Mentoring, Tutoring and Experiential Learning with Audrey Wisch, CEO of Curious Cardinals

Audrey Wisch is the CEO and Co-Founder and Curious Cardinals, a global community where K-12 students discover and pursue their passions, build confidence, and unlock their greatest potential with the guidance of college mentors they aspire to be.

Audrey started Curious Cardinals as an undergraduate at Stanford University; after teaching her first workshop on mass incarceration to high school students at the start of the pandemic, Audrey decided to mobilize her most ambitious peers at Stanford and beyond to join her in teaching the topics they were passionate about to K-12 students and serving as their near-peer mentors.

Since then, Audrey has taken time off from Stanford to pursue Curious Cardinals full time, now a community of over 400 college mentors mentoring students around the world. The company has raised $6.8 million in seed funding led by Anthos Capital and Audacious Ventures, and has been featured on CNN and Bloomberg. Audrey was also recognized in the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 Education and Youngest category.


Recommended Resources

• Curious Cardinal student Matthew’s video game that he has been building with mentors over the past two years can be seen here and a video of Matthew + his parents here.
• Failure to Disrupt by Justin Reich
• System Error by by Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami andJeremy M. Weinstein 
• Infinite Game by Simon Senak

Curious Cardinals is Hiring!

Lucy Chen is hiring for two roles on my team. 

Both work directly with the most amazing part of Curious Cardinals: our mentors, a community of the most passionate and ambitious college students in the world! 

1. Mentor Success Manager (mid-level) 

Looking for a system-minded ops person with strong learning background to scale our current ways of supporting mentors and preparing mentors to teach. 

2. Mentor Talent & Community Manager (entry- OR mid-level)  

Looking for a passionate community person to recruit and curate the mentor community. Strongly prefer someone with prior experience managing both virtual and in-person communities. 

Transcript

Alexander Sarlin: 0:05

Welcome to Season Two of edtech insiders, where we talk to the most interesting thought leaders, founders, entrepreneurs, educators, and investors, driving the future of education technology. I'm your host, Alex Sarlin, an edtech veteran with over 10 years of experience at top edtech company. Audrey Wisch the CEO and co founder at curious cardinals, a global community where k 12 students discover and pursue their passions, build confidence and unlock their greatest potential with the guidance of college mentors they aspire to be. Audrey started curious Cardinals as an undergraduate at Stanford University. After teaching her first workshop on mass incarceration to high school students at the start of the COVID pandemic, Audrey decided to mobilize her most ambitious peers at Stanford and beyond to join her in teaching the topics they were most passionate about to K 12 students and serving as their near peer mentors. Since then, Audrey has taken time off from Stanford to pursue curious Cardinals full time. Now it's a community of over 400 College mentors, mentoring students all around the world. The company has raised $6.8 million in seed funding led by anthos capital and audacious ventures and has been featured on CNN and Bloomberg. Audrey was also recognized in the 2022 Forbes 30 under 30 education and youngest categories. Audrey Wisch, Welcome to EdTech insiders.

Audrey Wisch: 1:39

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me today. Excited to be here.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:42

I'm really excited to talk to you. You know, we met a year ago at ASU GSV. And your company has been doing such interesting work. Everybody I've met who works there is fascinating and really dedicated to education. Let's start with just your story. You have an unusual origin story. You started curious Cardinals while in undergraduate. And you are taking time off from your undergraduate degree to grow the company. What inspired curious Cardinals and how do you think about your own educational and entrepreneurial journey?

Audrey Wisch: 2:16

Absolutely. Curious Cardinals emerged super organically. So to give some background, I was a history major at Stanford. I thought I was pre law and had no entrepreneurial ambitions at the time I wanted to be an immigration or criminal justice reform lawyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the dream. And I was teaching English to members of the janitorial staff I had done work before going to Stanford translating I've had been denied asylum forms for Hispanic refugees, and also doing some English teaching. But that fall at Stanford that year at Stanford really nerded out into the pedagogy of teaching a different language and absolutely loved one on one teaching. And then I was sent home from Stanford due to the pandemic and couldn't continue with this organization all I had some extra time on my hands. And I needed to make money as college students do. So reached out to a bunch of families. My parents didn't know many parents with kids. So it was doing a lot of cold outreach. Here's my resume my teaching experience is anyone need a tutor. And I started working with a seventh grader and a ninth grader to help with humanities and Spanish and whatever homework help they needed. And I soon found working with them how disengaged and uninspired they were with what they were learning in school, and how they were absorbing and regurgitating what they were reading in a textbook but didn't know why they were learning what they were learning. And so that inspired me to apply what they were learning in school to my own passions as a history major at the time in hopes of igniting their imagination for what they could pursue and why I realized the problem wasn't that they weren't grasping the concepts. The problem was they weren't critically thinking about the concepts and weren't really able to engage with the material in a way that engaged and excited them and stimulated their mind. And thus were unable to bring their best selves in the learning setting. And kind of thinking bigger picture was realizing that they had interests outside of school, they were reading about some current events that engage their curiosity. But there was a major disconnect between what they were learning in the school day and what they were genuinely interested in about. So that was kind of my mission to marry that gap and get them excited about learning. And they loved it. We had a lot of fun learning a diversity of things, teaching them things that I didn't get to learn till I was in college. And so we we are far away from their actual curriculum and started kind of me teaching them new things every time and engaging on this now what we call like curious Cardinals and exploratory journey, then one of them asked for math help, and I wasn't so passionate about math. So I texted Alec, and that's where my eventual co founder came into the picture. He was an aerospace engineer at Stanford, and he started applying what they're learning and math to how airplanes fly. And again, we They were telling all their friends about us. And we were talking about how effective this learning model was, as well as reflecting on the fact that we were so lucky to have found passions in high school, because that always felt like our North Star that fueled our motivation to work hard to do the extracurricular to study harder for the AC T and LSAT, and ultimately opened amazing doors for us like being admitted into Stanford. But a lot of our peers, it's not like they didn't have any less potential than we did. It's just they didn't find that thing. And so it felt a lot harder to navigate the path forward and find that sense of motivation. So we were talking a lot about how can we help kids find their passion? Where does that happen? And how can we nurture that up experience for students. And then meanwhile, peers of mine at Stanford, were losing summer internships and jobs and looking for something meaningful to do as well as needed to make money. And so I'm a natural super connector. And there I began connecting kids who are coming in referred by their parents to some of my most passionate peers. And June of 2020, we launched our first Wix website, I was doing research for a Stanford professor, and so was my co founder, Alec, but we just were like, Let's do this as a passion project. This is so fun. And this is so rewarding and exciting, and got us really stimulated reflecting back on our own education experiences, and what we wish we could have done differently and what went really well. And so curious Cardinals was born, happened very, very organically that fall of 2020. We said, let's take a gap year from Stanford and do this as a COVID passion project. Never would I have imagined in a million years that I would never go back after that time. But that's how it began.

