11. More AI, More Humanity: Ben Gordon Sniffen on the Alpha School Model
Episode 11 of Kinwise Conversations · Hit play or read the transcript
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Lydia Kumar: Today we're stepping into the future of education with Ben Gordon Sniffen, a Guide at Alpha, an innovative school built on a two-hour learning model. The model splits the day between a highly focused academic block, powered by an AI tutor, and an afternoon dedicated to project-based life skills like entrepreneurship and public speaking. The structure is designed to accelerate core learning while freeing up guides for deep human-centered mentorship. Ben shares how this unique structure works in practice, how students learn to critique AI, and what the model suggests for the future of work and learning.
Okay. Hi Ben. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I'm really excited to learn about your work with Alpha Schools and the two-hour Learning Model. For listeners who are just meeting you for the first time, I know you have been involved with English and computer science studies in this world of Alpha and two-hour learning. I want to give you a chance to kind of orient listeners to who you are. Tell your story. How did you end up where you're at? What do people need to know about you coming into this conversation?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: Yeah, happily. First off, Lydia, thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here as well. Great to meet you and all of the listeners. I think Alpha as a school requires a lot of orientation. It required a lot of orientation for me. When I'm talking with parents, I always say we're a three to four conversation school. It's a very robust and different model, and I think that's what attracted me to it in the first place.
Both my parents, you know, go back through the origin story. Both my parents worked in public schools for their entire lives as social workers and I always saw education as a place I would land, not a place I would start. But about halfway through college, I saw that I kind of wanted to accelerate towards that track. I was coaching track and I just loved that human, or even, you know, child-centered element, that child-centered work. And Alpha was just a really generous fusion of a place where I could enter early and have a lot of responsibility and a lot of room to grow while I'm doing the role of an educator and working really closely with kids and learning a lot of curriculum development stuff.
So I think selfishly what drove me there was an opportunity to take on responsibilities that are usually reserved for more veteran teachers in very different environments. And to your point about English and computer science, I came from one of the places where you're able to do English and computer science. I went to Davidson College. I was at a liberal arts school. I loved it. I loved the ethos of liberal arts, taking away all the other connotations, and it felt that Alpha was, and now that I've been in the model for so long, it is this sort of hyper-modern liberal arts school where there is so much inquiry and space for inquiry and discussion, but just structured in a different way. That's not the Socratic seminar and a beautiful liberal arts campus. It's different. But I think fundamentally a lot of things that appealed to me about my own education were a place that I could find in Alpha and a place I could find really early on.
Lydia Kumar: That's really cool. Could you kind of walk our listeners through what you think makes Alpha different? Or what are the structures that set Alpha up to be what it is?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: Yeah, we can, well, I think we can even run through, I mean, I think even just on the surface level, it's very distinct. By the time it's 9:00 AM, even the morning meeting is different. Instead of having a circle discussion, playing games with a teacher and paras in a group of 20 children, it's a level of about 10 to 15 kids and three adults going through a growth mindset exercise. That is really the guiding principle that in some ways sets us apart. I know growth mindset language has become politicized; a lot of schools use it in a lot of different ways, but it really is the foundational tenet of Alpha and it's how our children begin our day before they go into their academic work.
And that is the most visually distinct from a regular school. They're on computers. They're learning through adaptive apps with an AI tutor. And that takes up those first two hours of the day. They do a lot of work. The work that they do is really hard, but it's also targeted to their specific needs at that time. There's also a whole system around it. It's an entire model. It's not just the siloed piece of software, where we do have motivational models and there's strong adult support. There's never gonna be a ratio of greater than 10 to one. And my job as a guide—that's my title, not a teacher, but a guide—is to really be the emotional and motivational support. I think it's something you'll see from a lot of counselors in a more traditional school, but it's more constant. And I have so much time individually with my students during the day, both while they're working and then afterwards once we go into the afternoon. That verb from Guide to Teach does change a little bit and we'll go into Life Skills workshop.
Now, what life skills mean for us may be different than the context. For us, it's things like critical thinking, public speaking, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship. And the way our school year is broken down is into five sessions and workshops typically run for a session. So children as early as second grade are doing an eight-week-long public speaking workshop. We have third graders building their own businesses in the entrepreneurship workshop, and that's scaffolded up through later elementary years and middle school too.
Lydia Kumar: So what I'm hearing is in the morning you have two hours, you're doing some sort of tech-based, AI, adaptive learning, and then you're moving into the afternoon and you're able to really dive deep and not necessarily even be on a computer. Or maybe you are, but you're doing that public speaking, you're thinking about what you want to explore, and so students are able to have... it feels very comprehensive, I guess, if you're able to do that targeted learning and then able to explore other skills in the other parts of the day.
