Melissa Alfred

the voice behind ‘Rewired Learning’. rethinking school for the world our kids are growing into. chasing big ideas + big miles. mom to 3 humans & a pup.

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

Oh and Kate @AustinScholar too! It was so nice meeting you at the Harvard conference a few weeks ago.

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

Parents vs. 37 Experts.

Rate six ideas for fixing schools, then see how 37 education researchers scored them for The New York Times.

I dug into the rankings for my Substack, then built this interactive feature. My biggest gap was AI: I gave it a 6, experts gave it 2.2. https://t.co/vSLujQPVVT

What was yours?
@Alphaschool @nytimes @clairecm @smervosh @ryanalfred @jliemandt

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

I wrote about where I landed, plus the four questions I'd ask at a parent conference: https://t.co/YIUXLzgJX7

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

At a Harvard panel, three education experts @BernerEd @AmarKumarEdu @ClarkRimsza were asked to finish one sentence: "A good school is one that ___." They gave three different answers and never agreed. How would you finish it?

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

@Alphaschool Thanks for sharing! “Hard” and “fun” coexist pretty easily for kids in sports. I’m glad we are asking what that can look like in school, too!

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

My son’s dyslexia remediation showed me what instruction matched to a child could do. A three-month @MentavaInc trial with his younger brother added to that picture.

Why we pursued personalized learning, and how we landed at @Alphaschool

Substack: https://t.co/9O1MQl15M9

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

Almost none of the education argument happening on here reaches the parents who are actually evaluating a school. That's the gap I want to close, from debate into something a parent can use.

I'm here for the argument, by the way. Every side of it is rooted in something true and I think we're all trying to get to the same place of improving children's education.

[Dissident Teacher @educatedandfree]

On AI tutoring, from a veteran public school teacher:

My son was absent from school two Fridays ago, which meant he missed specific instruction on a new topic in Pre-Calc. He had a quiz on it Friday, three days ago. Thursday night, he seriously cut his hand at work (nipped an artery; Urgent Care docs took care of it toote de suite). He's fine, but he was worried he couldn't get enough practice in before the quiz because of voluminous bandaging and the stint in urgentcare.

Enter Claude. When we got home, we sat at the computer and he gave the very simple prompt, "Teach this concept to me."

Claude went through it with him slowly, then gave him practice problems. When my son went wrong in solving one, Claude pointed out his error, gave him the probable reason he made that error, and spooled up another problem to practice on. My son kept at this until he felt confident and was consistently getting practice problems right, as graded by Claude.

At the end of the session, after ~40 minutes, he said, "I bet I have this down better than my friends who only got it in class."

I think he's probably right. I'll let you all know how the quiz went when he gets it back.

When you have a learner who knows what it takes to get to mastery on a topic, they can study on their own. When you have a student who doesn't know what they don't know -- either because of absences, a lack of focus, or poor instruction -- using AI like this can be a huge game-changer.

As a teacher, this is a gigantic win. If I know that I can send a kid home to Claude or Grok or Gemini (YMMV) after teaching them how to prompt for a particular topic in my class, I can get the weakest students closer to the average kids. Once they're closer, I can leverage AI to move the average kids up closer to the best performers.

That means I can speed up the class.

That means ALL the kids can learn more in the same amount of time.

I understasnd the teachers who fear they will be replaced by AI. But a teacher who can outpace AI -- a subject expert with the creativity that comes with expertise and knowledge of her students and the community -- can leverage AI for huge gains in the WHOLE MASS of students. This is much, much better than attempting to triage by teaching to the top OR the middle OR the bottom of the class.

American teachers are currently incentivized to teach to the bottom. This is a huge waste of time for the on- or near-grade-level students and especially the gifted kids in our classrooms.

Play with this teachers. It can be done, and done well. But you have to bring your content expertise to the problem. If you don't have content expertise, you're right to be fearful. So develop it, as fast as you can.

Meanwhile, periodic formative and comprehensive summative assessments should happen in class, on paper, with no phones or laptops, so the teacher knows she's seeing what the kids know, not what they can produce with AI.

AI at home under a parent's supervision is a win for American education, if the American K-12 establishment can dump its sclerotic, fear-driven, adult-employee-centric habits.

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

I’ve been rethinking school.

If we were building school for the world our kids are actually going to inherit, what would we do differently?

AI, individualized learning, mastery, practical skills, less busywork, more joy.

More thoughts at Rewired Learning:

https://t.co/1CZzDKwPji

[Katherine Boyle @KTmBoyle]

“I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do.” https://t.co/PFYcZJUzeW

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

@rachelgoodlad @Alphaschool 💯

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

@lessin My boys would love these! Great idea!

[claire vo 🖤 @clairevo]

Agentic parenting is so unnatural, completely out of touch, "real" moms don't need all this, they keep it simple with the basics:
- mom calendar, dad calendar, school calendar x however many kids, sports calendars x however many kids
- mom email, dad email, school app x however many kids, whatsapp group for each classroom and sport / activity
- shopping list in note or in app or on refrigerator
- meal plans in their brain or on a whiteboard
- pile of mail on the countertop
- group text with mom friends of various sorts setting up playdates and coordinating carpools
- amazon wishlists for classrooms + school supplies
- google spreadsheets for snack signup for class parties and game days
- cobbled together camp spreadsheets + hours dedicated to signing up on various activity platforms
- homework nights bouncing between kiddos trying to remember your 8th grade geometry
- crumpled growth charts at the bottom of your diaper bag from the pediatrician visits
- waiting on hold with the pediatrician to find out if they can email --no, not fax-- vax records to the new school
- looking at your kids pants going wait did you grow out of your clothes again, putting said pants in that "I swear i'll get a donation run in" bag that's been sitting in the garage, forgetting the bag, forgetting to order new pants
- starting your kid on a delightful educational yt channel, looking away for 7 minutes, and accidentally exposing them to bizarro AI slop
- googling "what fruit is my baby" when pregnant
- carrying around a giant binder of printouts appointment to appointment if (god forbid) your child has special needs or a complex health issue
- taking pictures on your phone you never have time to print
- printing "kindergarden handwriting printables" off etsy or pinterest when you notice wobbly writing
- scrolling doctor becky videos on insta when you notice your tween is sassy

"Just be a mom."