Alexander Sarlin: 6:31

It's a really interesting story. It's such a meta story, because you yourself, were pursuing a passion project that was sort of, you know, orthogonal somewhat to your existing educational experiences and goals. And part of what curious Cardinals is all about is helping students identify those passions and interests that can allow them to fulfill their curiosity and not be constrained by the curriculum that they're faced with in their high schools are not, you know, they need to get that inspiration. So you're really passing on exactly your experience to your students,

Audrey Wisch: 7:08

we actually we talk about that all the time that our experiences are a microcosm for the journey we're espousing especially that kids are capable of anything, if they have the exposure, take the chance and have a passion for it. And it's funny, because when I started doing this, I kept thinking, well, when am I gonna go to law school, and I had this 10 year life plan set, and it started feeling like I was veering off track. And the more time I was spending, getting to understand the education space, and the more macro problems, the more I realized, like I really love this space, and I wanted to stay here. And I realized that at its core, why I wanted to be the next Ruth Bader Ginsburg was because I was really passionate about individual relationships supporting someone on an individual basis, but that enacting in a systemic change. And never in a million years would I have applied technology as the vehicle to enact systemic change. But I realized at its core curious Cardinals is all about championing individuality and the power of individual relationships, and using technology as our vehicle to do so at scale. So it's still the same, Audrey, it's just a very different application. And definitely our own personal experiences have us thinking about how we can facilitate those type of opportunities for our students.

Alexander Sarlin: 8:18

You mentioned that curious Cardinals was somewhat spawned by the pandemic, which has created a lot of ripples in the education world. And as you focus on individual relationships, it feels like that's really, as you say, the heart of what curious Cardinals does, it's designed around connecting students, usually high school students, or younger to college age mentors. Just to get really concrete, can you give our listeners a little bit of an overview of what that experience looks like from both sides? You know, what does it look like as a mentor coming into that ecosystem? What does it look like as a mentee or a learner?

