Episode 139: The Future of Education with Kirk Spahn of ICL Academy

Kirk Spahn is a fourth-generation educator with more than two decades in the field. After graduating from Dartmouth College, he worked for schoolmaster.net, an early online learning platform based in London. But it was the events of Sept. 11 that inspired him to start the Institute for Civic Leadership (ICL), an award-winning youth educational nonprofit organization.

In this episode, Kirk tells the story of ICL’s founding and the challenges of online learning. He also discusses the importance of mentors in a child’s education, how the COVID-19 lockdown affected online learning, and how he’s developed an academy that attracts top student athletes.

Topics Discussed:

• How he was inspired by the work ethics of professional tennis players

• The importance of resilience in his work

• How he convinced public schools to try out ICL’s curriculum

Resources mentioned:

• ICL Academy website

• ICL Academy on Instagram

• Join the Educator Forever Network

• If you’re enjoying this podcast, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Related episodes and blog posts:

• Episode 138: Supporting Students with Learning Challenges with Emily Levy of EBL Coaching

• How to Get Your First Customer As an Education Business Owner

• pisode 133: Reimagining Education through Makerspaces with David Martelli of Guild Hall Learning

• 3 Teachers Turned Curriculum Developers Share Their "Why"

Read the transcript for this episode:

Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.

Lily Jones

Kirk Spahn is a fourth generation educator with more than two decades in the field. After graduating from Dartmouth College, he worked for schoolmaster.net an early online learning platform based in London, and received his masters from Columbia University in 2001 Kirk co founded the Institute for Civic Leadership ICL, an award winning youth educational nonprofit organization that opened up the NASDAQ Stock Exchange in 2008 and has been featured on CNN, Fox, CBS, WB channel one and discovery for over two decades. ICL has trained 1000s of student leaders, supported hundreds of student led service initiatives and opened a fully accredited nonprofit performing arts school in 2015. Welcome, Kirk. So nice to have you here.

Kirk Spahn

Thank you so much for having me, Lily.

Lily Jones

Absolutely. So I would love in whatever direction you want to take it for you to tell us about your professional journey.