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: I think it is really comprehensive and I think it's really comprehensive in the way that's very generous to the students. It's not just you have this broad curriculum that is so robust, you have to include everything. I think going back to sort of the verb of my title being guide, rather than teach, it's about guiding students to places and projects that really align with their passions. I think one of the things that's so interesting about our curriculum is yes, we commit to teach all these different life skills—public speaking, critical thinking, entrepreneurship, teamwork—but the medium through which we teach them is completely generated based on the kids. Every session is bespoke and if we have a group of kids who are super into robotics, then we can do a pair programming workshop or a robotic construction workshop. But the life skill can be teamwork. So we're always iterating. And because we have five sessions per year, we have five different chances to get it right and make sure what we're teaching really aligns with what excites our students.
Lydia Kumar: How do you approach learning what excites your students? What does that look like for you as a guide?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: Yeah, that's a great question, and I think it happens more informally than people think. You know, we do have a lot of breaks during the day and a lot of the chances I get to interact with my students are out at recess, where we call it Q break, playing pickleball with them. And it's a lot of rapport building, especially in that first session. You know, it is still a school and kids don't know you for six or eight weeks. It takes a while for them to trust you, but it also takes a lot of formal moments. We have at least one session of 30 minutes, one-on-one coaching with each student for each guide every week. So in those what we call limitless meetings, that's the most formal and to your word, comprehensive way to get to know these students.
It's a lot of social-emotional coaching. You know, what we ask these kids to do is really, really hard. I don't want to understate that. A lot of the high support that we bring in and I bring in is executive functioning coaching, trying to give them strategies to manage and do even better than they have before, constantly be improving. Going back to some of my growth mindset thoughts before, but within those conversations, there's also a lot of time for students to just talk about what excites them. It doesn't have to be confined to the school ball. In fact, it's actually better if it's off campus. You know, what are you doing? Are there sports you're playing outside of school? Do you play an instrument? And typically when kids feel emboldened to bring in those things that they're excited about, when no teachers are around, when no guides are around, it really strengthens the relationship with a guide.
I always think, and I think to your point about what makes Alpha different, I think a lot of it is about the formative adult relationships. If you look at indicators of success, one of the number one indicators for student success is positive and sustained adult relationships. For me, in my job, that is always my North Star. And I think what I love about Alpha is I was so lucky to have teachers who believed in me and connected with me and probably gave me more grace than they should have to see me grow into the person I became. But when I connected with them, I was usually connecting with them over what they were passionate about, and that's great. It's awesome to have adults introduce kids to new concepts. But, you know, I was my physics teacher and I got really into physics, and that was sort of a fleeting passion. I had an amazing track coach who eventually pushed me to run track in college and now, the thought of running more than five miles horrifies me. Like I kind of lost that.
But what I think is so exciting about Alpha, I get to connect with kids in very early years about the things that they're super passionate about. I know nothing about jewelry, but I was able to work with one of my students on a limitless project about getting investment for her jewelry business. I was able to pair a life skill she really needed to work on—public speaking—with something she was really passionate about and we went out and she pitched to investors to get investment for her jewelry business, and that was not something that was driven by me. It was certainly guided, but it didn't come from me. I can't tell you how many conversations about anime I've had with my students. I am not an anime guy, but I think when you're able to invite what excites and what stokes student curiosity, you really transform that relationship early on into one that is more trusting.
Lydia Kumar: Yeah. That is really interesting to think about and I'm curious if, how do you feel like the AI tools that you have enable the opportunities for you to build these relationships? I worked, before I did this podcast, I worked in traditional public schools and the days are really, they're really busy, right?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: Yeah.
Lydia Kumar: I feel like part of the challenge of building these kinds of relationships is you have a lot of students and you don't have a lot of downtime. It's a lot of, you know, structured time and I guess I'm curious about a couple of things that I feel like I'm hearing that make Alpha different and also maybe enable this relationship piece: the AI, so I'm curious about that and the adult to student ratio. I'm also kind of curious about like, how do those two, what are those?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: No, I think that's good and I'll even start with the second one. I think it's a little counterintuitive and a lot of Alpha, and hopefully the direction that EdTech is going is making us question a lot of assumptions about the role of AI and the role of automation and supplementation in education. Because I think intuitively, oh, more AI support means we'll need less adult supervision, or we'll need less adult support because the AI can take care of it. What we find actually is when you use AI, you can free up a lot of those tedious moments that are keeping teachers, I don't want to say away from kids, but in the world that is preparing to be with kids instead of actually being with them.
