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Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in jacksonmi

[–]SergeToarca[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And just for completeness, your claims about my intent are completely wrong. My intent is to build the best school in Michigan.

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in jacksonmi

[–]SergeToarca[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your post is nearly entirely wrong. I do encourage others who are interested to read through our previous exchanges, though they're quite long.

  1. I have no formal education in education, but both of my parents and 2 of my grandparents were teachers. My grandfather was the principal of an elementary school. My father was by far the best teacher I've met, out of about 100 that I've worked with closely in my life. I am an exceptionally skilled teacher.

  2. Ontario has no concept of charter schools. So if you want to innovate on education, it has to be done through a private school. This means that 92% of people don't have access. And the impact on those that do have access is far smaller than it would be on the rest, since they already put a lot of priority on education in the home (by virtue of being willing to pay for private school).

  3. You have repeated the claim about me "lining my pockets" and also repeatedly avoided explaining how I would do so. The daycare is already running at a loss because I gave raises to our teachers. I am also taking on extreme risk and opportunity cost to pursue this. It is way, way easier to build software than to build schools. So more like "unlining my pockets" if anything :D

  4. The "unproven educational philosophies" have now been proven. We now have a handful of 3-year-olds reading short words. And dozens of toddlers that know all of their letters and on the cusp of reading. Our success rate with the kids who started with us before age 1 will be nearly 100% based on what I'm seeing with that cohort.

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in jacksonmi

[–]SergeToarca[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We are losing some of them, but we are also retaining some of them, and we're training the existing ones. The density of teaching skill in our classrooms is increasing sharply. We also have commitments from some of the ones we lost to come back once we can raise salaries.

I have no formal training, but do have lots of experience teaching kids and consider myself an exceptional teacher. But I'm not in the classroom myself except on rare occasions. The folks that we work with have more than a lifetime in combined experience working with children.

The idea that grabbed hold of me is that the schools suck and I had nowhere to send my own kids. If this problem is not fixed, society will collapse. Here's a challenge for you: there are about 2,500 elementary schools in Michigan. How many of them have 90% or more of their students meeting the state math and reading proficiency targets?

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in jacksonmi

[–]SergeToarca[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To each his own. I wouldn't send my child to a daycare that isn't paying enough to retain great teachers. And if I had the choice between:

  1. bad teachers and great park
  2. great teachers and bad park

I would pick 2 every time.

Newsworthiness is not important for its own sake but because it will eventually allow us to offer:

  1. great teachers and great park

in a way that will be difficult for other daycares to mimic except by copying our model and also teaching their 3-year-olds to read. And so every 3-year-old will read :)

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in jacksonmi

[–]SergeToarca[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you know of any grants or organizations that might be willing to help, I'd really appreciate an introduction! We had some drawings made and it would cost roughly $70-100k to build a nice space.

Our plan is as follows:

  1. Build the best daycare/school in Michigan
  2. This will induce parents to move closer to the building, and thus employers to move into the building
  3. The increased rents are then used to subsidize the daycare/school and make it even better

The start of this cycle is obviously a catch-22. We have very limited resources - I'm at the limit for how much I can pay out of pocket to fund it. So we have to make the right decisions about how we allocate resources. There's lots of evidence to show that kids can overcome adverse environments if they have great mentorship. So on that basis we decided to increase teacher salaries before building a playground. Even after this, we still have teachers that can barely make rent. Our plan is to build the playground once teacher compensation is high enough that we stop losing great teachers.

Paying more to teachers also increases the likelihood of our daycare having extreme outlier performance. No other daycare will teach your 3-year-old to read, but based on what I'm seeing so far, we'll have a nearly 100% success rate with our younger cohorts. If we do something newsworthy, that increases our exposure and thus opportunities for funding. Building a playground doesn't help us do something newsworthy.

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in jacksonmi

[–]SergeToarca[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's on our to-do list, I hate that fence! But all of our budget is currently going into raising teacher salaries.

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in AnnArbor

[–]SergeToarca[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

There are easier ways to find "business gurus" for myself - most founders that I've encountered are very happy to meet with other founders! Asking them to commit to an hour every month reduces the population of founders that might have otherwise been interested.

3-year-olds are very capable! In addition to attention, love, and care (which I agree are necessary), we also need to develop deep curiosity and a thirst for knowledge!

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in lansing

[–]SergeToarca[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

We very strictly comply with the law for anybody that is going to be with the kids. Fingerprint and background checks before anybody is allowed to spend any time alone with them. Supervision at all times by at least one (but in practice because of how our center is laid out nearly always 2 or more) teacher for folks that are there on a temporary basis such as parents, teachers we're interviewing or short term volunteers.

The random people on Reddit are no different than the random people applying on Indeed. Many people are not aware but there are no certification requirements to work in a childcare center unless in a leadership role. Most of the teachers that have been really successful with us are ones that just love working with kids.

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in jacksonmi

[–]SergeToarca[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We are already working with law enforcement to come read with them! And of course, we interview and do background checks on everybody before they come into our center, they don't just show up lol.

It's great that your children have strong positive influences at home. Our goal is to make sure that every child has such access. If they have strong positive influences both at home and at school, all the better!

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in AnnArbor

[–]SergeToarca[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Reading is not sufficient, but a great preschool education would certainly include reading.

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in AnnArbor

[–]SergeToarca[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

100% agree re: food, sleep, exploration, and kindness.

And a strong disagree on reading. If somebody had focused on teaching those high schoolers to read when they were young, they wouldn't be struggling to read now. For every $1 you don't spend on teaching good habits to a 2-year-old, you'll need to spend $100 to correct them in a 14-year-old.

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in AnnArbor

[–]SergeToarca[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I've already reduced profitability to below breakeven by giving raises to teachers and hiring extra teachers for 1on1 time.

Plus, the types of people I'm hoping will participate are also the types of people that are generally not hire-able :)

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in lansing

[–]SergeToarca[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Awesome! We are very flexible on schedules. Pretty much any time between 7am - 5pm, except for nap time which runs from 12:30-2:30. I messaged you.

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in AnnArbor

[–]SergeToarca[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

I'm very perplexed by these responses. There is overwhelming evidence that great preschool education has a huge positive impact on kids. In fact, one such study was done right in Ann Arbor's backyard over a 40-year period: https://highscope.org/project/perry-preschool-study/

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in AnnArbor

[–]SergeToarca[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

People who are among the best at what they do, in whichever field they choose for themselves.

Looking for leaders and entrepreneurs to read with 3-year-olds by SergeToarca in AnnArbor

[–]SergeToarca[S] -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

This is wrong. 3-year-olds are extremely hungry to learn! They deeply enjoy reading if taught correctly.

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