Small Group Learning is a premium form of “concierge” education, where families group their children and hire teachers directly to facilitate a personalized in-person learning experience.
SGL is practiced in various forms by the growing number of Microschools, Pod Schools and Cooperatives across the country. It is both a return to the effectiveness of the one room school houses of the past and a way to propel education into the future when paired with modern logistics and support technology. Though increasingly popular amongst affluent families with the time and material resources required to arrange and oversee them, we believe this transformational learning experience should be available to children everywhere. When compared to other forms of education, on a per student basis SGL is able to deliver better outcomes at a more affordable cost for the following reasons:
Values Alignment
Education is a deeply formational experience. Who a child is influenced by and how they are formed is a decision that belongs to parents alone. SGL represents a whole new world of choice for families and teachers, allowing both to connect with each other around shared values and a common educational vision.
Accountability, Transparency, Flexibility
In SGL, Families partner with and contract directly to professional educators in an at-will, direct exchange of value for service, strongly incentivizing teachers to provide great service that is fully transparent to their paying customers. Teachers are made directly responsible for their learning groups collective experience and can refuse service to any disruptive students or families to help ensure a positive peer learning environment throughout the year. Furthermore, SGL teachers are compensated to serve their students both in and out of the classroom. Students who miss class time are not penalized and will still be supported remotely through digital tools and ongoing monitoring to help parents understand their child’s progression.
Financial Sanity
Research is clear that the vast majority of a child’s elementary education experience is dependent on their particular assigned teacher. Expensive buildings, fancy marketing, and large administration budgets have little to do with outcomes but perpetually inflate costs for families. By significantly reducing these superfluous expenses, SGL lets families attract higher quality teachers with better compensation, while keeping total tuition at a more reasonable level. In many cases, teachers who have been teaching at schools costing 2x-4x more are finding they can be compensated better through SGL while narrowing their focus to half the number of students they are used to!
Understanding the power of Personalization
Small Group Learning also confronts a largely unrecognized, but systemic problem with Private Education models. Exclusive private schools everywhere run application processes to select the best students they can…but then take credit for how successful their students are. The reality is those same students are already high achievers and would likely be successful in any number of education contexts. By contrast, Small Group Learning is focused on creating a transformational experience for any student through highly personalized attention. Families and Teachers must mutually agree to certain expectations of behavior, but children are not pre-screened for their academic abilities to ensure they can move through pre-set materials. With only 8-12 students per teacher, the teacher is able to adapt their instruction to each students individual capabilities.
Those same high performing students? A growing body of evidence shows they do even better within the more personalized environment of SGL, where they are not held back by a pre-set curriculum and a pace designed for the collective average abilities of 20, 30 or even 40 other students. In SGL they can be challenged by their educator to their full abilities. Students with learning challenges? They can still be part of a close knit peer learning community and have an educator who understands them uniquely and is able to tailor an experience to their needs.
The problem…and a solution
Unfortunately, the complex logistics, coordination, communication and commitment challenges associated with forming and sustaining learning groups over time has limited their accessibility…until now.
We are excited to announce our partnership with Edefy, the first Small Group Learning marketplace and logistics platform to bring Families together and let them connect directly to professional Teachers at third party Host sites nearby. Edefy’s mobile app and web platform brings all parties together and through each level of shared commitment necessary to form, launch, and sustain optimized, in-person learning groups each year.
What is Verathon Academy?
Verathon Academy is an education leadership and support organization focused on making Small Group Learning accessible to all. Verathon Academy is a non-profit 501c3 that was founded to develop and expand Small Group Learning (SGL) as a premium elementary education alternative to Public and Private school. We recognize the utility of Public Education, the advantages of Private education, and the privileges of homeschooling, and seeks to combine the best of these experiences into a better elementary education experience for all.
Our vision for Small Group Learning combines the transparency, personalization, flexibility, and relational trust of the best homeschooling cooperatives with the in-person professional teaching, academic rigor, expert network access, leadership support, and overall culture making of exceptional private schooling. Our wonderful team of experienced educators are focused on applying their minds specifically to SGL and sharing best practices with teachers and families who are transitioning to this model of learning. To inform our leadership we Host learning groups at multiple sites on Edefy’s Small Group Learning platform.
Furthermore, Verathon Academy has been selected as Edefy’s official academic leadership partner. In this role Verathon Academy will create a complete playbook for Host, Teachers and Families to unite around if they so choose. Hosts and Teachers are free to follow our program if they wish, or can ignore it completely and come up with their own.
Our goal is to make the transition to SGL as easy as possible, and will therefore provide a default scope and sequence, selected curriculums, curated content and make our guidance available to anyone who wishes to use it on Edefy’s platform. Our education program will be accessible for free to all teachers on Edefy’s platform through our online SGL Teacher support community, which we will be launching soon.
SGL Programs and Costs
Small Group Learning Programs are able to adapt to the desires of families, but generally can be categorized into one of the following types:
Full Time
A professional educator leads and teaches a Full-Time Equivalent learning experience 4 days per week, Monday through Thursday for their assigned families. Because the educator is responsible for all aspects of the learning experience, Friday is dedicated to the teachers administrative tasks, including student evaluations and feedback and planning the coming week’s activities and scope and sequence.
Hybrid
A part-time professional educator partners with homeschooling families to help guide the learning experience throughout the year. Hybrid programs can be from 1 to 3 days per week, with professional instruction, group activities and socialization opportunities on in-person days, with work to be done at home on the off days.
Cooperative
No paid professional. Dedicated homeschooling families gather together on selected days of the week to share instruction duties, do group projects and socialize their children.
The professional educators assigned to Full Time and Hybrid Learning Groups will be equipped to drive the years scope and sequence, curriculum selections, student progression, student progress monitoring, compliance with their states homeschooling requirements, and provide detailed weekly feedback to families.
Costs will vary according to Host Site and Program Type, however, on the Edefy platform, Full-Time program base costs tend to match up with the lower end of private elementary school options in a given geography. In addition, families who help sites fill and are positive contributors to their learning groups throughout the year will see their tuition costs significantly lowered through Earned Rewards each year. Rewards can add up to many hundreds of dollars in savings, reducing the cost of your SGL experience substantially. To browse Sites and view base costs, download the Edefy app at (Website Coming Soon)