For us, it sounds odd, but with AI, we don't have prep periods. The work that we're doing can be condensed to the beginning of the school day or after school. The administrative tasks are a lower burden because we don't have to grade work. A lot of the AI and adaptive apps do that for us. Yes, we're building out workshops, but it's supplemented one by the AI and also by all of our other guides, our colleagues who have their own ideas and they're working with AI themselves. So it's a very quick acceleration through the building out of the curriculum. And once we can sort of shorten that time, much as our students do with their learning, that time is freed up to be with the kids, to be that emotional and motivational support. And I really do think it is about the model more than any siloed product.
You know, we've known for four decades of learning science, for a student to be successful, you need material that is at the right level of difficulty. Productive struggle, maybe if it's a worksheet, about 80 to 90% accuracy, so they're getting some wrong, so they're forced to go back. You don't want it too easy. Of course, you don't want it to be too hard to be discouraging, but you also need them to be motivated. And I think our afternoons are what really excites and keeps kids motivated because once they get through that morning, they know they have that super exciting element of the afternoon. Now, I think that also can sound like we're making kids just eat their vegetables, and that's not true. I mean, these kids do love the mornings too. I've actually had more conversations with parents about getting kids to stop doing homework in that app-based learning at home than making them do it because it is a very gamified experience. It's very generous to kids, gives them this confidence, and when we're trying to build self-concept and really instill those growth mindset principles, kids connect with the things that they're good at. And I think our educational model and the AI makes them feel really good at it because it's at a level of difficulty where they can struggle but still succeed.
Lydia Kumar: So they're doing all your English, your math, your science, your history. That's all in the AI app or are there more subjects? Like what does that look like?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: Core cases, very core cases. You know, I think it looks not unfamiliar to something an adult could do. And maybe a good metaphor is, you know, where adults fail. I don't know if you've ever done a Coursera course or any of those online things. There's great content out there. There's a lot of ways you can learn. There are these modules where you're getting the instructional material and then you have to do the problems at the back of the book to actually prove that you know it. The problem with Coursera and all those apps is never the material, it's the motivation to do it. I mean, the attrition rate on Coursera is like 90%; 50% of people don't even get past the first lesson. So I think what's special and what it looks like, it's kids doing the things that, you know, adults will download because they want to upskill and then never get around to it. But it is modules, it's a mix of third-party and proprietary apps. We use IXL because IXL has multi-step problems for fourth and fifth graders. As difficult as it is for them, it's great practice. Khan Academy has unbelievable modules for middle school science. E-Gump, great for high school language.
And then we saw some gaps, you know, for reading comprehension. There are good apps, you know, Newsela has its merits. But we saw that we wanted to be able to create something that can match student interests and age-appropriate content with reading level. So what our reading app does is it takes a first-grade student who's reading at a sixth-grade level and generates content, generates an article about something that is age-appropriate for a first-grader, but at a Lexile level, the reading difficulty level that is still going to challenge them. There was a gap that we saw that the academics team created. And as much as we use AI, we also have an entire academics team of learning scientists to go and audit and curate the skill plans along with the AI because, that is, you know, LLMs and generative AI and those who look at it, you know, it's not always faithful. It hallucinates and it's really important for us to have those human checks, at least for now, until we can completely trust and hand over the work to agents and more robust LLMs.
Lydia Kumar: Yeah. And then do you see students using those skills that they're—like, how do the skills that the students do in those two hours in the morning translate into the life skills or the projects they're doing in the afternoon?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: I think one thing that Alpha's philosophy is, and I'll use that phrase often, is the belief that kids just need knowledge in their head. This isn't super specific content that's bespoke above the level that what you get. Honestly, it's Common Core. Our standards are Common Core. Now, how our students move through that content is very different than what you would see in the classroom. We can move that aside. I think our belief though is, and I'll say a specific sub-skill, critical thinking. The main track we have in our critical thinking program is both sides. We call it both sides. Can you argue both sides of an argument? And that starts as early as second and third grade. You're in what we call town hall, which is sort of our group-wide meeting where a level comes together and the kids get to set the standards and there's a lot of debate that comes with it. Now, at that age, it's "should you be able to bring stuffed animals in on Friday? If you do, how big should those stuffed animals be?" And that's really great because in the afternoons, the kids are being given that structure. They learn what an argument, what a counterargument, what a rebuttal is. So they're arguing both against their peers and against themselves to figure out what they believe. The Common Core and the instructional material in the morning is just giving them knowledge in their heads so once they go out and are in middle school and high school, they have enough knowledge in their brains that they can make informed decisions about more serious debates.
Lydia Kumar: Yeah, that makes so much sense to me. I was thinking about the entrepreneurship example that you were sharing earlier and just about how much math you need to know to make effective financial, effective business decisions and how I can really imagine how, whether it's critical thinking or entrepreneurship, you're able to bring in these skills that you're learning in the morning and then apply them to the more practical afternoon.
