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Teaching Twice Exceptional and Differently Wired Kids w/ Sam Young
188 Plays1 year ago
Sam Young, MEd, or Mr. Sam, as his community members call him, is a growth-minded, two-time Fulbright Scholar and Director of Young Scholars Academy, a strength-based, talent-focused virtual enrichment school that supports twice-exceptional, differently-wired, and gifted students to feel seen, nurtured, and happy as heck!
Mr. Sam is a neurodivergent educator who has ADHD. As an ADHD learner, he has committed his life to empower young people to learn to develop their superpowers and lead meaningful and fulfilling lives through strength-based education.
Before founding YSA, Mr. Sam taught in a variety of capacities, including nearly a decade at Bridges Academy and an array of other programs in the US, Europe, and beyond! Travel and culture are near and dear to him. He has led 2e students to over 7 countries for immersive cultural and educational trips.
Mr. Sam is a graduate of Bridges Graduate School of Cognitive Diversity where he studied under the legendary Dr. Susan Baum. He has been featured in: the documentary 2e2: Teaching The Twice Exceptional, the textbook Understanding The Social and Emotional Lives of Gifted Students, Variations Magazine, over 30 podcasts–including the amazing Debbie Reber’s TILT Parenting, countless conferences/seminars, 2e News, and other publications.
Connect with Sam:
Young Scholars Academy: https://youngscholarsacademy.org/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/young_scholars_academy/?hl=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YSAENRICHMENT
Christian's Links:
Children's health consulting (autism, ADHD, gut dysfunction, etc.): https://christianyordanov.com/childrens-health-consulting/
Get my book Autism Wellbeing Plan: How to Get Your Child Healthy: https://amzn.to/43ah6yD
Pregnancy preparation and recovery health consulting (book your free 15-minute discovery call): https://christianyordanov.com/pregnancy-preparation-and-recovery/
Get 3 FREE video courses instantly when you sign up to my members' community here: https://members.christianyordanov.com/
The courses are:
- The Healthy Gluten-Free, Casein-Free Diet for Autism & ADHD
- Nutrient Supplements for Autism, ADHD, and Children's Health
- Health Challenges Autistic Children Experience
The above 3 courses cover topics such as gut dysfunction and infections, clostridia bacteria, Candida, oxalates, methylation, excitotoxicity, zinc / copper imbalance, going gluten-free and how to do it well, heavy metals and chemical toxicity, probiotic supplementation, mitochondrial dysfunction, immune system dysregulation, neuroinflammation, and much much more. I even show you how to select high-quality supplements and avoid the junk and hype - with real examples and analysis of ingredients on screen...
Every parent of an autistic child must know this information that is why I want to share it with you for free. And parents with kids that have an any health complaint will also learn a ton. In fact, every parent will learn a lot of value information from each of these courses - so please help me share this information with more parents! Thank you so much.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome back to the Children's Health Podcast, Christian Jordonov here. Today's guest is Sam Young. A little bit about Sam, or Mr. Sam, as his community members call him, is a growth-minded, two-time Fulbright scholar and director of Young Scholars Academy, a strength-based, talent-focused,
00:00:22
Speaker
virtual enrichment school that supports twice exceptional, differently wired, and gifted students to feel seen, nurtured, and happy as heck. Mr. Sam is a new divergent educator who has ADHD. As an ADHD learner, he has committed his life
00:00:39
Speaker
to empower young people to learn to develop their superpowers and lead meaningful and fulfilling lives through strength based education. You can read the rest of his bio in the episode description.
Journey with ADHD and Strength-Based Learning
00:00:51
Speaker
But Sam, thank you so much for joining us today, brother. Thanks for having me, Christian. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about your journey with ADHD and just your journey in general. And once you were diagnosed with ADHD, how did your life change in a way? How did you sort of take it from there?
00:01:10
Speaker
Yeah, I was diagnosed pretty early. I always joke that I was always the kid that wasn't in trouble, but I was being looked after carefully. It was for fourth grade for me here in the United States, or sorry, second grade was the first time. And I very much just had a hard time in school and it really affected me because I felt
00:01:35
Speaker
stupid, right? You kind of can't help but feel less than. It would take me longer to do things. I struggled to get homework done at home. My mom would always support me and help me read. And I could understand the content when someone read it to me, but it was just taking it in and having it kind of input into my brain and then processing it.
00:01:58
Speaker
And that was always difficult for me from a very young age. And it's continued to be difficult my whole life. I struggled in high school. I struggled again in college. And I still struggle definitely today with just just trying to intake information, process it and then do something with it. It wasn't until I discovered probably audio books.
00:02:18
Speaker
that things helped me out a great deal. But when I got into the education role and I became a teacher, I discovered this world of strength-based learning, which really was my saving grace. It allowed me to reflect instead on the things that I do well. We have a tendency, I think, to focus on where we're struggling and trying to bring the bottom up, right? Like fix what's broken, so to speak.
00:02:43
Speaker
When you do that all the time, kind of like we were talking before the show started, you can't help but feel bad. So if I constantly remind myself and other people remind me of where I need to be better, you internalize that and it can be pretty harmful. So once you make a shift, once I made a transition to seeing...
Understanding 'Twice Exceptional' Individuals
00:03:01
Speaker
I'm still making that transition, by the way, focusing on what I'm good at and how I show up and how I offer value for myself and other people, that was a pretty transformative turning point for me.
00:03:14
Speaker
Awesome. So you, you introduced me to this term twice exceptional. Can you define what this means for us?
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah. So like a lot of terms, there's no perfect definition and many different scholars disagree. But the idea behind twice exceptional is that an individual possesses characteristics that are both exceptional strengths and exceptional struggles. So that would mean that we have someone who has perhaps like an above average IQ. They might be like two standard deviations over
00:03:48
Speaker
and have an above average IQ, strength area, ability area, et cetera, take someone perhaps who has autism and has like a 135 IQ, right? They're really intelligent. Their intelligence may not show up for a number of reasons, but they have this intelligence or the strength. And then at the same time, they have because they have autism, they experience the different struggles around that. They might have anxiety, depression, difficulty, regulating, self-regulating, self-soothing, et cetera.
00:04:17
Speaker
And so it's
Strengths in Education and Personal Growth
00:04:18
Speaker
the co-presentation of the strength, the exceptional strength, and the exceptional struggle that makes the dual exceptionalities, what we call twice exceptional, or 2E.