Kirk Spahn

Wow, that's a big question. Yeah, no, I feel like that's a couple of different lifetimes, I guess, I guess we can start to work backwards of how I got here. So my kind of purpose that I found late in life is very much as an educator, is how to create something innovative with a lofty goal of, how do we transform education. My bully pulpit is really that I think the future of education is going to be very hybrid. I have a mantra that says, respect tradition, but embrace tomorrow. So I think the concept of teachers supporting kids and having that actual physical or virtual, kind of what we're doing, just support mechanism from a great teacher is game changing. I think that, you know, teachers represent so much more than just instilling information into kids. I think it's really about building character, building self confidence, awareness, but at the same time, how do we utilize technology to maximize education, to make it more personalized and customized to an individual student that really, you know, I think that they that the concept of "does a child fit the mold of a school" is completely flipped on its head. Now, I think going forward, it's really, how do you put the person first, the student first, and how can we use technology with great teachers to create a more customized and personalized approach for every student? Because we both have kids, and we know that children are not the same family. They're drastically different. And in education, you know, students learn differently every you know, we have so much more data than when I studied education in college, which I think Howard Gardner had think when I was in first in college, it was like nine multiple intelligences, and then over the years, it went to like 16 and 32 and I don't know the number offhand, but I think now it's way, way up there on how kids learn. But my passion for education, I think, was instilled.... I'm a fourth generation educator. I grew up in a family of scholar athletes, entrepreneurs in the education field, starting with my grandfather, who started summer camps. He was a professional basketball player, and he really believed that sports and education could be combined, and he started summer camps that turned into starting an elite private school in the Upper West Side. My father followed suit. My whole family's been in the business. I'm the first generation though of a virtual by no means am I a virtual native. I am not. Technology fears me, but I would, but I did, sort of come of age post college, entering in the virtual world. So my first job was actually at a digital education company called schoolmaster.net. I then worked in Silicon Valley, as I shared with you at Ask Jeeves, they had Education Solutions. And I sort of just realized the power that technology was going to have to completely impact everything about education, how we learn, what we learn. By no means could I have imagined where we are today, and I think that the education field as a whole, should be a pioneer, but the reality with bureaucracy within our education system is that we end up lagging. And it's almost counterintuitive, right? Like I think that the concept that educating this generation should be different than the education that you or I received, or my father received. And the truth is, education sort of prides itself. Schools pride themselves. Like we haven't changed since, you know, we were founded on the Mayflower or what do you know we're the oldest school. We have this tradition, and tradition is great, but as I said, that the mantra of respect tradition and embrace tomorrow, it has to evolve. And, you know, every industry is evolving into more personalization and customization and the user experience, and I think that I was able to take the best parts of education that I saw, and it took 25 years. So it's not an overnight, you know? It's like, Best New Artist, The Best New Artist wins after I remember Adele winning the award for Best New Artist, and she said, thanks. I've been turning years and have like, four albums, but I appreciate the best. Like, yeah, here's think my journey is a little bit the same, which is exciting, because the entrepreneurial path, I think that, you know, from an early age, I was an athlete, and to be honest, I created what I've created with ICL Academy, which, because I wish it was around when I was younger, as an athlete that was excelling in a sport. I was a tennis player, and at first I went to a really renowned, the oldest school in America, the Collegiate School in the Upper West Side of New York. And I love my I love my school, love my friends. Got good grades, but I started to compete at a high level, and I would have to go to Nationals, and I would have to miss school. And I completely understood that if my grades dropped, then I need to change something. But I was getting straight A's and I was still getting really beat down and kind of chastised by the school. Why are you missing school? Well, maybe you should be honoring the fact that I'm representing the school and I'm sort of top in the country, and isn't this great? And I'm and so I thought that maybe I could blend the two. And I had an opportunity to go to a really renowned sports academy that was turning out champions like Andre Agassi and Monica Salas. It was the Nick bullet Terry Tennis Academy, which became img. And what was so crazy when we went there was my parents came down as educators. They saw the school, and they came to me and said, We're so sorry, but we cannot let you go to school here. This is they just care about education. This is they care about your tennis, but we think you're a really great player and you could go far. But we saw this girl from Serbia grunting on a court over there, and I think she would kill you. And we saw a German guy, Tommy Haas, who became two in the world, and obviously that was Monica sell us. And it's like, you're good, but not quite sure if you're that good. And I was bummed I had a chip on my shoulder. I went back to New York and grinded and finished, you know, in a regular school. And to this day, I think, you know, the ability, if I had had the chance to do the training that they did, and have a good education, you know? And I'm proud of tennis and what it gave me. And I played in college and attempted to play after college, not to huge success, but it's a huge part of my life. But I thought, no, no athlete, no one should do that. That shouldn't have to be the problem, and so I think that was a solution that I wanted to solve, and it took over two decades, but I think we're there now. Yeah, so interesting. I love hearing about the different things that you've done and how it led you to this point, and I specifically resonate with what you said about like, not being an overnight sensation, right? Like all the things that we do in our lives build to something, and we're constantly evolving and changing and building to the next thing. So I appreciate that, and I'm curious a little bit more about I know you formed the Institute for Civic Leadership ICL, and I kind of get you know how it came about, but was there a specific moment that you were like, all right, I'm starting this school. Like, how did you actually do it? You know, the it was later in life that I'd realized that my education, the word education, to me, does not encompass a a right year. You know, education isn't from 8am to 3:30pm and then when you pick up your homework at night and five days a week and for nine months a year, education is is 24/7 and to instill a love of learning in kids is huge. And I thought, Wow, a secret could be just, just to, just to engage with them, like, what am I care about I was a tennis player. I sort of was good at math, and again, I was all about getting grades. I wanted to get into grade college, but I didn't know. I didn't understand that math is a tennis court. No one explained it to me, and later in life, I was like, wait, I probably would have been a lot better if, if someone had related it. My passion, which is not that hard to do. And so the ICL Academy, the school that we have now, is actually an outgrowth of the foundation that I co founded over 20 years ago. And it was really the foundation started after the tragedy of September 11, 2001. I had had the ability. I was in my 20s. I was sort of, you know, a time I wish I'd I was like, do I join the Peace card court, Teach For America like I want, I want to, want to have an impact. And especially after the tragedy, so many people were galvanized. Say, what can we do to impact positive change. And I realized that what had been most inspiring to me was the fact that I had been able to be around for whatever reason, these incredible global icons, World Champions. I was working at a record label, and I saw incredible artists like Wyclef and Alicia Keys and just their process that they would do. And I realized that the culture, the MTV culture, had sort of shine that made people out to be overnight successes, but their stories were actually all about just the work put in. And it's the same as an athlete. I then lived with two NFL players, and one of them was like, I did so bad in school. I, you know, I was a dumb jock, and I'm like, but I'm sitting here with you, and you're a pro NFL player, and you, I look at this binder, you just memorize 3000 plays. I go, you. I go, I looked at it. It looked like Japanese, like, it was the hardest thing to learn. I'm like, and you memorized all of them. It's like, Yeah, I had to. That's my life. That's my job. That's my life. I said that. Said, well, wow, you're not. There's no word dumb that comes into that, because it's, it's so fascinating how people's brains can be trained to think they're good at something or not good at another. No, I'm not a math guy. I'm I like history, I like this, and usually in a young age, it's a parent or a teacher that inspires them. For me, I didn't like history when I first so when it was called Social Studies, and I was like, Oh, why do I need to learn about past? And then, of course, I had an incredible seventh grade history teacher that flipped everything on its head and said, you know, if you want to understand today, tomorrow, the next day, you got to know what came before, because we all repeat it, and it just clicks something a history. It just became a voracious, sort of lifelong learner of history.