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: Totally. Totally. And I think even with entrepreneurship, that's a funny one. You know, even if you go into, there are plenty of jokes about the MBAs of the world, I won't get into that, but it's like, even if you're doing EBITDA calculations, it's not calculus. I know there are corner cases, but it's not crazy high-level math. A lot of what it is is tracking and mapping. I mentioned multi-step word problems before. Now word problems present their whole host of difficulties. You know, I'm sure you've, working with kids before, when a kid sees a word problem that's, "Susan went and bought six apples and Sarah went and bought six bananas," their first thought is like, "Are Sarah and Susan friends? Like, why did they get apples?" Like there are so many other things for them to think about, because a lot of times when kids see words, they think story. And I don't wanna reduce that; that's not every student, but I've seen it often. And the challenge with multi-step word problems and word problems in general is being able to map an object to a number. This person had X quantity, or this other person had Y quantity. What operation are you gonna bring in to put X and Y together in some way? And it keeps... kids need to keep track of a lot. And I do think that mechanism of being able to hold things in your head is really important once you get into the afternoons and you are doing yeah, these really complicated puzzles, you know, maybe in the critical thinking workshop or in your business.
Lydia Kumar: Yeah, absolutely. And it's... I think being able to map and build systems is a skill that feels like it will become increasingly important in the future of work. And so it's that critical thinking aspect and being able to tie things together. That's really cool to hear about. Okay, future of work. How does Alpha think about preparing students for the future of work? Like you're using AI in your school and students are also going to grow up into a world that has been changed by AI. We know like there are some really dire predictions about white-collar workers losing jobs depending on who you talk to. But how are you thinking about preparing students for potentially a different world than they're in right now?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: I think the answer is really actively. And if you look at the ecosystem, no matter what your actual answer is to the mechanisms of how you're preparing kids, every mission statement of the last 15 years is "we are preparing kids for a changing world." I'm being reductive, but a lot of them say that. Or if you push them, they will say that. And it's different for a lot of the legacy institutions who were established in the 1700s. It's less about changing their pedagogy or really equipping their teachers to teach in these new ways and modes of thought. It's kind of about giving kids the signal that they've been through it. You know, if you go to a really elite private school, whether that's elementary, secondary, or even in college, a lot of what these legacy institutions are relying on is the fact that their students went to a legacy institution and they have that name at the top of their resume.
And we do believe that in 10 years, that Alpha name on the top of the resume is going to mean a lot. But I think it's because we are trying to instill in our students these constituent skills that we know they're going to need. We know they're gonna need to think critically. We know they're gonna need to speak publicly. They're going to have, if they don't become entrepreneurs themselves, they're going to have some sort of ownership mindset where they can take on tasks that weren't simply asked of them, but because they take it on for themselves. And a lot of our jobs as guides is to fuse what the student is passionate about with those different concepts and put them in positions where they're forced to, like I said, think critically and challenge themselves, where they're forced to be put in front of an audience and share their thoughts. And not just in that moment when they're practicing their actual oration, but can they compose words together? Can they write, whether that's with an AI assistant or not? Can they put together something that is comprehensive and cogent and cohesive enough that actually can move and persuade people? So that's how we think about it. And I think that is mostly taken care of in the afternoons in those life skill workshops. But of course, like we've been saying, kids just need to know stuff. And even we're sometimes conflicted on that. There are schools of thought in Alpha where they're like, "Guys, stop making kids memorize the 50 state capitals. Like they don't need to do that anymore." And the other argument is that kids, you know, knowledge in their head is, being reductive again, but I'll keep saying it, you know, some rote-based learning just needs to give you a concept of the world. That sort of semantic memory of just what things are. And when you do have what is knowledge above just the trivial, that can really help inform all those other skills once you actually have to use them.
Lydia Kumar: Yeah, I think that's really powerful to think about. What students know and how when you have knowledge in your head, then you can do something with it.
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: And it's also to be trivial, myself, and the root of trivia, like kids just love trivia. Kids like, you see, especially around, I mean, everyone loves trivia. Like bar trivia is apparently the most popular thing in the world these days. I didn't even realize that. But kids just love knowing things and so it's a fun way for them to compete in a way that, you know, doesn't need to necessarily compare themselves to other kids, but they can compare themselves to themselves. We were always on this site called Jet Punk, which is just this repository of little pop quizzes on every possible area of knowledge, and it's just so fun for them. It's just so fun.
Lydia Kumar: That's cool. It's like, it seems like there's a range of types of learning happening and some, you know, Jet Punk is just like fun random trivia stuff. And then you're also doing this more adaptive learning of the skills that you just need to know. And then there's this application base that you're doing in the afternoon. Who knows how you can use one of these trivia facts to start a conversation. They're not totally useless.