00:04:30
Speaker
Right. And so what is your approach to sort of, I guess this is where the strength-based approach comes in, right? That's right. As I mentioned before we started recording, this definitely resonates with me because like you said, we tend to only focus, like especially for me personally, I tend to focus on what am I currently lacking in my life, in whatever my career, in my fitness regimen, my diet. But
00:04:59
Speaker
And that causes you to forget the progress you've made in the past six months, six years, a decade, whatever else. So how do you go about leveraging this strength-based approach to help folks out?
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. And the key is really talent development. What we do is we focus on what is your strength area? What are you good at? What naturally do you feel called to, right? Humans, especially ADHDers.
00:05:32
Speaker
autistic people focus a lot on, consciously or subconsciously, things that feel good. We pursue our curiosities. We go on extreme binges of content consumption and reading and learning and YouTubing and podcasting, the things that feel good. And
00:05:50
Speaker
As you said, when we stay in the deficit space, it's unfulfilling. I know people who are CEOs, are marathon runners, accomplished athletes, and it's never enough. They're constantly unfulfilled. It's always getting ready for the next thing or fixing the thing that's broken, and it's like trying to fill a bottomless pit.
00:06:16
Speaker
You know, when I struggle with this, it's a big part of having ADHD is that when you have ADHD, you often have anxiety and depression. And when we focus on the deficits, we're constantly feeling a bit emptied, right? We don't feel recharged. When we focus on our strengths, it often takes a mentor.
00:06:32
Speaker
It takes someone else to kind of hold a mirror up to us and say, hey, you are really bright in this place. You really are shining in this place. You're really strong in this place. Let's develop that. And that will be the rising tide that raises all the ships. And one of my favorite psychologists, I always use this quote, but I think it's just it's offers me so much clarity.
00:06:56
Speaker
It's almost silly, actually. He said no one, his name's Dr. Joseph Ranzulli. He says no one cares about Pablo Picasso's ability to do complex mathematics or Einstein's ability to paint.
00:07:11
Speaker
It seems silly, but we don't care about Einstein's ability to paint. He's an expert, complex mathematician, statistician, scientist. We worship him for that. He's become like an icon. Same with Picasso. No one cares about Picasso's math score in 10th grade. It's actually laughable. But why do we do that to ourselves?
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah, that's actually really good. So it's about be so exceptional at what you do that, yes, okay, your dress sense might not be amazing, your social skills might be rough around the edges or whatever else, you know?
00:07:51
Speaker
Does it actually matter in the grand scheme of things? It's about pursuing your passion and your calling in life and maybe even your life's purpose if you're so lucky to know what that is. And then the rest is just minutiae. It's like, who gives a crap what shoes you wore on that wedding? You know what I mean? Like 10 years ago at the end of the day, right?
The Mission of Young Scholars Academy
00:08:15
Speaker
Yeah, and so we believe
00:08:18
Speaker
at Young Scholars Academy is that a lot of the times in education, we punish kids, right? Like, let's say you have an incredible voice, you're meant to do podcasts, you bring out the depth and the complexity in people. And if I were your school administrator, I would say, okay, Christian, I know you like podcasting, but we didn't do so well in science, so no podcasting until we get that science score up, right? And that just doesn't make sense, because here you are now, well, I guess you actually are involved in science, so that's not maybe a good example,
00:08:49
Speaker
Pick another example. And it's so much more apparent when you're an adult, but we do this to kids. So our focus is no matter the age, no matter the struggle, we're going to take kids and give them the content that they crave, that they want to learn, and then we'll bake in the skills around that content. So you have, let's say, a seven-year-old young girl who's really passionate about coding.
00:09:17
Speaker
Well, let's get her in a coding class, even if she's not doing her homework, even if she's struggling to read. You know, again, it's that asynchrony, right? If we realize that it doesn't matter, not everyone has to be, you know, good at everything. I think that's outdated. We're not we're not working in factories anymore, or we're going to rotate jobs. We're in an intellectual era where we want people to be not balanced. We don't we don't actually want balance as a society. But education seems to want a lot of balance.
00:09:44
Speaker
Yeah, this education system on my other podcast, we definitely criticize that a lot with many of my guests because it is not only is it outdated, but the very intentions with which it was founded were less than, let's say, wholesome. But tell us more. That's a whole separate topic we can cover. I'll have to come back on the other podcast. I love that conversation.
00:10:10
Speaker
Yeah, we could definitely have you on the other podcast and talk a little bit more about the nitty gritty of that and other things. But tell us more about the Young Scholars Academy that you founded and what's that about and just give it a plug as well so where folks can find it. We'll do that at the end, but let folks know in case they want to Google it while we're talking. When does this episode air? I'm just curious.
00:10:37
Speaker
Uh, next, probably next week sometimes. Okay. So yeah. Okay. So we're a virtual enrichment program and, um, the idea is to take the students together and steep them in their strength as said, but one of the big visions is this it's become very clear in
Global Expansion and Challenges
00:10:52
Speaker
my experience. I worked at the first school that ever taught twice exceptional students. I taught there for about 10 years and I had a realization like many people during the pandemic.
00:11:03
Speaker
It became apparent to me that what we were doing here in Los Angeles was really special. And with the adoption of the internet, Zoom connection, I realized, oh my goodness, we could do this for the whole world. We could take these students who are often, they're stuck, they're marooned, they're alone. Sometimes they're bullied, they're picked on, they're misunderstood. And we could bring them together from all over the world and we could pair them with mentors.
00:11:30
Speaker
so they could look around at other kids who are just like them. Even if they don't know that that exists, they're not alone, they do exist. And then we could give them adults like you, like myself, who are maybe like them grown up and we can help them realize that everything's going to be okay. They can explore their passions, they're beautiful, they're incredible.
00:11:50
Speaker
And we do that throughout currently the summer. We have summer camps. We have 17 different camps. And again, it's all the unconventional stuff that our kids love. You know, I like to say when you're in university and you take like an introductory course, it's kind of boring, right? But when you get into the nitty gritty, the niche stuff, you know, instead of World War history, and you know, we get into like
00:12:15
Speaker
Women in the world wars in Europe, right? That's way more interesting. So the classes that we offer are Like that we have like World War one or World War two weapons We have you know putting together a like a full play like a drama production and we have coding robotics engineering debate cryptocurrency investing, you know all of these different things that our students are passionate about and we do it in
00:12:42
Speaker
for seven, eight, nine, 10-year-olds all the way up to 18-year-olds. And so we do that all summer. And then during the school year, we also have courses. So that's all at youngscholarsacademy.org, by the way. Sorry.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah, and we have all the links, of course, in the description. So are the classes taught live or are they pre-recorded? Are kids able to raise a hand, ask questions? How does it work? Totally. So we are virtual and live. They're small classes. Some of them only allow six students, because we know our students need a lot of attention, and they can get social anxiety in big settings.