Lily Jones

So I'd love to hear a little bit more about what ICL offers and kind of your approach to education.

Kirk Spahn

Absolutely. You know, it's funny when people use the word innovation, you're innovative because it's not so much that. I think that the the way that ICL has looked at education traditionally, you know, when you talk to athletes or performers, It's, I have my passion, and I'm dedicating, you know, six, 810, hours a day to my passion, and school is then over here, because when you're younger, it's sort of the future, like, I need this for my future in today's world. And truly successful people, they start their careers early, whether it's a Steven Spielberg making movies with a handheld. You know, athletes obviously start to train incredibly young. And I'll stick with athletes because they're, they're kind of the model that we, that we follow, because you commit yourself so young. And never before has there been a school that says, Okay, I see you. You're passionate about gymnastics or tennis or whatever, we're going to adopt our education for you to weave that in, weave your passion into all the subjects, and then to test you, we're going to say, how do you apply this to what you're doing, what you're passionate about, and we the ICL foundation that I was talking about before was really put in place after September 11 to really try to instill the next generation of young leaders and students The ideas of how to build good character social entrepreneurship. It had been a generation of kind of me, me, like me first. And the truth is that all the speakers and the global icons and celebrities that we'd have come in and talk, so many of them said when I stopped thinking about myself and started thinking about what I could do for others, or what my position could be, what my music could bring to others, what my sport, what I could do to affect change. It propelled them to another level, and that was kind of universal as a universal theme, not anticipated. You know, we invited celebrities to alk about their story. I just wanted to hear kids to hear that when MTV did little snippets and they say, Oh, my God, Beyonce did this. And look what I want, what she has, well, I wanted Beyonce to come and talk about the fact that she speaks three languages and had been singing since she's five, and writes, you know, has it's a great story. The person that found Beyonce is Wyclef, an incredible artist, and I'll never forget a conference for the ICL Foundation. He said, kid said, Man, I want to be you. I recorded a demo. You know, can you get me on MTV? I want your cars. I want your life. And he's like, great, no problem. I love that. I'd love to help you with that. So I have a couple questions. How many instruments do you play? It's like, I don't play one, because I play 23 how many languages you speak? English? I take a Spanish class. He goes, I speak seven. He said, you know, how many journals do you have? He's like, Oh, I write. I got, I got some stuff on a notepad. He's like, I have 106 journals. You know, that's the point, and that's universal, right? That that that comes out from everyone. So at ICL, the foundation really laid the groundwork, because we started getting grants to do really innovative curriculum from the Ford Foundation. Ironically, the MTV Foundation came and supported us, and we talked about, how do we instill character and leadership skills to build entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs the future? And it was great, and we won every award. We opened up the NASDAQ, and that's the front side and the backside was, but we're giving this coursework that we've spent years and millions of dollars to create, and we're giving it for free to the public school system, and they're not using it. It's like, who needs another extra sure. And it was so it was just like, Oh my God, what do we do? Like, you know, we know that anyone that does this, the impact is huge. And it was about 15 years ago, and when I kept seeing technology moving forward and just new technology bringing people closer together, where we would go from having 1000 kids from different schools in a big auditorium or to Museum and they talk and people say, Oh, this is life changing, to now you have zoom. Now you can actually reach 1000s of kids. So we started having that multiplier effect of reaching more and more, but it still wasn't being integrated into schools. And I kind of say the Willy Wonka golden ticket was, well, why not like, why can't I just create a school like I my family's built schools for generations. I know how to build a school. I have incredible access to teachers. I have incredible curriculum, the best in the world.

