeled her older sister “smart.” She labeled herself “dumb.” (And look at her now!) What we feed our kids, what we tell them to be true about themselves, matters so much more than we realize. Elle is also proof that we can take negative self-talk and completely turn it around.

2. Reward effort, not outcomes. Alpha doesn’t have grades. We use XP. (One minute of focused learning = one XP.) The goal for every student is to hit around 120 XP points per day. There’s an XP leaderboard that tracks this, and there are days when kids are crushing 200, 300, even 400. Elle talks about how this changed her perspective of what “hard work” and “success” actually mean: less to do with grades and performance, more to do with effort, focus, and consistency.

3. Assess your kid’s social life by quality, not headcount. The socialization question comes up often, and Elle is the perfect gal to talk to about it. She was the popular kid at her traditional school. (“I ruled the playground!”) At Alpha, Elle found a smaller cohort of friendships that ran much deeper and inspired her to become the best version of herself. When it comes to socialization, it really is quality over quantity.

4. Confidence comes only after competence. You cannot praise a kid into believing they’re capable. Elle is proof of the alternative. In third grade, shortly after joining Alpha, she took the MAP science assessment and landed in the 50th percentile. She looked at that number with her parents and thought, well, there it is. Confirmation. Her guide simply said, “Cool. How do we get you to the 99th? What do I need to do to help?” Eight weeks later she tested into the 95th. Two things made that work, and you can steal both:

   Create “confidence anchors.” It’s so important for kids to build a library of things they’ve done or accomplished, so they have undeniable evidence about what they’re capable of. They can use this to inspire them to keep pushing through something hard. (EX: “I know you’re struggling with science, but remember when you aced reading? Science is just reading comprehension. So let’s try again. You’ve already done the hard part.”) At the end of the day, kids need reps, reps, reps.

   Establish a motivational model that actually works. Elle was dying to fill her Amazon cart with pink stationery, candy, and other girly goodies, so her guide used exactly that. ”Once you hit the 90th percentile, that Amazon cart is yours.” Because she wanted it so badly, the work came easy. And when she did hit 90th percentile, it changed how she saw herself forever.

From “dumb” to valedictorian. From “popular” to finding deep, meaningful friendships. Elle shares so much more of her experience in this episode, so if her story changed the way you think about what your kid is capable of, I strongly encourage you to give the full conversation a listen.