00:13:22
Speaker
We don't even require our cameras to be on. For some of our students, they'll often come in in the beginning and they're a bit timid. And usually by the fifth day, you can't get them to stop talking. So it's a really intimate experience. And many of them, like 93% of our families stay for at least one year. So people aren't coming in and going. They come in and they stay and they join. I call this a virtual village because we also have
00:13:48
Speaker
I take all my former mentors and all the top experts in the field, and they come and talk to our families every month. We have fun events like virtual trivia nights, even like an ice cream night, so the kids can just come together and do things that you would do in a classic traditional school.
00:14:07
Speaker
That's awesome. And other than the US, where, what other countries do you have participants from? So it depends. I found it depends on the time of the class. We have.
00:14:19
Speaker
Our earlier classes are more attractive in Europe. Some of our later classes are more attractive in Asia and the Middle East. We have people from, I think the last time I counted, it was about 13 countries. The most popular seemed to be Oceania. So New Zealand and Australia. There's a big desire there when we're getting more and more people from the Middle East. And again, those early classes we have, for whatever reason lately, England, France and Switzerland. So I think we have 13 countries total outside the United States and Canada.
00:14:49
Speaker
And so when did you found the Young Scholars Academy? Sorry, let me just ask the second question as well, might as well. When did you do it and sort of what led you to actually do this? Because it looks like a massive project. Your regular Joe doesn't look like, you know, doesn't look like your regular Joe will do this. So something big must have happened to compare you to do this.
00:15:16
Speaker
Yes. That's a good question, Christian. You are good at what you do, my friend. Thank you. I very much was at the position I was in. I was at this school. It's called Bridges Academy. They are really the flagship school. They had a research center and I started working there a bit. Then they founded a university actually. The high school that I was at created its own research center and then the research center created a graduate school.
00:15:45
Speaker
So I was on path to get my doctorate in education and I wanted more. I was ready to be out of the classroom. I wanted to build something bigger and I was going to try to be the principal at that school and it became apparent that it was myself and this other gentleman and we were kind of going against another for the position.
00:16:09
Speaker
And it was going to take me longer to get there. So it became pretty apparent that he was going to take the position. So I decided, okay, I think I'm going to go elsewhere. So a good colleague of mine, she and I would take our students all over the world. We're incredibly close. Every year for about six years, we would take students
00:16:26
Speaker
to different countries. We'd go to Europe and Asia all over. And I really found that this experiential learning, this idea of doing things differently outside of a school setting was this enriching setting. So I was talking to her about getting the courage for us to leave and start our own school here in Los Angeles.
00:16:46
Speaker
And as we were kind of building up the courage to do that, the pandemic hit. And when that happened, of course, it did not make sense to create a school. Schools were really struggling. And a small group of people asked me to start teaching debate online. So I said, OK, I'll do that. So I was teaching debate online and it really took. And then this was people at my school, but they would ask me, hey, can my cousin join there in Texas?
00:17:14
Speaker
Can my family join there in Florida? And all of a sudden, I realized, oh my goodness, there's something here. I'm going to pursue this. And I realized the difference between the students I was teaching in LA and these students in other places was that what I was seeing from the other students was it would give me goosebumps. I mean, they had never experienced anything unconventional. They were going to conventional schools.
00:17:41
Speaker
They hadn't had like a progressive strength-based education. And watching what they were getting out of just one hour a week, it was like addictive. I just saw this shy kid who would tell me later that they were bullied and that their mom would say, oh, she didn't go to school for a month because she's scared. But here she is in debate.
00:18:05
Speaker
building confidence and persuading other people. And this is really it. And then so I added another class and another class. And eventually I was not interested in my old job anymore. And so I let them know that I was going to leave, left. I finished the year, left. And then it was just, yeah, as you said, the average person would not do this. I think if I knew how much work this
00:18:33
Speaker
Everyone says that at the end of a project or like when they sell it like an entrepreneur that sells the company that gets acquired and they ask him I remember a guy Kawasaki was watching some courses he was doing way back when and he's like
00:18:49
Speaker
would i start a company now startup no i know i because i know how much work takes and i've been in startups and any any startup venture to the written a book for god's sake like you now i want to write at least three or four more books i have ideas for them and everything i've even up outlined and mapped a couple of books already but i'm like
00:19:12
Speaker
I don't have the balls to dive in because I know how much it's going to hurt, how painful it's going to be, and how hard it will be on my family. So yeah, dude, big up.
Support Strategies for ADHD
00:19:24
Speaker
It's awesome. Let's take it back now to the actual ADHD from the perspective of a parent. If, let's say, parents out there listening, if their child is diagnosed with ADHD, what do you think
00:19:41
Speaker
What tips can you give to those folks since you've been through this path yourself? I think definitely helping our students understand ADHD early is one of the most important things. I mean there's a lot of research if we look at like brain scans from neuropsychologists and neuroscientists.
00:19:58
Speaker
You can see the development of different brains especially pronounced in things like dyslexia with with early support and intervention the way in which we can help our students understand their own brain and then learn learn different strategies that's huge. For me there's a lot of.
00:20:18
Speaker
kind of like micro trauma around it because the self-talk is harmful and helping our students understand you're not broken, you're not stupid, there's not anything wrong with you. Your brain just works differently and we're going to have to build different strategies to help you do things. Some things will come really easy and some things will be incredibly difficult. And what we do is I'm a big believer in exposing kids to tons of ideas and having them reflect
00:20:48
Speaker
Does it benefit you more to write things down? Do you have to touch? Does digital work for you? Do you like the urgency of having a timer or is that anxiety producing? Having them exposed to a tremendous amount of different systems
00:21:04
Speaker
And then also understanding at a very high level, like what are the ways in which our brain function? And giving them forgiveness, like the part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, this front part that's behind your eyes, is the part that's in charge of executive function, which is the set of 12 or 13 different skills, initiating a task,
00:21:28
Speaker
Not initiating a task, right? Like, I want to check my phone. No, I'm not going to. I'm going to finish this email. Like these kinds of things are there. They're called executive function skills. And, you know, that part of your brain is developing until you're if you have ADHD or autism, 27 to 30 years old. Yeah.