Audrey Wisch: 8:54

Absolutely. So I think at the core of these personalized matches is really understanding the relationship on both sides, or the individual on both sides. And I'll share kind of the four pillars of curious Cardinals to give the big picture of who we are and our approach and then talk about more of the tactical of how it works. So the four pillars of curious cardinals are one near peer mentorship, learning from a college student who's not too much older in age and yourself so they can set out the path to where they got to and make it feel attainable. We were in their shoes not too long ago, also grew up on social media also had the pandemic halting our education, lots of relatability factors. And it's about making that path to where we got to feel not so intimidating but accessible to is passion based learning. So really trying to start with students existing interests and show their applications. Within that we have three different kinds of swim lanes. There's one students who are in the exploratory journey who are coming to explore a passion. Maybe they have no idea what they're interested in. Maybe they have a vague idea, and they're on an exploration route. We have students who are coming to pursue a passion project, whether they have a very clear idea of a project they want to pursue Mind or have an idea of a passion but haven't actually dipped their toes in it. That's the track they go on. And then third area is kind of general academic confidence and support. So we call tutoring the T word. We don't say tutoring, but it's what people think of as conventional tutoring, but really that through this relationship driven model, and so those are kind of at three different entry points. And the passion based learning approach comes in for the kids who have no idea what they're interested in. Oftentimes, parents say, Oh, my kid can't stop playing video games, or my kid won't stop watching sports. And instead of turning away from that, which feels like the natural inclination, we say, lean into that validate it. If your kids can't stop playing video games, why don't you say want to learn how to code their own video game? If they're obsessed with watching sports? What about learning sports analytics, there's so many ways to start with their existing passions as an entry point into many other interests and disciplines. So that's the passion based learning. Third is project based learning many of our engagements culminating project deliverables not all, but more than anything, it's about the ethos of project based learning. I didn't take computer science in high school, not because I wasn't interested, but because I thought, maybe I'll get a bad grade, and it'll tarnish my chances of getting into Stanford, which is such a terrible reason not to try something. So we aim to detach that fear of failure and encourage exploration. And then the fourth pillar is representation matters. Or we like to say imagination matters. You are what you can see. I was one of the few girls in my honors math class in high school, a lot of confidence in STEM, I probably prematurely D myself a humanities gal. So whether it's your gender, your race, a learning difference, you have an aspiration to be a college athlete, whatever it is that feels most for to your identity. We want to match you to a mentor who you can see yourself in and through those pillars. Our goal is to truly unlock student's greatest potential. How does that tactically happen? On the mentor side, we pride ourselves on recruiting the best of the best college students, the presidents of clubs, the winners of awards, college students have truly demonstrate passion, professionalism are also compassionate individuals who can deal with the sensitive issues that students are coming in with and really help them navigate those issues. It's the type of college student to who gains enormous pride and the ability to give back to a younger person, but they wish they could have told their younger selves. So it's extremely rewarding process. And we pay really well we aim to ascribe a prestige to the role of being a curious Cardinals mentor. So this is meant to be like a really prestigious part time job for college students, as well as a prestigious community to be a part of that. Hopefully, outside of that really meaningful one on one mentorship relationship you have you get access to our other amazing mentors, parents, educators, job opportunities, we really hope it's kind of the gift that keeps on giving. So we have a three part interview process, written interview process, a video submission, and then a live interview process, where we do everything from asking mentors to teach us something where we evaluate their ability to make concepts intelligible to kind of as best as we can in measuring their social, emotional and EQ capacities. Are they able to, as we said, kind of grapple with some of the struggles students are coming with engaged with them well, and then more than anything, we say, being a great mentors, like being a great leader, do you set an agenda when you come to your session? What are our goals for today? How are we going to tackle those? Do you give feedback to your student? Do you ask for feedback. So like the driver mentality that kind of comes with being a great leaders, what we look for in mentors, and then we have an onboarding process as well, once they're accepted, and support thereafter, throughout their engagement, that's when the mentor side. On the student side parents typically, our main avenue for growth is word of mouth referrals, parents tell their friends. And then as you said, I'm on tour, meaning our learners and parents parents help us spread the word by hosting events to introduce us to their friends, which is amazing. I'm so grateful for the generosity of our parent community, it's so motivating as well. But typically, when parents are interested in getting started, they have a consultation call with our team, where they come in and share what they're looking for. And we asked a range of questions. So we can really develop a comprehensive understanding of who their child is and what they're looking for. If they're high schoolers, they typically have their own consultation call as well, because sometimes a high schooler will say very different things than what their parent thinks is the case for them. And so through that, we then try to marry kind of our the information on both sides of who they are superpowers what they like to do in their free time personality, their dream mentor, the dream mentee, and what success looks like in this engagement or the mentors skills able to deliver on that. And then we make a match,

Alexander Sarlin: 14:31

amazing. I mean, such thoroughly thought through principles and processes, to try to create that kind of deep, meaningful relationship and to recruit and then train really, really high performing mentors from colleges. It makes a lot of sense that the business grows that way and that you're able to take your sort of original insight about leveraging or working with students passions rather than steamrolling them and Getting back to the math homework or getting back to the, you know, the essay topic and scaling it. And that's the kind of thing that individual tutors may realize as you did. But to scale and be able to do it again and again, with so many different mentors and mentees of different ages, it's really quite a feat. Yes, you do a lot of traveling to meet your learners and to you know, find out about how their lives have been changed through these mentorship. I'd love to hear a couple of stories. I follow your travels on LinkedIn. But I'd love to hear about Yeah, some of the relationships, these mentor mentee relationships that have been built through the processes that you just named a curious Cardinals.