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: No, absolutely. And even if they are useless, they're still fun.
Lydia Kumar: Yeah. And fun, you know, fun is good. How do y'all... okay, so we have at Alpha, you're using AI as a big part of teaching students, but it's AI with a lot of guardrails. You're not throwing them in front of like a, you're not saying, "Okay, get on ChatGPT and learn about history." There's something more... it sounds like it's a lot more guided. Are students working with LLMs more organically in the afternoons? What does AI literacy look like at a school like Alpha?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: It can look like so many different things at so many different ages, at so many different parts of the day. Our model is not just this Common Core wrapper around ChatGPT, no, it's two decades of adaptive apps. I mean, adaptive apps have been around forever. Now we have a much more robust model that is taking in student data from all these API keys, keeping it secure in our own proprietary mechanism, and then generating curated content plans to meet them where they are. It's not just launching them into ChatGPT and saying, "Explain to me the Battle of Saratoga from George Washington's perspective." I mean, that's not it. Now that can still be useful, but that takes a lot more active teaching.
AI literacy does not come naturally. I personally don't even necessarily think that digitally native is a thing. I mean, there are some things that are more intuitive for kids online, but I can't tell you how many times I've had to remind my students what the shortcut is for copy and paste. Like there are some things that they're just not going to find by themselves. And when they are moving into those LLMs away from our other machine learning algorithm into something they're interacting with, it is a lot of giving them the language of how to ask. You know, you can't just talk to this like your friend, but also sometimes you can talk to it like a friend. It's not bad to just have a conversation.
Now, there are other limitations of how quickly they can type and how quickly they can read the text that's popping up on the screen, or even if we can get them to have the patience to wait until the entire response is generated to really start interrogating it. We also, from the guiding perspective, it's not purely organic, but we're making sure that the LLMs and different portals that they're using are specific to the task. Becoming an expert is something we see as a life skill, which is, in layman's terms, research. Are they just going on ChatGPT for that or do we want them to go into Perplexity? Do we want them to be able to find linked academic articles and go into those pages and research it for themselves while they also have this sort of compiled excerpt in front of them from the LLM? A lot of what we find with when kids are interacting with the LLMs is just kind of prompting them, us prompting them of how deep they should go and how deep they can go. If it's just trying to build a one-pager for your business, then ChatGPT is fine, but you should know how to create it even without ChatGPT. If you want to do research for a presentation, we're probably gonna direct you to Perplexity, but let's take it a step further. Can you actually go into one of those linked academic articles and try to read past the abstract and really understand it for yourself? You see the form that Perplexity is generating, you see where the summary can be. Can you do that for yourself?
And I think that's what's really interesting about LLMs generally, and you see this even in adults too. You know, we learn so much from the forms of writing. LLMs do. I mean, you know, I was a creative writing major, so I have a very formative relationship with the em dash, but I think it's becoming more common now both from AI writing, but then also people who have read AI writing see the utility in the em dash and start using them for themselves. There are some phrases that ChatGPT especially loves to use. ChatGPT loves saying, "It's not about blank, it's about..." It really loves to contrast. And I see that more commonly now just in both my students and other folks' writing because that's just sort of the form of the day. And it's interesting how LLMs are really doing that. I say that to go a step further, you know, we're trying to be very mindful. Students shouldn't just absorb the forms that LLMs are producing. They should be able to do it themselves and they should be able to do it in a way where it could look or contrast against a general LLM output.
Lydia Kumar: Are your students bought into using LLMs in this way? A big concern in education generally is that critical thinking is going to be outsourced to LLMs. And I know critical thinking is a huge part of what you're teaching at Alpha, directly and purposefully. Are students invested in using LLMs with a critical lens, or are you having hard conversations about the importance of being thoughtful about how you interact with these tools?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: For some of our learners, it doesn't take any buy-in. They're just entranced with the magic that is LLMs. And it's really amazing. But it also, when we talk about the future of work, as threatening as it can be for adults, I think it can be somewhat threatening for kids. They want to, at least some of our students want to compete with the LLMs and want to be better. And I think that's actually a fairly healthy view of it and it forces them to take a more critical view of what the outputs are. I remember one time when I was working with our middle schoolers and this was in the early days of GPT-4, I wrote this little story. It was for a creative writing workshop, a storytelling workshop. And on the first glance, the kids were like, "This is perfect. This is amazing." And then we went past it and actually did the line edit and looked through it with a really critical eye. And I don't think there was a single sentence that wasn't marked up by the end of it. So I think what you're contending with is how passive students are going to be when they're just sort of consuming LLM content and we want it to be really active and we want them to critique it even more than they would a peer. And I think in that critique, there's a lot of learning too. You are learning what the LLM does wrong, but you're also sort of learning your own interests and preferences that you can then go apply into your own work.