00:21:45
Speaker
So to get frustrated with ourselves and to get frustrated with our children when they're doing things that are impulsive or not thinking through their consequences. It's kind of like the business example we were just talking about. It's like, if I knew then what I knew now, well, I was in my 20s. So I wasn't connecting the dots or whatever it might be. There's, I think, just a general awareness so that our students can understand their strengths and also have compassion for themselves.
00:22:12
Speaker
And I think it's a good reminder for parents to have compassion for our kids because, you know, it's a lot more obvious when someone has something that's a physical disability or difference. If you see someone in a wheelchair, you're not mad at them for not walking. Yeah. Right. But when someone has autism or ADHD, language processing struggles,
00:22:37
Speaker
not easy to see that and as a result we can get frustrated with them and then they can get frustrated with themselves. So bringing awareness to what they have, bringing awareness to how it affects them.
00:22:47
Speaker
bringing awareness to their strengths and then exposing them, I think, to a ton of different supports and allowing them to build their own, I say like build a Frankenstein system, you know, not that you have to prescribe to any one system, but that we expose them to a bunch of different systems and allow them to build something that's going to make sense for their brain in the way that they were and involve them in it because they'll care about it more.
00:23:11
Speaker
Absolutely. I'm resonating a lot with what you're saying because just over the, in the last, I suppose month or so, I, yeah, in the last month, I ran a genetic test on myself that, what was the name of the damn thing?
00:23:28
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it's called DNA Mind, and it covers genes that are associated in neurodegenerative disorders, such as, you know, Alzheimer's and stuff, depression and mood type disorders, and
00:23:51
Speaker
There was one other thing that I forget now, but my point there is there's a number of genes related to dopamine, the dopamine signaling. And I've looked into my genetics from a few different angles and I have definitely some
00:24:09
Speaker
They're not defects, per se. They're called polymorphisms. So they're genetic variations that basically some of them can create bottlenecks in metabolic pathways. So let's say the metabolic pathway has 10 different enzymes in it, and each enzyme is encoded by a gene. And when you have a variant or a polymorphism in one of the genes, then the enzyme that's part of a chain of, let's say, 10 enzymes,
00:24:38
Speaker
One of these or two or more could be running, let's say 50% slower or could be running 20% slower. So they can create bottlenecks and that can create either a buildup of dopamine. In my case, I have one specific gene, which is the normal sort of the most common variant of the gene where you actually break dopamine down too fast. So my
00:25:05
Speaker
my thinking is, you know, I definitely could at a younger age, certain other factors were, you know, like other stresses, like psychological family stresses and whatever were a factor. And my diet wasn't good, I could definitely
00:25:23
Speaker
it could have led to an exacerbation of these genetic predispositions where I could definitely at one point, I could have definitely thought even myself that I could have ADHD. So, you know, having systems, you know, I've worked out over time, like having systems, like, for example, deadlines seem to help me out. Whereas I suppose someone that is more on the autistic side of things, more on the autistic spectrum, they might
00:25:53
Speaker
get anxiety out of that whereas I get a bit of a buzz and maybe that raises my dopamine and then having my dopamine more sort of normal levels I'm not sort of thrill seeking or constantly novelty seeking which is what
00:26:10
Speaker
having a low dopamine can cause so i love this the idea of figure out what your child and involved in like figure out together as a team cuz your family is a team figure out what the systems can you put in place in the home and maybe even outside of the home in order for that child to thrive based on again you know there.
00:26:31
Speaker
their learning style can you go more into this and maybe give the listeners a little bit more and i'm sure you're quite well versed in what exactly functions are in more detail and you know how can we integrate that with setting up systems based on our children's strengths.
Tailored Learning and Executive Function Skills
00:26:51
Speaker
Absolutely. So one of the things that I do actually probably our top three most popular courses is a course called Young and Thriving Executive Function Systems for Success. And the idea is, first of all, awareness, right? We don't break down tasks into tasks. We break down labels. So we say, like, you're not a good student or you're a lazy student, right? It's a label. Instead of
00:27:20
Speaker
Is it that, what does it mean to be a student? What are the tasks of being a student? There are really three, right? Of course, one is behavior in the classroom, but the other is intake information, process, and then output, right? So it's kind of like behavior intake output. And so we look at a very high level. Where's the struggle? Is it the way in which the information's being presented? Is it the way in which the student's intaking the information? Is it the way in which they're putting it out?
00:27:47
Speaker
So without reflection, a student can look, quote unquote, like a bad student. We refer to this as schoolhouse gifted or not. In other words, your gifts, like a good example, thinking of the Olympics randomly,
00:28:03
Speaker
Simone Biles, one of our greatest gymnasts of all time here in the world and definitely in the United States has ADHD, right? And so she would struggle in the classroom. You put her in a gym, right? Her strengths are showing up. So when we bring awareness to what it means to be like good or quote unquote bad as a student, there's that break it down further. We can say, what does it mean to be in the classroom? Well, if they're struggling to
00:28:31
Speaker
get work done. A lot of the times a classic statement from a teacher is they'll say like, oh, these kids are smart but lazy.
00:28:39
Speaker
It's not that they're lazy, they want to work. It's just that they're forgetting that they have work or they're getting distracted. And so we would then break down, like we said, executive function skills. What are the skills? Well, there's working memory, right? A student's ability to have multiple things going at once. There's, as we said before, task initiation. There's inhibition. Can you avoid doing something that you feel impulsive?
00:29:09
Speaker
There are all of these kind of, I like to call it the air traffic control, right? Like you would see at an airport, the big tower that's directing the airplanes, this plane should go, this plane should not go, these planes go in this order. Or think of it as the CEO of the brain, right? What to do, what not to do. But this is the, it's very much the part of the brain that is responsible for these skills. And just bringing awareness to that, hey, you can have a high intelligence and not get your work done.
00:29:39
Speaker
It's not that you're stupid. It's just that this part of your brain isn't necessarily working in a way in which you're being expected to. And then we can go even further. We can break down really specific things. Okay. Homework isn't getting done. Well, what are the three parts to getting homework done? Well, we have to write it down. We have to capture it.