Kirk Spahn

Why can't I weave these principles into education? And ultimately, the dream was to integrate the kids passions, but it started with hiring and paying a lot of money to teachers to build from scratch. Fast forward to today. You know, this is 15 years ago. To today. You can use AI, which, which educators are so fearful of to actually almost instantly be able to adapt to a student's passion. I mean, you can literally upload the curriculum and be like, make this for soccer players, you know, like, let's ask. And it's just, like, shocking, right? I mean, it's, it's, I'm not giving away the farm here. It's not a secret sauce. It's just that's, that's how we look at it. If we can create something more personalized and customized, and it, it had a snowball effect, right? The Foundation covered, you know, the startup costs. And said, All right, we're going to find great kids. We want to give them scholarships, and we want to build this, and we want to start with kids that are dedicated in their field. And, you know, in marketing, it it's, it's not, it's not rocket science. It was like, Hey, I know as a tennis player that if you're the number one player in the world with a country for your age, other families are like, hey, where do they train? And what do they do about school? And that was sort of the snowball effect for ICl, because, you know, coming up now with, you know, hundreds and hundreds of students, not, you know, and we can keep growing in such a fast clip because we have the sort of top student athletes. We have top performers on Broadway and and movies, and because they they have full time jobs, basically, I look at education as efficiency, right? And you realize that after COVID, COVID gave online learning, a, I think, a negative persona. I think, you know, the small amount people loved it, others were like, This is terrible. And the way that it was executed, like, you know, a Google Classroom and a Zoom account does not a great online school. It did not make a new great school. So, you know that that was sort of the perception, so, in a weird way, everyone, to me, is like, well, obviously COVID helps you so much. Like, not, not really. I mean, it put a kernel in that there was this opportunity. But I would, I would call what ICL is doing, and ICL Academy, the school is sort of online education 2.0 I think, you know, I think the future is hybrid. I think I use a bit of a Warby Parker model, which the dream is to start, you know, Warby Parker started just online, right? Order glass get shipped to you. Great price. You know, we'll beat, we'll beat the price of other ones, and we'll give back, right? You're helping kids learn. So all those, ingredients are key. And I said, if we start online, but look at Warby Parker. Now they'd started to do pop up stores at Southland, cool events, cool places where people and trendsetters were ultimately now there are physical Warby Parker locations all over, like stores. That's sort of how I see the trajectory of ICL, right? It started as a like, say, virtual private school, hybrid, you know, but it moves to hybrid because now we put ourselves in our group of students in training facilities, right? You know, go and train at you're in San Diego, Go down to barnes Tennis Center. There's an education hall like, you're part of ICL. There are numerous students there tier one, or any of these places to ultimately, we can put a model into a full building, but it solves a lot of problems in education, which is, one is budget is huge. I mean, we know that it's, it's astronomically expensive to start a brick and mortar school. Go, go ask LeBron James is, I promise. I think was 100 and 50 million to start. They have to keep raising money every year, and mind numbing, right? And if you can be more efficient, and that's how we look at education, is like the kids learning. You don't have to do busy work, you don't have to do 20 of the same problems. So you get it like show it in three four, and now it's apply it to something you love, apply it to tennis, and then the ultimate form of mastery is teach it to your five year old brother, or, like, tell your grandmother about it. Like, internalize it. So we have this cycle of engagement to application to mastery. Yes, it's like, the depth of knowledge.