Lydia Kumar: Thank you for sharing that example. I think it's helpful for folks listening to just have examples of how students can use this to think critically because it is a big shift for educators throughout our country and throughout our world. So it's good to have those kind of examples.
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: And I think, you know, the zeitgeist, I think teachers do feel somewhat threatened by it. And I think that's really unfortunate because it can be this really great supplemental tool where you can offload a lot of the, not meaningless, but difficult and tedious work. And it can be something that you can use without threatening your job. And I think it's really... but it is like that's what people think about and it's really unfortunate. It's even unfortunate, I think how people sort of first interact with AI. You either use it to automate the really boring tasks, you know, you use it to send emails or do anything, and you're like, "Wow, this is amazing." And then maybe you do feel a little threatened, but you have to remember, this is the emails. It's not going that deep. Or people do it to try to assist them with the really, really hard stuff. And sometimes, especially if you are at the frontier of work, you are going to find the frontier of LLMs pretty quickly and you're gonna be disappointed in the outputs and then you'll swing back in the other direction and sort of be dejected or disappointed in what it is. It's like this thing is a joke. And I think it does take a lot of time just with the AI to find what it's good at and what it's bad at.
I know we talked even asynchronously about how people should start using it and I think it is for in both of those places. And then just sticking with it to a place where you can find how useful it is for you. Honestly, LLMs right now and probably will be for a long time, are just this black box. There's no user manual. You can take as many people on LinkedIn want to sell you their prompting courses. The best way to learn, I truly believe is just to prompt and talk to it, and talk to it in different tones and learn how it talks back to you. Try to give it the persona, try to not give it the persona. You know, you don't need to say, "approach this like a PhD physicist." You can usually just talk to it, but try that once or twice and see if there's an actual material difference in the outputs. I think experimentation is really critical with AI, both if you're working with it as an adult or if you're trying to introduce it to kids.
Lydia Kumar: I think the experience of just doing it yourself is always a very rich learning experience. And so with AI or anything else, it's like, just try. I think it's easier to learn than people think. It's not as scary in terms of learning a new computer system. I think AI, the LLMs are fairly frictionless, at least at first. And so it's just, just try. I wanted to ask you, how long have you been at Alpha schools and what changes have you seen? Because the technology has changed a lot in the last two and a half years.
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: Yeah. The technology has changed a lot, but we are not creating our own LLMs. Yes. We have the AI tutor, which is its own thing. And we have a dev team and we have both an academics team working on that. What I have seen, what has been most encouraging for me is most of the changes in the curriculum. And to answer your question, this is, I just completed, I guess I came at the end of 2022-2023. So this, I just completed my third year. And a lot of the changes I've seen have been guide-driven. The guides are in the field working with the students and seeing what works and doesn't, and some of that feedback gets passed on to our academic team so they can improve the AI tutor, but it's mostly looking critically at themselves and saying, how can we improve the afternoons? How can we improve the workshops?
Before I got there, there used to be a category of afternoon workshop called "just for fun." We found in these past few years, if we want kids to achieve at the level we expect of them, we need to have really high standards and we need to hold really high support. And that has meant increasing the rigor, frankly, in those afternoon workshops and giving kids really challenging things. I had third and fourth graders go through a Wharton business school simulation. Now they of course, didn't have all the content knowledge, but they had to learn all these structures of organizational thinking and how to strategize in a small group. We have kids doing—and there are a few examples of simulations from Harvard and UT that our students have completed—but it's also going out into the real world and running your own food truck and seeing this thing that isn't just impressive because you're 10, but it would be impressive if an adult did it too. And really just putting kids in position and almost engineering scenarios where they're challenged but can succeed.
Lydia Kumar: Yeah. That's amazing. I feel like students are capable of doing so much more than we expect of them. And so when you're able to give opportunities to students like that, I'm sure it's incredible to see a 10-year-old running a food truck. Probably the first time you see it, it's like, whoa. But then over time, does it become almost normal? Are you like, oh yeah. Kids are doing...
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: Yeah. Sometimes I have to remind myself of how impressive it is because it's become an expectation. You know? It's the expectation that, yeah, I can get nine-year-olds to code self-driving cars in Python. That was something I did my first session, this was two years ago. We've gotten kids to build their own novel use cases for robots that kids now in the US and India are using in their curriculum. I mean, there's so much we have done. It feels like we just keep raising the bar and we're gonna continue to do that. But it is worthwhile, especially for the kids to step back and just be grateful for how much they've achieved. You know, if kids are growing and we want to raise the bar as they grow, but I think it's really important and why the guides are there to just sometimes be like, "Wow, I'm super proud of you. That's amazing."