00:29:59
Speaker
We have to prioritize it because not all work is the same. And then we have to execute it and submit it. Right. So if a lot of the times it's simply taking things that we kind of know and understand and talking about it with kids and giving some level of awareness that these things can all be broken down to their most simple forms. And then within each domain,
00:30:26
Speaker
How do you write things? How do you capture homework? Well, typically it's done in like a notebook that we give our students.
00:30:33
Speaker
But that may not be the way that they work. Maybe they need to use their phone and they need to just do a quick voice note. You know, English assignment, read page one through 18, questions one through five. Do Wednesday, okay? Maybe something as simple as that can allow them to go from not getting anything done because it's difficult for them to, maybe they're dyslexic, it's difficult for them to write. No one ever stopped and asked. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe they need glasses and it's written on the board. You know, it could be something so simple.
00:31:01
Speaker
maybe then they take all of that and they get home and they get paralysis. They don't know what to start with.
00:31:08
Speaker
Perhaps understanding, well, what are the criteria that contribute to prioritizing? You know, as adults, how important is this? When is this due? How aligned is this with my goals? You know, I'm gonna prioritize X over Y. A lot of our students, they don't always have that nuance. They might understand it, but they've never perhaps built a system around it. So can we give each thing weight?
Creative Problem-Solving and Responsibility
00:31:32
Speaker
Sometimes even just flipping the script. I tell students, when you're stuck,
00:31:36
Speaker
give everything a number, a number from the least important to the most important. Or introducing them to like a matrix. Your x-axis is going to be important, your y-axis is urgency. Where would you plot it? And when it gets more complex, it's actually sometimes for certain students at certain times more exciting. You can gamify it a little bit. I love it.
00:32:00
Speaker
And I don't want to go on too long, but... No, no, please, please. It's interesting. Yeah, okay. When we sometimes jump to conclusions... Because I'm trying to get tips for myself as well here. Yeah, I mean, this is my world. I love this stuff. I mean, I literally, you know, I live in this stuff. And it's because I'm obsessed with it. And it's because I've struggled with it. And it gives me kind of salvation. And I think if we can give kids that,
00:32:23
Speaker
they can avoid a lot of the pain and a lot of the struggle. So something that we'll do is like, yeah, help a student understand. Here are 30 different ways that you can do this, this, and this. Let's build something. Let's test it. Let's collect data. Let's review every week for eight weeks or 16 weeks. And let's see what's working. Give it a grade. How's it going? What didn't work? And when they're all presenting, they're kind of inspiring each other as well.
00:32:54
Speaker
And then they offer feedback. And so it's really kind of like a fun social experience that they have. And it's stimulating. You know, again, we take a kid who can play a video game, right?
00:33:07
Speaker
There's not many people who have more like tenacity or like more stick with it. You know, you get to a boss and you die a hundred times, you know, and you keep pushing, pushing, pushing. It's not fair to call that kid lazy. It's just that the homework is maybe not something that they totally understand and can wrap their brain around. So we just expose them to high level stuff. I don't think that we need to wait until kids are, I didn't learn about executive function skills until I was in college.
00:33:36
Speaker
That's a shame. I would have had a way easier life if I, if I could disconnect my intelligence and my doing skills, you know, it kind of gives us grace to like feel okay and understand I'm not broken. I'm not stupid. Just that this part of my brain is operating in this way because I have ADHD and even going full circle to what you said, Christian, there's so many different ways. Even like I'll talk, we have, um, we also have some college courses.
00:34:04
Speaker
So we have like the students are still younger, but we're giving them college level courses. It's something here in the United States called advanced placement, which means they get they take a course, they get a certain score. And then if they get an appropriate score, they actually get credit for university. And one of our courses is psychology. And even just introducing the student, I say like, hey, you know, there's seven or eight different approaches in psychology. So we could look at one problem.
00:34:30
Speaker
from a medical lens, right? Like you were doing with the way in which the brain works and dopamine receptors, we could look at it from like a humanistic lens and we could say, well, it's about, you know, being fulfilled and self-actualizing and you have a hierarchy of needs and you feel this way because you don't feel safe and secure. So of course you can't feel
00:34:50
Speaker
Social, right? We can look at it from all these different perspectives. Evolutionary, right? Why are babies so cute? Why do we love babies? Or why are we quick to compliment people in certain perspectives? Because we want to be safe and we're part of a community and that's kept us alive.
00:35:06
Speaker
Just bringing awareness to these kinds of things, our students have the intellect, they're curious, they're creative, and they're often struggling someplace. And instead of just trying to fix the struggle, if we stimulate them and we expose them to things that are perhaps years beyond them,
00:35:22
Speaker
Right. It's like, it's like having an employee who seems to be lazy and you give them promotion. And then all of a sudden, you know, they have a title and they're stimulated and they want to work hard and they want to impress you. And then they outperform everybody else. You know, it seemed like the least intuitive thing, but it was a genius move. I love that. And yeah, that's what I forget who I was talking to recently that said, you know,
00:35:48
Speaker
You have to talk to your kids like an adult. And I still can't with my daughter because she's like barely over a year and a half. So I'm like, but eventually I'm going to snap myself out of it. But I think it's so true. You have to treat them like adults per se, but you have to treat them like a grown up intelligent human being, like a genuine human being, not like a little
00:36:15
Speaker
you know, fuzzy little potato or something. And I think they definitely feel they can feel that sense of responsibility when you like give them a task in the home or in the classroom. They
00:36:30
Speaker
They step up to the plate. When the stakes get higher, they step up. I can see that even with my daughter already. So I think I love that approach. And I think to be honest, personally,
00:36:46
Speaker
I'm not a fan of the schooling system as we already established, but I think for me personally, I think for many children is because the content is not engaging. I'm part of a conscious parenting community that's just about to sort of get off the ground.
00:37:06
Speaker
And we discussed this on our kind of kickoff meeting last month, I guess. And I love it when people are coming up with out of the box solutions, like those guys, like yourself, because this is what we need to give to kids right now. It's a new world. It's like the institutions will never evolve.
00:37:34
Speaker
in tandem with the actual evolution of society. So we're an entirely new world from when the school system was designed back in the late 1800s, early 1900s. So we need to be now thinking forward thinking and just creating the solutions and with the
00:37:51
Speaker
Obviously with the internet and with smart folks like yourself, we have the power to do that now. So thank you for doing what you do, first of all. But I guess let's get deeper into
Young Scholars Academy Summer Camps
00:38:04
Speaker
it. Tell me more again. I'd love to know more. What does this summer camp look like from beginning to end for a typical student, let's say?