FFS

[Adam Lane Smith | The Attachment Specialist @AdamLaneSmith]

New research indicates that fathers build bonds best with their children (and craft secure attachment in them) by "destablizing the child" in a "safe environment. Fathers in the study had a unique ability to make their children laugh and therefore create more perceived safety for the child which led to stronger attachment. Mothers made children feel safe too, usually with repetition and soothing, but the laughing and playing did not make the children as attached as it did when fathers performed it.

Several things jump out from this at me:

First, a father who is relaxed enough to laugh and play indicates a safe environment. Fathers are biologically the providers of safety, so if dad is relaxed, the world must truly be safe. Children may be picking up on this.

Second, being worthy of a father's time and attention is a huge marker for kids. A father's attention may actually mean more in many cases, as we've seen in other studies. The bond with mom is equally as important, but sometimes the bond with mom is taken for granted, where the bond with dad is taken as remarkable due to perceived other demands on his time.

What this means: Dads, you've got to be playing with your kids. As silly and disruptive as possible. They need this from you. It's one of the strongest ways they can bond to you.

More about the research: https://t.co/EQdjHrpGbg

[Melissa Alfred @melissalfred]

Signed a mom of dyslexic children… https://t.co/hDcNVv38UY

[Itamar Golan 🤓 @ItakGol]

What it's like to watch AI fix a bug

[Jason Walls @walls_jason1]

Yesterday Mark Cuban reposted my work, DM'd me, and told me to keep telling my story.

So here it is.

I'm a Master Electrician. IBEW Local 369. 15 years pulling wire in Kentucky. Zero coding background. I didn't go to Stanford. I went to trade school.

Every week I'd show up to a home where someone just bought a Tesla or a Rivian. And every time, someone had already told them they needed a $3,000-$5,000 panel upgrade to install a charger.

70% of the time? They didn't need it.

The math is in the NEC — Section 220.82. Load calculations. But nobody was doing them for homeowners. Electricians upsell. Dealers don't know. And the homeowner just pays.

I got angry enough to build something about it.

I found @claudeai. No coding experience. I just started talking to it like I'd explain a job to an apprentice. "Here's how load calcs work. Here's the NEC code. Now help me build a tool that does this."

6 months later — @ChargeRight is live. Real software. Stripe payments. PDF reports. NEC 220.82 calculations automated. $12.99 instead of a $500 truck roll.

I'm still pulling wire. I still take service calls. I wake up at 5:05 AM for work.

But something shifted.

Yesterday @vivilinsv published my story as Claude Builder Spotlight #1. Mark Cuban saw it. The Claude community showed up. And for the first time, I felt like this thing I built in my kitchen might actually matter.

I'm not a tech founder. I'm a dad who wants to coach little league and be home for dinner. I just happened to build something that helps people.

If you're in the trades and thinking about using AI — do it. The barrier isn't technical skill. It's believing you're allowed to try.

https://t.co/cDVdY5mcLv

[Beff (e/acc) @beffjezos]

SF takes on Wall Street

[Carl Hendrick @C_Hendrick]

When students can’t find the "main idea", the problem is almost never a missing strategy.

[Michael Strong @flowidealism]

My favorite quotation from Maria Montessori is this: The greatest sign of the success of a teacher is that the children are now working as if I do not exist.

This captures something essential. The goal is not to make children dependent on adult instruction but to help them develop the capacity to direct their own learning. In a well-functioning Montessori classroom, you do not even know where the teacher is sometimes. She may be working with a student in a corner. The environment does most of the teaching. The adults create and maintain the conditions for learning, but the children drive their own development.

Montessori's greatest discovery was that students can learn to learn on their own in a developmentally appropriate prepared environment. Many people get stuck on the specific Montessori materials, which are well designed. But the fundamental insight is much larger. If students are surrounded by both learning materials and humans who exemplify the right spirit, and adults only intervene when needed, then something remarkable happens.

When I created Montessori middle schools in the Bay Area twenty years ago, I witnessed the most striking difference I have ever seen in education. The Montessori-raised children immediately began working, taking initiative, choosing what to do and when. The public school transfers were lost. They would stare at their desks until we walked over and helped them plan their morning. It took at least a semester before they could function in an environment that asked them to direct their own learning.

But there was another group worth mentioning. Three girls transferred in from public school with heavy makeup, provocative clothing, and the attitudes of mean girls. Within a year in the Montessori environment, the makeup came off, the clothing changed, and the mean girl masks vanished. At the end of three years, when they had to leave for high school, they cried at the thought of returning to a world where those masks would be required again.

The environment changes the child because the environment is the real teacher.

The future of education is high-agency education. The tech elite are increasingly enrolling their children in high-agency microschools, starting their own, or homeschooling with learning pods. Quality of life, including raising motivated children who love learning, is becoming the ultimate luxury good.

You do not need to be in the tech elite to provide this for your child. You need to understand the principle: children are naturally capable of directing their own learning unless we train it out of them.