Audrey Wisch: 15:39

Absolutely. There are so many we could do a whole hour to a road trip, you tell me how many stories you want to hear. But I'll try to keep it short here. I'll share an example of a student who had no idea what they were interested in, fell in that category, and maybe less confident to begin with less conviction in themselves, and then a student who's more in the natural overachiever bucket. But I'm also lucky to since starting, I'm still working with a student who I started with when she was a eighth grader. And now she's a junior in high school, not because I have the time, but because it's enormous ly meaningful for me to be able to see a student develop from an eighth grader to a junior, and hopefully I'll see you're off to college. So that's another experience that has been really, really impactful. But kid who has no idea what they're interested in one of my favorites. His name is Matthew came to us in 10th grade, he had a consultation call with his dad, and we said what are you interested in? He said, I don't know. I said, What do you like to do in your free time when no one's telling you what to do? And he said, I like to play video games. And his dad was next to him and rolled his eyes. And we said, what if you could learn how to as I was saying earlier code a video game. And he was like, that'd be pretty cool. I guess I took a coding course this summer, though, and didn't really like it that much. And we were like, just give it a shot. Let's see how it goes. So we match Matthew with a mentor to learn how to code a video game. This was 10th grade. Fast forward, he is now a senior in high school, he spent one and a half years coding a video game designing a video game literally learning how to do the animations. He worked with a music production mentor mentee pair to do the music. And this fall, he launched the video game with an entrepreneurship mentor. Because self advocacy is also something he needed to work on actually how to get users and how to self advocate and market it. But he has built something phenomenal. I will after this send you his game because everyone should play it. It is more complex than what peers of mine who are engineers at Stanford can build. It's amazing. And this is a kid who it's amazing what he's built. Just the game itself is like you see it and you're like, Wow, this is so impressive. But more than anything, the change in his personality and demeanor, the confidence he has the conviction and who he is. So he's now a senior. And he did the whole college process based on schools that had amazing game design programs. Now it's his dream to be a game designer. And so that's just one of my favorite stories, because the project itself is extraordinary. But also just the competencies developed is so amazing. I mean, it was really interesting. I actually met a person who works at the school he attends, and I told them about him. And they said, really Matthew, and they were so impressed and so generous. But it goes to show that sometimes students don't thrive in the classroom setting or in a certain classroom. That doesn't mean they're not highly capable and curious and passionate. But it just shows how when he found his thing, his true colors shine, and you really did bring his best self out. So that's one of my favorite really proud of him and excited to see what he does. When he gets into college and beyond. There's a student, a Mia, who's been with us for two years, and she's a high school fellow, we have a health fellowship program for some really passionate, curious cardinals, high school students who want to learn more about what it looks like to build and grow education company. But she has done a variety of things. And she came to me this fall and said, I think I have a passion project idea. I'm not sure could I speak with you. And so I don't do the consultation calls anymore, but love to speak with Mia. And Mia said, as you might know, I've had anxiety at times when I've dealt with mental health. And I have a dog and whenever I'm anxious, I get to cuddle my dog. And I realized that the majority of kids, not everyone has a dog and can do that and knows that dogs can help alleviate anxiety. And so I want to bring to market a product that mimics the calming breathing of a dog to support more students who have anxiety or dealing with mental health, which was awesome. She that's an example came with a project idea. She's kind of like where do I begin? I want to do this I care deeply and she has all the ambition and skill sets to bring it to fruition. And so we matched her with a mentor who was also a peer of mine at Stanford, which is so fun when I know people on both sides I used to know all the mentors now less so. And she has interned at mental health startups and part participated in Stanford's prestigious entrepreneurship fellowship. So no one better. And she loves her dog obsessed with her dog. So they meet every week and me after the first session was like, she taught me what a Gantt chart is today and project management tools. So you're learning these skills by pursuing what is a passion project, the thing she wants to bring to life that she doesn't know how. But she's also talked about how amazing it's been to have a really high achieving role model who's also dealt with mental health and have someone to talk to you that makes her feel like it's less stigmatized, because she admires this mentor so much. So they're still working on it, they haven't brought the product to market yet. But that's just a pair where it's really awesome not just to see, it's great to see kids who are struggling where they can find their thing. And kids also who are so high achieving, that kind of need other spaces to be challenged further, or also have big ambitious ideas that sometimes people tell them like, how could you actually bring that to life and go through the process of bringing it to live?

Alexander Sarlin: 20:55

Yeah, you can really see how stories like that are about that sort of fire lighting moment where somebody realizes something that they're actually excited about may not be something in a traditional curriculum, or maybe, and then gets the help and support and mentorship to be able to overcome you mentioned anxiety, or, you know, overcome confidence issues and actually pursue it. I mean, that's the kind of mentorship and sort of, you know, deep semi therapeutic relationship that really, really changes lives. And it's amazing to be able to do that. At scale. I wanted to dig in on those flavors of mentorship. You mentioned earlier you said you know, passionate projects and exploratory journeys, which are, you know, you've been describing just there, they sound just incredibly inspiring. And then there's also the T word academic tutoring, and acceleration accelerated learning, which is really about getting ahead. And some of those, you know, students who are looking to accelerate, I mean, I'd love to hear your take on all of these. But from the outside, it feels like you know, a couple of these are very open ended, they're so inspiring. It's about interests, and a couple seem a little bit more akin to what you'd see in a traditional tutoring company. But I know that's really not the DNA at all of curious Cardinals. I'd love to hear your take on the you know, the difference between these types of parents and students as they come in? And what do you sort of see more? What do you guide people towards within the curious Cardinals system?

Audrey Wisch: 22:21

Totally. And I'll start big picture, our vision is to really be able to support students, the learning journey, people always ask what's the ideal age, and we're hopefully able to support students on that ever evolving learning journey from fourth grade to senior year where they're trying to figure it out. And then when they're ready to go deeper. And we internally are kind of working to develop our own Maslow's hierarchy of learning needs about and if where's the entry point, and what are the nice to haves, because sometimes we are helping parents navigate, they want their kid to win XYZ award, but their kid doesn't even see themselves as a math person are still working through that confidence issue. And so we need to kind of bring it to the basics before we can go on to do the flashing thing. And so it's a constant iteration process, which is one of the most exciting things about building something that you're continually evolving it and growing it. And I get to work with Lucy, who introduced us our amazing head of learning designer to do just that. So in with that learning journey, I like to think of it literally thinking as a journey, like kids have tunnel vision. They are very narrow, often with high schoolers. There's so much stress about college and they're not able to think the big picture of why do I even want to go to college? What do I want to learn in college? What do I want to get out of it? What do I want to do in life. And so I like to think of we bring them out of that tunnel vision to be on the vast mountain tops and see the horizon or like a cardinal bird be able to see the 360 view of all the opportunities out there. And the mentor is not doing the journey for them. It's kind of like your Sherpa as you're hiking Mount Everest, no one thinks it's any less impressive that you hiked Mount Everest, you hike Mount Everest, but the Sherpa was there to guide you. And the mentor is often kind of putting that flashlight to see where they know they encounter those same roadblocks and you don't know they exist and bring visibility to those components of the journey. And often it is to students come in feeling directionless. And even if the end destination we set out to track to initially changes, at least it gives them as I said in the beginning with what Alec and I felt lucky to have found in high school, that Northstar that sense of why we're doing what we're doing. So that's kind of I love a lot of the journey analogies, because I think of it in that way where it is ever evolving. And when I look back, and I've done some journey mapping of the pivotal experiences in my own life, you often don't realize in the moment how things are going to make sense. But you look back in retrospect and are able to make sense and kind of draw threads through things that seem desperate at the time. So we really were excited about kind of building for that as it pertains to what we were command where if students exists, it depends where they're at, we realize that to encourage a student to kind of embark on the passion discovery process, if they're really struggling in school might not always be the right approach. And when we started and offered academic support, we wanted to eventually eliminate it. And then we realized that it was beautiful in our own approach where again, it was more so about the mentorship relationship than nailing Friday's test. And that's when we say to parents who that this isn't a kind of one stop shop Band Aid solution for Friday's tests. This is about building the skills for life. And the way a mentor is going to help a student bring out their best self is through really getting to know them and building a relationship with them, as well as building trust. So that what they say carries weight, and they're going to listen to their guidance. And that takes place over time. So for us, it's all meeting students where they're at most people, it depends, the majority of people come in, like, I really am looking, this is my pain point. And then that often is there's so disengaged, or they're really struggling and lack confidence in themselves in math, or they have this idea but have zero idea on where to get started and have tried a few times and get demoralized. Some people don't and we then try to distill what does success look like here? Like what is the thing that we can best accomplish. And that doesn't have to be the end all be all, maybe that's a prerequisite the thing you initially came here for. But for us, it comes down to meeting students and parents where they're at. And then defining the experience that ensues thereafter.