Lily Jones

Yeah. I mean, I'm curious too. I like hearing about the connection to people's passions and like their sports or their area of interests. And I, you know, professionally, I'm a curriculum developer. We have a curriculum agency like love creating student centered curriculum. And I'm curious your thoughts. Of, like, I absolutely agree that we should tailor curriculum to students interests. Like, absolutely. And also, I feel like there's value in just learning something, for learning it. And so I'm curious for your thoughts on that, of like, Yes, I love that. Of like connecting things to the soccer field, and like getting you to see the connections. And then also thinking about, like, as you were talking, where it's like, well, what are you learning on the soccer field? Is also perseverance, and it's also going through situations where you don't know how it's going to turn out. And it's also like self coaching and positive psychology, like all that could also be applied to calculus, right? Like, without a direct topic connection. And so I think there's just so many opportunities for like, cross connections that may be beyond what people immediately think.

Kirk Spahn

So you perfectly just, we could just swap roles, because everything you just said is more eloquent than I would put it. But you are spot on. I mean, at the end of the day, that's, you know, I I'll just use myself as an example. You know, I had a great education. I have, I joke to my family, I probably should have gone to degree.com because I have a lot of degrees, but 50% of my learning came from what tennis gave me. So was the grit, the resilience, the perseverance, the teamwork, the empathy, but more more than anything it was, it was survival skills. I traveled at a young age. I lived in India. I lived in Serbia, like right before a war, I lived all over Europe, South America, not speaking the language, and so these life skills. I mean, we joke that we have many unique electives at ICL. I teach a leadership course. We have, you know, different forms of psychology, sports psychology, the business of sport like find out. Let's go deep in what you know. But also you mentioned the love of learning and the transfer application, because I look at the way you prepare for a massive event tournament is the way that you should prepare for your SATs like the same nerves come in, the same thoughts. And so you mentioned kind of personal coaching, and I take no credit for this, besides finding an inspiration and a mentor and a partner who is the godfather of sports psychology, a guy named Dr JIM LEHRER who's written 17 probably he'd correct me, probably in his 19th book by now, but he's kind of a legend. And he said, You know, when it comes to youth, the most important thing is for kids to develop Yoda. And I'm sitting there going, oh, man, you're teaching the force. I'm like, I love Yoda. Like, and he's like, No, I'm like, Baby Yoda, the new one. No, what's Yoda? He's like, how, how a child can become your own decision advisor. So your personal voice talks all about your inner voice, and a lot of times, what happens is your inner voice that nobody hears. Your parents can't hear it. Just yourself. Can tell you I'm nervous, scared, I didn't do enough, I'm not prepared, or I am prepared. I own this. I put the work in. It's your own, and you're right. It applies not just to the sports field or the performance you're going to give. It applies to everything in academics. And I would share with you that we're very lucky at ICL to have global icons and World Champions supporting the foundation. And I kind of pinch myself because what I could try to say, you know, they just, it just, it's who they are. It's innate in them. And what makes them champions is the fact that they put the work in and they are thirsty for knowledge. I'll share with you two great champions, Novak Djokovic and tennis and Bodie Miller, legendary skier, both. I'm not sure. I think they both finished high school, but I wouldn't, I mean, obviously, didn't go into college. Bodhi won a gold medal, you know, for his 18th birthday. Novak, we know is, you know, been a professional tennis player. He won 100 events over 20 plus years. But when you talk to them, they are voracious readers. They are their their need for information is on a different level. They want to learn about the body, mind, spirit, how things work. Everything is just like a sponge, like, Please give me more. Fill up my tank.

Kirk Spahn

And that's education, right? I mean, they've been traveling the world, but they, you know, may not be if you want them to sit down and do a calculus problem, but I guarantee you, if you sat them down and taught them calculus, they would crush it, you know. And you don't really hear people talk about that, because sometimes even the champions have a chip on their shoulder. They don't feel like if they left earlier. One of my greatest inspirations, dear friend, that I love to death, is Monica sell us. And Monica has been given some of the greatest ICL talks, and she's a champion mentor, be above and beyond, board member. And the first time she spoke to 1000 kids, she was so nervous. She said, Kirk, I'm scared. I don't know what to say. I you know, I'm not that in education, like, I don't know if my skills, like I'm a tennis player. To Monica, literally everything you are in your being. I mean, just forget your tennis as a human being, the humility, the way she treats people like the character, every facet of EQ is just supremely high. And, you know, schools and education places talk about IQ and a little bit about EQ, but now it's like emotional intelligence, and how can we test it? And how do we do this? And at the end of the day, there's not a silver bullet for success. There's a process to follow.