Lydia Kumar: And I'm wondering, what do you think schools outside of, you know, the schools who are not Alpha, who don't have the structures that you have? Even reflecting on your own experience as a student in a public school, what do you think schools should be learning or taking, or is there a piece that feels like a good starting place for your average public school?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: I don't wanna be the arbiter of what a good education or a good educator is like, because we are so fortunate to have the resources we do when we are a private school, and there's a lot of wonder that comes with that of what we can really give to our kids. I don't know the practical lessons, but I think adopting AI sooner and AI tutors earlier in the process to give kids those afternoons and time back is really important. That doesn't mean send them home at noon, but try to then curate that afternoon curriculum to be something that dives closer to what the students are really into and be okay as a teacher to accept moving away from what you are truly passionate about and onto what your students are really interested in.
That's easier said than done. And I think public education is a massive cruise ship and it's really hard to turn it around, but I hope it just starts to steer in a slightly different direction. What I really hope is, you know, we have Alpha, we have traditional ed. I hope we find a secret third thing. I hope from all this experimentation we can find something that serves all students in all scenarios. And I think that should even be the guiding principle of EdTech. If you look at what has been created, and gosh, there's been a lot that's been created in the last 20 years, all of it seemingly has been produced to either supplement the role of the teacher or to replace the role of the teacher. And it can do both of those things. Crash Course is amazing. The access that EdTech has brought is wonderful, but it doesn't solve the fundamental challenge of making kids want to learn and aligning their education with their passion. It doesn't always have to be their passion. They don't need to be excited 100% of the time, but they should at least feel they have some agency and ownership in their own education. And I think the question that schools are really bad at answering, and one that I take very seriously is the "why are we doing this?" And the answer for us is never "just because." And I understand in a lot of educational environments, the answer sometimes has to be "just because," and maybe it's just because the Department of Ed is making us do this, or just because it's the top-down decree from administration. There's a lot of "just because" in there, and I hope we can create this special third model where "just because" is never an answer.
Lydia Kumar: I've, yeah. I think really, why are we doing this? What's the purpose? And being intentional about the kind of learning that's happening feels, yeah, feels like some promise for the future.
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: And I think we can be really excited about the progress we've made. I mean, Crash Course is amazing. Like I love John Green. But like there are ways to get kids excited just from novelty and there's also ways to sustain that excitement. You know, when I was in school, the criteria for being my favorite teacher was like, you had a little bit of energy and you rolled in the TV every once every month and maybe played... it was a fairly low bar. And I hope we can go past that into a place where kids are really excited every day in every class. Now it's a high bar. It's one I hope we can clear and it's going to take this divergent breadth of thinking to even get us close.
Lydia Kumar: It's when you were talking about that motivation piece, what has always made a really good teacher is the teacher that makes you feel like you can be bigger than you are or can shift your self-perception or has a vision for a classroom that goes beyond learning the quadratic equation. There has to be something deeper that goes alongside of the learning that happens and so it is good to hear that. I don't know, one thing that I think Alpha is doing well is thinking about how do you create spaces where the adults in the room are that motivator, that relationship builder and you're able to walk side by side.
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: Absolutely.
Lydia Kumar: One of my last, the question I really like to end on is brings us back to AI and it is, what is the idea or question that you have about this technology right now that is sitting with you, and it might be the thing that makes you hopeful, the thing that makes you worried, the thing you're curious about, but what's the idea or question?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: That's a great question. I think for me it extends well beyond AI and really into our AI usage. And it's just, what if we get this wrong? And that can be both generally and specifically. If I'm working with a kid and I'm trying to implement some new executive function intervention, who do I want that coming from? Do I want that coming from AI or do I want it coming from me? And usually the second question is, who can correct it quicker if we do get it wrong? And in those social-emotional spaces, I trust myself more. When it's academics and it's about making sure kids are placed in the right content area, I'm happy to offload that to AI. And with AI, I just hope we find the places where it's okay to get it wrong because we are gonna get it wrong. And I hope the places where we do get it wrong and AI can't step in and correct, we keep to the humans.
Lydia Kumar: I love that. Well, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and sharing a different way of doing education. I think people have tried a lot of different things for a long time and it's cool to hear about Alpha. Is there any last thought that you just want to share or things that are kind of percolating for you?
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: No, I think I ran my greatest hits. This was wonderful. I don't have a call to action. I don't need to do anything so formal as that. I just hope people really keep exploring with AI and challenge themselves when they do feel threatened. Because I see this with my parents' colleagues and my friends who work in public schools, they do feel threatened by it. And I think that's such an unfortunate emotion to have with something that can be so transformative. So, I hope people keep exploring AI, keep finding where it works, keep finding where it doesn't work, and gain some confidence in this tool that may not change the entire world, but will certainly change some of the spaces that we occupy within it.