00:38:15
Speaker
Yeah, so I'll take one of our ones that's running right now. It's one of our most popular. So we have a camp called Tools of War. It's World War I and World War II weapons and engineering. And so we will go through different weapons and engineering items that were created during the two world wars, and the students
00:38:40
Speaker
get exposed each day to a particular item and then they do some really critical thinking levels. Here's a primary document image of the item. No context. What is this? Why would this be created? What authentic problem
00:38:58
Speaker
What do you imagine the context for this? Do you think this was created in response to something that came up in the war? Was this something from a prior war? Was it outdated by the time it was created? And then they're getting different primary documents, maybe journal entries from the creator, and they're piecing together the story. And then they'll go through after and they'll look at the true narrative behind it. And then each day the students are exploring the things that interest them. So there's a bit of independent work.
00:39:25
Speaker
And we really believe in these kind of three tiers of learning is that we first expose students and we build their curiosity and excitement. Then we give them a bit of sort of a release of responsibility where they're kind of working together as a group. They're problem solving, they're coming up with problems, they're creating, they're thinking creatively. And then the third part is that they do something that's independent that they own.
00:39:52
Speaker
And so during the week, they're each researching something that fascinates them. It could be a device used for codes to a parachute, to a type of plane, to a type of bullet even. And then they really explore that in depth. They put together a presentation. And it's the thing that, again, as you said, it's something that they own. And then no matter how complete it is, no matter how quote unquote perfect it is,
00:40:17
Speaker
they present it. If they were struggling with the skills to put together the presentation, they talk about what they would have done and what they have learned. If they have a final three minute clip that they made and they edited and they have like a short documentary, they share that. But it's just the opportunity for them to kind of explore content that they're curious about, excited about, ask questions, answer questions. And then over the course of the week, they're
00:40:41
Speaker
taking on more and more. So another example would be we offer speech and debate to really young and older students. And so in the beginning, what does it mean to be persuasive? What are the buckets of persuasion? There's logos, pathos, ethos. And then they might do something like write an advertisement for something they're passionate about. Then we look, OK, now you wrote this ad. Let's reverse engineer that. What are the elements of a persuasive ad? We know that there's types of persuasion, but what are the pieces that you need
00:41:11
Speaker
You have to have this, this, this. Let's change our ad. And then the next day, they're going to get the overall formula for a speech, which is to tell someone what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then remind them what you told them. So they close the loop, and they have total clarity and trust. OK, cool. Now let's have a debate about a topic that you're passionate about. Are schools outdated? Whatever it might be.
00:41:38
Speaker
And then, OK, now we've done that. Well, how do we ask questions? What are the intents of questions? Is it just because we're curious? We start to categorize the questions, right? There's clarification, then there's contradiction, right? There's a hierarchy. OK, now let's put it all together. And then we're going to have a debate about if school is outdated. And you're going to speak for two minutes, ask questions for one, and then summarize for one. So we're kind of each camp starts
00:42:04
Speaker
And one final example that comes to mind is we talk about authentic. We have a coding or engineering or robotic. Actually, they're all good. It's hard for me to talk about just theater even. The kids come in. What does it mean to make a character? What are the elements that go into character creation? Body language, voice. How do you get into the nuance? This character, he's got a limp because when he was younger, he had a diving accident.
00:42:33
Speaker
And it affects the way he trusts people now. These little backstories that make people, what does it mean to make someone human? How do we connect? Oh, it's actually not their strengths. It's their journey, their struggles, their obstacles connect us. Why is Luke Skywalker related to Darth Vader? Because that makes for a way better relationship that we can have with both characters. One has some dark, one has some light.
00:42:58
Speaker
And the other one actually has a little bit of the other, right? And it's doing that. And then by Friday of the camp, they put on a play.
00:43:07
Speaker
You know, they're putting together a whole play. And if they don't know their lines, that's okay because they have them on the screen. You know, but it's just about learning and experiencing and doing it in a safe way where they feel like they can take a risk. Because you as adults, we know the best way to learn is to make mistakes. Yeah. Right. It's to screw up. But schools punish that. So our whole thing is like make a ton of mistakes. That's where you learn. I'd rather you make mistakes than sit quiet.
00:43:32
Speaker
And that's really kind of like undoing that educational model. So the big goal is that they come in and they do something really cool. They do the heck out of it. They build confidence around it. They're worth experts coding an app or doing a theater production or whatever it might be.
00:43:50
Speaker
They get hooked. I mean, they come back. They love it because it feels good. And then they usually stick together for the whole summer. And the best part, and I'll stop. I know it's hard for me to stop talking about this stuff because I'm really passionate, but it gets to a point where they can introduce each other. You know, so I have these two kids in debate I had last week and I made a comment. I said like, oh, and, you know,
00:44:10
Speaker
Jill would do that. Let's say Jill's watching a movie and another student is like, Mr. Sam Jill doesn't watch movies. She loves books and specifically she loves Wings of Fire. I'm like, Luca, I know I've taught her for, but it's cute that you know that, you know, and so it's building that community too. And I think that ends up being one of the most important things.
00:44:31
Speaker
That is really awesome, dude. I wish we had more of that when I was growing up in school. I can't honestly, like I lived in South Africa with my family for six years and school there, it was good.
Personal Growth and Enriched Learning Environments
00:44:46
Speaker
It was, I suppose, more advanced than school in Bulgaria because, you know, well, yeah, the former communist country, you know,
00:44:57
Speaker
really rough in the, in the, I started school in 95 or whatever it was 93, geez, that doesn't matter. 93, yeah. So yeah, you know, you can imagine communist countries, how bad things are. So going to South Africa, it was suddenly, we were suddenly exposed to much, for much more technology to begin with. So we had, and dude, I went there without being able to speak English. So I literally the first year, the first few months was hell.
00:45:26
Speaker
I was crying in my mom's lap every night, same as my sister. But the fact was that we would listen to an audio, like an audio tape, and we would listen for comprehension, and they would answer questions
00:45:45
Speaker
based on what we heard. And we'd never done that, dude. I don't even think people, well, I shouldn't go that far. I had a Walkman back in Bulgaria, but I don't think the schools had access to that level of technology. So then a few months later, a few months later,
00:46:04
Speaker
I had to get up and do a speech and it was something about Buckingham Palace. Dude, I couldn't even pronounce Buckingham Palace. I was there doing a speech mispronouncing the damn words and the teacher. She was so nice.