Alexander Sarlin: 26:26

I really like the idea that the line between academic tutoring and you know, catching up, perhaps for a student or preparing for a test, and passions and finding out who you are and having a 360 view of the world and your potential, the way you're expressing it. You know, the line between them is not a hard line. There's interesting, blurry ideas in there, you can use interest to get students interested in academic subjects. You can use academic subjects or academic assignments to spur passion projects. And it reminds me this is a funny example. But I saw a Maurice Sendak exhibit recently and one of the things in the exhibit is a ninth grade assignment. I think it was ninth grade where it was to write a Shakespeare essay and Maurice Sendak being who he is, did not want to write. And he wanted to draw it. And he convinced he asked the teacher if he could do the whole essay through art. And she said, Sure, and he made these unbelievable illustrations that sort of told the whole story of the Shakespeare book. And he credited her with basically launching his career as an artist giving him the confidence to think I can actually do something meaningful with my art. And it's like such a concrete example of exactly the kind of thing you're talking about with curious Cardinals. How do you inspire students to find their identities in the context of hey, you have an essay to do you have a test to do? Fascinating, fascinating stuff?

Audrey Wisch: 27:55

Yeah, absolutely. I was smiling too, when you said Shakespeare example. Because one of my favorite examples, and I now support my She's a junior in high school, I've started with supporting her with academics, then we did many different passion explorations together before we had the defined learning experience in curriculum we have, and now we're working on her blog, but I sometimes help her in other areas, or we recently had the junior year college discussion. And I was like, you're getting so old, but she was working on a Shakespeare paper last year. And one of the things it's interesting too, is sometimes it's again, for us, it's all about anchoring things in the why. And you would think in most workplaces, if people are just doing for the sake of doing it don't know why their daily actions ladder back to a greater why they will feel disengaged. We don't do the same thing for kids telling them why they're learning what they're learning in geometry, or why they're learning Shakespeare. But I've also realized that's often the prerequisite to struggles with writing. And so we were talking about her Shakespeare paper and brainstorming ideas. I think the assignment was making a scene from The Tempest into a contemporary version. And we were talking through how do they all talk now and they talk on Snapchat, and we they use emojis and we're going through, and then she said, Wait, but isn't my teacher gonna think I'm a bad writer? Then? I was like, whoa, wait, why are you writing this assignment? And she was like, I don't really know. I said, Well, you had the previous two assignments, were analytical, why do you think she's doing this one? And she didn't realize we got to it. I kept asking the questions till she uncovered it herself, that the teacher wanted to show them that the themes of Shakespeare are timeless. So the taking a creative path was actually an awesome way to go. But she felt so lost because she didn't know the why. And so even in academic support, sometimes a kid is like, I don't really get why I'm learning this or why am I having an essay on this? And if you make it feel bigger than it feels, they realize what they're capable of, or, Oh, I get that or Oh, that's pretty cool. And so moments like those are like, just telling her that little thing which might seem so basic On the other side of things was like a huge unlock, and then she was able to run with it. So it's also sometimes about just kind of those unlock moments that someone else can see it you and bringing it back to the why, of course as well.

Alexander Sarlin: 30:12

Absolutely. So I'm sure a lot of people listening to this are educators or are working in traditional school environments in a variety of ways, perhaps through tech. I'm curious if you have a couple of nuggets of advice from your experience, these are such incredible examples about how within the formal education experience within school within, you know, homeschooling within micro schools, they might do some of the things that you're saying that you train your mentors to do, you know, chase the why inspire through interests, like how do you think that these kinds of methods might become, you know, part of education as a whole?

Audrey Wisch: 30:51

Oh, great question. And it's interesting, because we're predominantly working with families, for we are working with a few charter schools, and as one of our core values is serving low income students, not only students whose parents can afford our services. And so part of what's awesome there, too, is working within the school day and running with the curious Cardinals model. But we've kind of from the beginning, gone back and forth. When we first started, we said yes to every opportunity that came our way. And we worked with many schools, and now we're predominantly not, but I think our goal is always to work in conjunction with schools and other educators. Because a child is soon in the team, whatever stage they're at learning experiences, it's, it's so vast, it starts with the conversations they have at a dinner table with their parents to what their teachers are sharing them to the mentor to the coach all the other people in their life. So I am really hopeful about the ways we can further integrate with other educators further integrate within the school day, what the steps to get there look like there's a lot of different potential paths. But there is a need for change within K through 12. Education, I think it's probably very much why you're running this podcast and why we do the work we do. And it feels unfortunately, more tensor animosity than there should be because we all have the same goal. Or hopefully we all want to do what's best for students and unlock opportunities for them and support them to thrive in the world and find happiness and fulfillment. And so kind of a long winded answer. I think there's many possibilities for how again, we can partner collaborate, integrate, as well as a lot we can learn from teachers and our mentors can learn from teachers, they're not certified professional educators. So a core part is they're in that learning journey themselves. So I'm very excited and optimistic about all the different ways kind of the different players in this ecosystem can get together because we're all doing the same thing. And we're stronger together, but unsure of what a scalable collaboration looks like going forward.