Lydia Kumar: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Ben. I really appreciate it.
Benjamin Gordon Sniffen: Thank you.
Lydia Kumar: That was such a fascinating look inside the Alpha School model with Ben Gordon Sniffen. A huge thank you to him for sharing his on-the-ground experiences. His description of using a two-hour AI-powered academic block in the morning to create more time for human connection and passion-driven life skills workshops in the afternoon is transformative. I was especially struck by his insight that the model doesn't replace adults, but empowers them to be better coaches and mentors.
From one innovative educational model to another, join me next time on Kinwise Conversations where I'll be speaking with John Sharon of the Carolina Friends School. We'll explore how a school with a deep values-based mission rooted in community and reflection is thinking about the role of AI in human-centered education.
To dive deeper into today's topics with Ben, I've put everything for you in one place. Just head over to the resource page for this episode at kinwise.org/podcast. There you'll find the full transcript, more about Ben and the Alpha School model, and a list of resources inspired by our conversation. For the school and district leaders listening, if Ben's insights have you thinking about how to build a real AI strategy for your teachers, I invite you to learn more about the Kinwise Educator PD pilot program. We partner with districts to select a topic that's meaningful for your teachers, and together we build a community of practice that continues to support them long after our work together is done. You can learn more about our approach at kinwise.org/pilot. Finally, if you found value in this podcast, the best way to support the show is to subscribe, leave a quick review, or share this episode with a friend. It makes a huge difference. Until next time, stay curious, stay grounded, and stay Kinwise.
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I hope you enjoyed hearing Ben Gordon Sniffen’s perspective on Alpha’s two-hour learning model and student-driven life-skills workshops. If you’re curious to see the model in action, or to follow Ben’s ongoing work at the intersection of AI and education, here are a few easy ways to connect:
Alpha School Official Website – Explore the two-hour learning structure, outcomes data, and campus locations. Visit the website: alpha.school
Connect with Ben on LinkedIn – Follow Ben’s reflections on AI-powered tutoring, curriculum design, and student coaching. Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/benjamin-gordon-sniffen-423a91229
2-Hour Learning Model Overview – Watch a short explainer and see sample schedules that condense core academics into a focused morning block. Read the overview: alpha.school/2-hour-learning
Adaptive-Learning Apps Mentioned – Khan Academy, IXL, Newsela, and EGUMPP power personalized practice across subjects. Explore the apps: khanacademy.org | ixl.com | newsela.com | egumpp.com
AI Research Tools – Try ChatGPT or Perplexity AI for cited summaries, brainstorming, and deeper dives into any topic. Start exploring openai.com/chatgpt | perplexity.ai
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1. The “2-Hour Adaptive Block” Prompt
(Inspired by Ben’s description of Alpha’s focused morning powered by AI tutors.)
*“Act as a learning-design consultant. I teach Grade 5. Build a 120-minute schedule that weaves together math, reading, and science in 20-minute rotations using IXL, Khan Academy, and Newsela.
• Include 3-minute micro-breaks with growth-mindset cues.
• Add suggested mastery checkpoints for each subject.
• Return the plan as a clear timeline plus one actionable tip to keep students motivated.”2. The “Passion-Driven Workshop Planner” Prompt
(Inspired by Alpha’s life-skills sessions that merge core competencies with student interests.)
“Create a 4-week workshop that fuses public speaking with learners’ passion for robotics (mixed 4th–5th grade).
• Provide weekly objectives, required materials, and a student-friendly rubric.
• Finish with a showcase idea that lets each team present a working prototype and reflection.”*3. The “AI Critique Exercise” Prompt
(Inspired by Ben’s practice of teaching students to interrogate AI output.)
“Generate a short 250-word story about a space mission. Intentionally insert 3 factual errors and several stylistic weaknesses.
• Then supply a line-edit checklist students can use to identify and improve the piece (focus on facts, clarity, and vivid language).”*4. The “Executive-Function Coaching Script” Prompt
(Inspired by Ben’s one-on-one ‘guide’ meetings that build self-management skills.)
“Write a 10-minute 1-on-1 coaching conversation to help an 11-year-old overcome procrastination in self-paced math work.
• Use motivational-interviewing techniques.
• Close with two SMART goals the student commits to for the week.”*5. The “Entrepreneurship Mini-Simulation” Prompt
(Inspired by Alpha’s food-truck and business challenges.)
“Outline a simplified food-truck simulation for middle-schoolers.
• Include 5 decision rounds: menu, pricing, marketing, staffing, scaling.
• Provide decision prompts, easy formulas for revenue/cost, and reflection questions after each round so students can iterate.”*