00:46:19
Speaker
Uh, she was correcting me as I go and the kids, they were, they were like, giving me a chance. Cause you know, he's trying this, this motherfucker came here. He couldn't speak at that word. He's putting on a speech now. And like, uh, two or three years later, um, like I was in a competition for best speech, dude. Wow. Yeah.
00:46:41
Speaker
Like, and I was in the debating society there and I was a prefect, which is like a thing in South Africa in the seventh grade. So the point is that enriched environment can like create amazing things for kids. And yeah, the teachers varied, but a lot of them were very supportive. So, you know, you would do, like, I remember I was talking about this on another interview I was doing.
00:47:11
Speaker
Like we would do art projects and I'd be very lazy. I'd be the kind of like leave it to the last moment type of guy and then get my mom to help me with it. So I would be doing these minimalistic collages and the teacher would be like, Oh, you were a minimalist. Yeah, that's cool. It's a thing.
00:47:26
Speaker
Minimalism is a thing. I love the fact that you're not criticizing children for expressing their individuality because that is what the school system is doing. They're trying to cookie cutter us into good little office workers now. And you're doing the opposite. You're letting kids play to their strengths. And over a summer, especially when a person is as young as eight, nine,
00:47:55
Speaker
The amount of progress they can make in any field of endeavor that they set their mind to, if they feel they're in a supportive environment, is tremendous.
00:48:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's exponential. And actually, this school year, we're starting as young as five years old. So we're starting a kindergarten because we believe exactly what you just said, that the earlier the intervention, the earlier the support, the more exponential it will be over the course of a lifetime. So during the summer, we're seven to 18. During the school year, it's going to be five onwards.
00:48:31
Speaker
Everything you just said is exactly the reason why we do what we do. There's two kinds of thought camps, right? There's convergent thinking where we come, we think together. What's the answer? A, right? And then there's divergent thinking. We are in an era in which we need divergent thinking, right? Instead of, you know, what year was the brick invented? Answer D. It's, you know, how many uses can you come up with for a brick?
00:48:56
Speaker
Okay, that second question is far more important in the 21st century because we live in an era now where how do you provide value? Who are the people that we worship? Steve Jobs, George Lucas, Simon Sinek, right? These people that are like different thinkers, but our education system isn't allowing that. I know that's another conversation, but if we can equip our students to think this way, to think differently, to challenge things, to
00:49:21
Speaker
lean into their differences, right? I say the strength that people have if you picture like a bell curve, the strength that they have are the things that are further out towards the edges, right? Again, going full circle, no one cares about Einstein's ability to paint, right? Or Picasso's ability to do math. It's not about how they were like other people, it's about how they weren't.
00:49:42
Speaker
right? And we recently had an open house and we had these like two-hour open houses every two months and we have all the parents come and discover the new courses that we're going to have. We had three families come who are really just like loving what we're doing and they just explain it because I can talk about it all day. But it's not until someone sees like a mom or a dad like them
00:50:06
Speaker
And every parent said the same thing, basically. And they actually laughed about it because they were all like, we prepared notes and we have the same. And every parent said two things. They said, one, this is the first place that we've ever been where everybody says yes to my child. We don't say no, that's wrong. We say, huh, how did you get there?
00:50:23
Speaker
What made you come up with that conclusion and can you explain it? And the other thing that they said is that just their ability to find unique courses that you can't find anywhere else and then study it with kids who were just like them so that they can look around and say like
00:50:40
Speaker
wait, these kids have the same, they like the same memes and they read the same books and they watch the same movies and just knowing that they're friends, right? And that many of them will exchange information and then they'll play Minecraft together and hang out together virtually. And so it's those key elements of, yes, as you said, like not those teachers in your life.
00:51:02
Speaker
They encourage you, you could go this far and then they would be just a little further, supportively encouraging you, keep walking Christian, keep going. That kind of support and push is so important. And then understanding when our students are gonna struggle and saying, hey, it's okay, we don't have to go any further. Because at the end of the day, man, it's just school. When you think about it, it's like,
00:51:26
Speaker
How many times did you have to find the area of a circle or the length of the hypotenuse of a quad, whatever, triangle? A lot of the stuff is BS. And I sometimes do these mental exercises. I try to think, what did I learn in school?
00:51:49
Speaker
that I am using in everyday life. Well, it's more abstract things. It's communication skills and dealing with people, dealing with people one-to-one, dealing with people in groups. There's definitely some things I learned. There's always going to be benefits to everything, no matter how primitive it is. Public speaking, getting rid of the fear,
00:52:18
Speaker
So there's a lot of things that can be learned. For example, this homework stuff, I feel like these kids are spending so much time in school already.
00:52:33
Speaker
Why are you going to burden them with more work at home? I remember I personally had no problem with homework, but my sister, she was struggling with things and my mother was helping her. And I was like cocky as a kid. And that actually worked against me because I was good at the homework, I was good at everything. I didn't have to study for exams or tests. And then when I got to college, I got a big slap in the face. The first year I aced through it, I got the highest ever exam
00:53:03
Speaker
score for the Java programming exams, like 97%. Got the highest ever score of the college ever. But the second year, it was a complete brick wall because to me, it's not about figuring out who the star student, who's bad at learning.
Addressing Masking and Digital Engagement
00:53:21
Speaker
It's about equipping the kids with the skills that they need in order to thrive. And how do you thrive? Well, you have to learn to, what you said already, like a million times,
00:53:31
Speaker
The most important thing is problem solving solving challenges because that is what life is about puzzles challenges and like obstacles that you have to figure creative ways to get around right.
00:53:45
Speaker
Yeah, no, and I think that a lot of our students, going back to like the twice exceptional model, a lot of our students really struggle in that because they are so bright and they've been able to compensate, right? So they may, there's a theory in education called masking.
00:54:02
Speaker
And the idea is that there's three different kinds of masking. It's that you can have a strength that covers your difference or disability. You can have a disability or difference that covers your strength. And then you can have pronounced strengths and differences that cover one another.
00:54:17
Speaker
And a lot of the times, if we have the classic example of someone who's maybe like yourself who's really highly verbal, intelligent, quick-witted, you can cover difficulties and differences up to a point.