Alexander Sarlin: 32:59

I'd love to see that sort of onboarding that curious cardinals, principals onboarding be offered as professional development for teachers. I mean, imagine that world where the student who you help understand that the point of the assignment is timelessness of Shakespeare. Well, if the teacher had been clear about that upfront, in the class said, hey, look, Shakespeare's themes are timeless, let's update it be creative. Suddenly, that changes the assignment for every kid. I just think it'd be amazing to be able to scale some of this thinking, Yeah,

Audrey Wisch: 33:29

I love your ideas, keep them calm, and we can all talk separately.

Alexander Sarlin: 33:34

Yeah, that was thrown out spitballing ideas to amazing entrepreneurs that are doing such incredible work. So I have to go to a little bit of a darker note. And I know this is a little intense. But you mentioned in passing that, you know, one of the things you're recruiting for is mentors who can handle issues beyond pure academics who can actually be mindful who can support people in their sports students in their lives. And we've mentioned that students, you know, have anxiety they have at a record levels. There was a recent CDC report that was pretty shocking about the state of teen girls in the US right now. 57% of girls in the survey said they felt persistently sad or hopeless. That's almost double what it was 10 years ago, 30% seriously considered attempting suicide. Almost one in five has experienced sexual violence in the last year. I mean, we're talking about epidemics of extreme emotional stress. And we haven't even mentioned you know, social media or depression, or anxiety. What is your take on this epidemic? What do you hear from your mentors on the ground about what students are dealing with whether it's pandemic related or just social media related or anything else? I'm curious what insights you've had, as you know, the head of a company that has so many mentors that are really really in deep with students.

Audrey Wisch: 34:56

Yeah. Important question complicated by shin. And just as you said, it seems like these there are clear boundaries between these things. And we are explicit about the fact that our mentors are not certified professional, they're not licensed therapists. And so there is certain boundaries as to what we are feel comfortable with our mentors taking in and knowing and procedures to make sure that elevates to the right support figures and a student's life. But it's inevitable that it comes up. And even sometimes, if a parent stresses that up front, we make sure that that's, hey, my students facing anxiety and would love to work with a mentor who also has dealt with anxiety that the if there's kind of that consent upfront, and explicit clarification upfront of what a student is going through, and how a mentor can work with it based on their own habits, that's really important, but it's really complicated. And there is no shortage of possible causes from overparenting social media, competitive academic and extracurricular expectations, politics that have been really overwhelming and confusing for young people, especially for girls, social injustice, climate concerns, gun violence, like the list goes on for what hours and the younger generation has dealt with and how that is played. It put a toll on their mental health as it pertains to and I'll say I was listening to a pivot stock LOA Kara Swisher podcast a few weeks ago, and they brought on a psychologist, I forget who it was. But they said that the the date item, I'm weary to age myself, but the year that I was born is the year that they've seen a stark contrast in the effects of mental health on young girls. I was born in 2000. And it comes as no surprise because it was such a pivotal part of my in my peers upbringing, it was who knows what how much usage we spent. And when we were growing up, and our bodies were changing, and our minds were changing the type of figures we saw on social media and unrealistic expectations and crazy standards. I know, it's crazy stuff that between ages 12 and 13, the proportion of girls who said they were not allowed to fail increase from 18 to 45%. So there's also the double standard that we hold girls to and the crazy perfectionism that girls feel and the failure to fail, that there are many reasons as to how we raise boys and girls, not all of us but much of society raises boys and girls differently today. Still, even though there's been so much progress for women around the world. So I think just the high high standards young girls hold themselves to and then that coupled with what they're seeing on social media, and the high standards that feel like are just unattainable to them, whether it be body issues, whether it be grades and performance and extracurriculars and trying to be perfect and fit all the boxes. There's just so many pressures that young girls face. And definitely one of the things I was excited about having the opportunity to share insights that I wish I knew when starting curious Cardinals being a mentor for other young women, I call it our unofficial rule of mentorship that it unless they request otherwise, if young girls are requesting help and stem, match them with a woman, because they probably don't even realize the subconscious biases they hold or parents hold, and so on and so forth. So I just think that it's a jumbled response. And I haven't been asked that question before. It's something I care about deeply and think about often. So I wish I had a more thoughtfully fleshed out response. But I think that the confluence of social media politics changes, I mean, I'll name it, the very fact that Roe v Wade was overturned. These are things that make fears and insecurities and pressures that young girls are already facing even more pertinent and even more real, and also demonstrate certain people's perception of women's roles in society and their capacities. So just a lot of troubles even and it comes to the workplace as well. And I think it's whatever problems we're facing in society trickle down to what K through 12 students are experiencing whether people realize it is explicit or not, I'm sure we can talk about what type of education learning are being banned in certain states and whatnot, but it all trickles down. And even the me to movement. I was in high school and the me to movement, and there were cases of sexual assault happening at the same time. And so it's just I think it's a with social media. There's more documentation, more information out there at Stanford, I actually did research on the history of sexual assault narratives from 1969 to 1989. So there's just a proliferation of documentation and beautiful thing about social media is that people can tell their own stories. So there's also more stories being told, which is a positive and opportunity for people to claim their own narratives, but it's it's really it's a lot and I always say, when having conversations about how to help your kid find your passion, like one of the core things is talk Have conversations about social media have conversations about relationships? What do positive relationships look like? This is friends, this might be your first high school crush or romantic relationship like these are things that when they go wrong, they occupy a student's headspace. And then they can show up in a classroom as their best self. So we're all conclude this long winded answer is that to not talk about these things, as parents, as educators, as mentors, is negligent because these are real things students are experiencing and real things that are going to prevent them from showing up as their best self. And so I hope we can have more conversations, because as I said, You're I think the first person to ask you that question. But it's something I think about often and way more dialogue is needed on this topic. Ya know, it's

Alexander Sarlin: 40:45

very clear, you think about it often and have a lot of different, you know, potential suspects or contributors to this sort of mental health crisis that we're going through as a country, and especially young people. I think that was a fantastic answer. And, you know, you mentioned the near peers and years ago, I got a chance to speak to a really eminent social psychologist about this type of one on one relationship and sort of what students are looking for. And he gave me a term that I've used a lot since from the literature, we basically calls them aspirational role models, somebody who is you admire, but they're not that far from you. They're one step ahead on the journey, like you said, a college student, tutoring a high school student, or somebody with anxiety, who's just getting over it, helping somebody with anxiety, who's right in the middle of it. It's a really interesting concept. And I think it's, you know, the amount of academic work versus personal work, you know, that happens in any given mentoring or tutoring session is the ratio is so different based on what's happening in kids lives. And teachers know that to do what's happening in the classroom. So I think that was a fantastic and very thorough answer. And I agree we should all be talking about this more of this crisis is not going away by itself. And those kinds of one on one relationships, that curious Cardinals is building is definitely one of the best remedies there is based on all the research. Before we go, I have to ask you one question. It's just on the top of everybody's mind in ad tech, I've been asking all of my interviews, objects, and you are somebody I'm so curious about how you're going to answer this. Do you see artificial intelligence, serving any role in this type of mentoring or relationship building? Do you plan to use it in any capacity? I curious Cardinals? Do you think it's a threat to the kind of real one on one relationships, you're trying to build the idea of chatbots? How do you think about AI at this moment?

Audrey Wisch: 42:46

Totally, I'm getting very excited about AI. And I will, I've actually, lifelong learning is a core value of ours, a curious Cardinals and so something we all aim to practice on a daily basis on a weekly basis. And one of the things I've committed to learning and understanding is AI. And I have been using chat GPT once a day for the past month. And the more you use it, the more comfortable you get with it, the more you unlock all of its capabilities. So something I'm really passionate about really better understanding and understanding the role that can play i Great a16z article, I just read that on the rise of AI. And kind of what it came down to is despite all the fears, all the schools banning AI and chat GPT and the fears that how this will change school or make it easier for kids to cheat. The truth is if leverage Well, AI has the potential to greatly amplify student's abilities to spend time on critical thinking and soft skills, and collaboration. And so just as I said that she had this assignment and didn't even know the why I'm really excited about how we can learn to leverage AI so kids can spend more time on the critical thinking, because the amount of kids I see struggle, not because of a matter of competence, but more coming down to competence or trying to put together their thoughts on something that they actually don't really have well fleshed out flops on they didn't really have the time to let it marinate. I read a recent study, I forget who it was I'll write it after but a professor who taught her first course to fresh college students in the first semester they did really poorly and she was really upset with the quality of the work. And she put the onus on herself. She said what did I do wrong? And then she realized that these were complex topics and she only gave students like a week for each essay or two weeks for each essay. So she decided to change the nature of her class. So go deep on one thing, and also say give kids opportunity to reflect in their life and take insights as they were going on really become experts on the subject and letting the idea marinate. Let them go really deep with critical thinking and demonstrate their understanding and instead of the previous essays, which were super mediocre and more borrowing other people's ideas because they didn't feel the authority to contribute their own It was truly they felt like they acquired some expertise. So I bring that example because I think there's so much potential for, for the role AI can play in changing the time we spend on the rudimentary, absorb and regurgitate learning a lot, I think we can be a lot more thoughtful about the hours kids spend in school and where that time is allocated. And coming back to that article, one of the the first one, the first kind of header of the article does, with AI, the one on one model goes mainstream. So I actually think it is so so exciting, because there's never going to be more important role for one on one learning, you can't replace relationships, we live in a world of people and humans, and you need to learn how to collaborate with people in the classroom, because one day you're going to be collaborating them with them in the workplace, or in the office or in the political Hall. Whatever it is that we're doing in the world, we need to know how to work and learn from people. And people are going to be able to challenge you and better you and expand your mind in ways that AI is getting to. But there's the power of human connection that's not going to go away. And so I think there needs to be more positive examples of what a redesign school day looks like how we can acquire those basic competencies in in new ways and how that can allow for more time spent on critical thinking or problem solving or creativity and allowing for nurturing innovation. And I think AI gives a lot of opportunity to do just that. The other thing is curious hurdles is very much about personalized learning teacher cannot cater to every student in their classes needs. But curious Cardinals mentor can and AI of course can help create personalized learning experiences for each student based on their learning style, interests and progress. And you can use machine learning algorithms to analyze student data and provide recommendations on content and teaching strategies that best suit suit student's needs. Rather than a threat, I see that as a amazing resource that we can take advantage of to continue improving this student experience, especially as we scale out curious Cardinals. And then the final thing I'm really excited about in the role I can play is data analytics is AI can help you analyze large sets of data to identify trends and patterns and student performance. And then you can use this data to improve your teaching strategies are identify areas where students need additional support and make data driven directions about the decisions you make. And so we get so much data and so much insights about our students. And we talk about it all there only anecdotally as it exists today. There are certain trends I observe, like I've spoken to six parents with twins, boy, girl twins, and the girl is always lacks confidence. And the guy has consistently been a quicker learner, and that affects his twin sisters confidence. So it's only a small sample size. But I was like fascinating. You're the fifth Mother, I've spoken to with the same thing. So that's just a nice example of these random things. We are taking away with the types of questions we're asking you about kids. And so I'm really excited to work with AI experts and learn how we can leverage this to improve learning experiences for other students and parents. So lots I'm really excited about lots to nerd out on. I'm excited for your ideas as well.