00:54:34
Speaker
and everybody has the point where they hit and then it seems like everything falls apart usually here in the united states that's around like eighth grade you know the end of middle school going into high school and then it seems like the students who they always knew the right answer they they memorize things they have a brilliant memory but now it's time to write an essay it's time to do these certain skills and then
00:54:55
Speaker
it falls apart, it starts to come apart. And for me, that was definitely, I struggled a lot in going into high school and then again, going into university like you, where it was kind of easy and then all of a sudden it wasn't. And it was for math, like I just struggled with math a lot. Same here.
00:55:15
Speaker
Yeah, just the skills just aren't there. And then what do you do? You do have to start from kind of from the beginning. So yeah, I completely agree with you. And I think masking helps us better understand how that can present. But it also helps us understand like kind of who may be gifted. Right. And maybe it helps us question people that we think might not be and look at them perhaps differently. Like where are they strong? And is it is it us just expecting them to be strong in a certain way? Or is it actually that they might just
00:55:45
Speaker
this really well-rounded experience that they're struggling here but strong there. Absolutely because like in my sister's case she may have been struggling in you know high school but then in college she was like top of the class like literally and it was a huge class it was like 70 people like there was a bunch of students like 20 students from China like it was a massive class and she was like top top top top of the class all four years so but it's because she learned
00:56:14
Speaker
work ethic, basically, hard work. And yeah, that's I think that's actually it's a good one to learn. Tell me, is there any challenges with this format, the digital format to conducting this work that you do with the kids? I mean, there's always the concern of, you know, students being distracted, right, of, you know, you have a kid who's online who might have like a game up or something, but we're really good. I mean, it's again, it's mostly cameras on.
00:56:42
Speaker
We have we engage the kids a lot. We keep notes on all the students. So we might have a student like so and so likes to play Minecraft, you know, and we'll just have a note and say, like, hey, buddy, I know that you might be distracted. And it's just that constant recognition of redirecting. But that's definitely one of the bigger ones. I think that it can be challenging for some students who who may be. Yeah, they're going to do what feels good, right? And it's not until they
00:57:08
Speaker
can kind of let go of that a bit and then come fully into the class that they then feel really good in the class and then that takes over. But it's just sometimes that transition. Yeah, I think those games, like my older nephew, he's on his phone with the games a lot. I think that could actually be like a way to just avoid maybe perhaps
00:57:32
Speaker
dealing with people or maybe because of, I don't know, anxiety or just whatever reasons, you know, there could be any number of reasons why you don't want to be social in a given time. That could be like an escape. He might not be like with his friends. He might not be doing that, but it could be like a way to channel whatever anxiety or other feeling into the away from whatever is at hand.
00:57:58
Speaker
And I think like you said too, I mean, with education, you know, socializing is changing too. And I think it's kind of hard for parents because we have an idea of how it used to be versus kind of how it is now. But, you know, the reality is a lot of our students are socializing on these platforms. Like they're socializing in games and they're socializing in ways that don't look like socializing to us.
00:58:18
Speaker
And it's just like with education, it's also, I think, important that we should be cautious. We should make sure that there aren't things going on, like genuine tech addiction, you know, because that's becoming an issue, certainly. But also letting go a bit of how our students connect and build relationships because they may be meeting those needs just in a way that we didn't originally see. Yeah, I think what you're doing is great because when you think about it,
00:58:46
Speaker
these kids are going to have screen time every single day of their life. So why not leverage that screen time and learn skills, like all the stuff that we'll be talking, instead of just mindlessly, you know, watching cartoons or, I mean, I guess at that age, well, I guess at that age, you still watch cartoons or movies or playing games, you know, something more engaging or learning World War history through
00:59:11
Speaker
through, especially for boys, like tanks and all sorts of rifles and stuff. That is, you've already, if I was like an eight, nine year old kid, you've already got me. Just, guys, we're going to learn about tanks. Oh, and then accidentally, oh, I know all these facts about World War II and all this history stuff. And, you know, later on in life that creates
00:59:35
Speaker
foundations for and it's like you learn one skill could maybe debating or to write a to create a theater production like you were talking about that is a skill the skill of project management man like learning project management as early as possible is epic because you can apply it to anything writing a book writing and producing a movie
01:00:02
Speaker
Whatever, clean your house, whatever, right? Yeah, no, that's everything. And again, that's the goal. A classic example that we use is a lot of parents, especially of our autistic kids, they want them to take socializing classes, right? Helping them develop the skills and learn
Play and Socialization in Learning
01:00:20
Speaker
the things. And that's important, definitely. But the way in which that's done is horrible. The assumption is, I have to take a class because there's something wrong with me.
01:00:30
Speaker
Versus, you know, you come here, you take Dungeons and Dragons. It's one of our most popular classes. Our kids take Dungeons and Dragons. You have six kids or eight kids playing a quest. You have to take turns. You're gonna have differences in opinion. You have to solve problems together, right? What are we gonna do? Are we gonna fight or are we gonna go? Will everybody present a reason what we should do and then let's have a vote.
01:00:52
Speaker
Okay. Well, someone, someone's really upset about something that someone did. Well, why, what was it upsetting you? Right. So we're doing all of the stuff or doing it in a fun way that they care about. There's no fundamental assumption that there's something wrong with them. They're playing a game. And then all along the way, we're kind of strategically baking in these different opportunities. Hey, we're going to pause and redeflect and we're going to reflect on what just happened. And you know, it's.
01:01:16
Speaker
It's exactly what you're saying with project planning and management. It's doing the things that we know matter in the 21st century, but doing them in a way that feel good so our students will enjoy the process. Yeah, man, like learning through play. It's like literally how kids, like small kids learn. And why should that change in life?
01:01:37
Speaker
It shouldn't. Well, Sam. Yeah, man, exactly. And we have to remember because it's awesome. And this is what my daughter is teaching me. You don't have to. It doesn't have to be so serious. So, man, Sam, that was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, for sharing your insights.
Conclusion and Resources
01:01:56
Speaker
Before you go, please let the listeners where they can find, again, the Young Scholars Academy. And are you on social media? All that good stuff, please.
01:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, thanks, Christian. Now, this was amazing, and you are so good at what you do, and I really enjoyed this conversation. As I said, it was 7 a.m. when we started, and I felt energized right away, so that takes a special someone. So you can check us out, everyone, at youngscholarsacademy.org. That would be the best place to go. We have summer camps that are going until the end of August, and we have fall courses.
01:02:27
Speaker
that start at the end of August and will run from eight weeks all the way through nine months. So we have everything starting very soon. So youngscholarsacademy.org is the best place to go. Awesome. Sam, thank you again, bro. Thank you, Christian. This was amazing.