Alexander Sarlin: 48:21

I'm also very excited about AI for personalization, for all of the reasons you're saying. And it's really nice to hear that you feel like you can work side by side, I totally agree with this side by side with one on one relationships doesn't have to replace them doesn't have to compete with them. Having a mentor and having an AI support for your pedagogy. It are both incredibly valuable. It's exciting to hear that take on a new technology that is proving to really, really be meaningful in the EdTech space. So we close our interviews with two questions. The first is what is a trend that you see rising in the space? Ideally, something we haven't already talked about, that you think people should probably keep an eye on because you think it's growing in importance.

Audrey Wisch: 49:10

Yeah, of course, the rise of AI, I would say. And this is, again, from my our vantage point, coming out of the pandemic more so than ever, we have seen two things, one of which being parents speaking more about soft skills, I would say pre pandemic, it was a lot more I want my kids to do well on their tests. I want them to do XYZ outcome and more than ever, parents want their kids to gain confidence. Parents want their kids to have engagement. And so I've see so much more emphasis on soft skills, which is a trend amongst parents that I am seeing and it's really interesting how that's coming out of the pandemic and how that's also dealing with the ramifications of the pandemic. The second thing too is I think parents psychology is changing dramatically. I think parents are often the greatest resistance to change in education because they think why we turned out okay, we don't want to do it so dramatically differently, it seems kind of scary. And I think the pandemic presented an opportunity where they got a front row seat to their children's learning. And I think more parents than ever are discontent, or finally acknowledging that this doesn't really seem like it's working, or my child still doesn't know how to tie their shoe, or write an email, or the amount of parents who talk about executive function skills lacking like they don't know the things that are going to help them thrive in society and life and making the connection causing correlation with school and like, what are they actually learning from 8am to 3:30pm each day, I think is a is a really huge change. I've observed personally and find it fascinating for what it means for more people being adopters to changing what education looks like for kids.

Alexander Sarlin: 50:57

I love how you phrase that it's a shift in parents psychology with regards to education, instead of sort of assuming the status quo is sufficient. Getting that front row seat to all the Zoom classes. And yeah, has really shifted people's opinions. I totally agree. And we've heard variations of that from a number of different people, including people who do alternative credentialing who do micro schooling, who you know, there's really a paradigm shift from you know, education is always a little subpar, but it's good, it's fine to education, maybe is truly broken, and we should try something authentically new. And I think it's an amazing opening for everybody in this space for sure. What is one resource you would recommend for somebody who wants to learn more about any of the topics we learned, we talked about today could be book blog, newsletter, anything,

Audrey Wisch: 51:48

I was saying initially, this is a hard one for me, because I'm an avid reader and podcaster. I'm an avid lifelong learner, I'll do a few ones. Failure to disrupt was a great ed tech space book, especially when I was starting to build curious Cardinals and thinking about the landscape at large. A book I really love and thinking about ethics and technology is called system errors. It's written by three Stanford professors and talking about how we teach engineers, we teach them to optimize, but we don't ask them what they're optimizing for. And some of the ways in which ethics have gone awry within the tech landscape. And really interesting with thinking about risks within a tech infinite game is another one I love for startup founders by Simon Sinek. On our gender studies, book, gender studies, books, podcast, gender studies are so important. What have minored in femme Jen, like we had I graduated, and I'm a huge fiction reader fiction to nourish the mind fiction to keep you creative person to build empathy. So I've been reading, I love fiction, and I've been reading more than ever. And I think it's especially great as an educator and thinking about creative ways to teach children and that engages them and excites them, it's a little harder for me to put down my fiction books and my business ones, I won't lie.

Alexander Sarlin: 53:04

Fantastic. So we hear failure to disrupt system error, infinite game, read fiction, I couldn't agree with that more. And we'll also put a link to the students game that you had mentioned earlier on that student who changed their whole life to game design because of this type of mentoring relationship. Because I definitely want to highlight that as well. We'll put links to all of those resources in the show notes for this episode, as always, Audrey, which incredibly exciting work that you're doing. And it's really meaningful to hear somebody of your generation and and your entrepreneurial perspective, really, really trumpet, you know, the value of one on one relationships, in education and of passion and interest based education. It's something that I think is incredibly important, and rising interest from many people around the education space. It's great to have you here. Thanks for being here with us on Ed Tech insiders.

Audrey Wisch: 54:02

Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for all of your questions and for leading such a thoughtful conversation had a lot of fun chatting.

Alexander Sarlin: 54:09

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