Lily Jones

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And I think it's like curiosity is a huge part of it too. Like, it's like passion, curiosity, agency, like the belief that, like, you can go after these things and be passionate about them, but I love all of your examples being broader than people might think right, like it really is about feeding your mind and your body right and like, really going after what you want and thinking broadly about it, that we can get knowledge from so many different places.

Lily Jones

Awesome. All right. Well, thanks so much. Kurt, can you tell folks how they can connect with you?

Kirk Spahn

Yeah, we cut it down to six. PS. I mean, I try to simplify right at the end of the day. A great teacher, a great, you know, educator, a great business person, a great everything, takes what's difficult and makes it simple. Whether you watch, I mean, what do people say about Michael Jordan, Roger Federer, Muhammad Ali, they say Wayne Gretzky, you know, the goats of their sports. Oh, they make it look so easy, right? And we all know that that's anything, but that's sort of the ultimate compliment. You know, great actors aren't acting. They assume the world said it's that way in everything. And so, you know, Albert Einstein take the most confusing things and cut it down. And I think that educators can learn to do that as well. And I think great teachers make complex things bite size and inspiring and make you want more, make you make it resonate, make it understand. Because how many times did we grow up and we thought our teachers just trying to trick us? I remember all the time being like my friends. Ah, teachers gonna try to trick us in the test like, like, I've been a teacher for years, and you want them, but you want to, you want to see, not you want to see how they think right, train the mind, how to think. So at ICL, we try to simplify everything. We have a basic if somewhere to join ICL Academy, I don't care what your passion is, you're going to follow the same kind of roadmap, and hopefully, when you look back, you'd be able to write a college essay putting in part these six PS, the ICL, six PS, which is, how do you take a passion and make it a purpose? And ultimately, when you have a purpose, you're driven maniac. Lily, but passion and purpose don't make someone great. It has to be the process you follow. So you have to create the right process, the right habits, rituals, and that has to be repeated, repeated, you know, on and on and on. And then ultimately, it's perseverance, right? Because nothing is a hockey stick. You're you're never, there's no human that's gonna get all A's, you know, you meet those kids that I need into the freak out if they miss a thing. I'm like, but we all know you learn more from your failures. Like, yes, now if you just get everything right, it's like the times that I learned the most was when I actually did badly on a test and a teacher walked me through and said, You know what? And I and it clicked, and then it stayed longer than just remembering, you know, for the test. And so that's, you know, perseverance is grit, resilience we talked about. And then it's people like the other piece, people like, you know, there is no individual sport, there is no individual education. And look, there are those exceptions there. There are a handful of kids around the world where, you know, in Khan Academy works great for them. They'll just sit by themselves and and just suck in information and become great at that. But most of the time, there are people. You need great teachers. You need mentors, you need peers to drive you good or bad, right? You want to compete. You want to you know, you want to make that next level. And that's all about people. And then the last P that they want to come out with is personalization, right? Everyone's journey we talk about is different, and no two students are the same. And you know, when you talk about you being a curriculum writer, you can't it's like you realize that it's not going to fit everyone. You're going to try your best to think everyone is going to just get it like this. But you also know different students. And I think that in this day and age, curriculum writers is very different. It's, it's, it's, how do we get to critical thinking? How do we get their minds working? I can't. I can only take it so far. And you know, you're going to have different types of students. So those are kind of our 6p that we really try to follow. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think personalization in particular is so key. And like using universal design for learning and having access points for everybody, but also having that path that people can again, going back to the agency, right? Like, you can go in and be like, Hey, this is really an area that I feel passionate about, you know, using some of your PS, and I want to go down this path. I think it's a balance there, and absolutely something that needs to change in a lot of educational spaces without, without a doubt, and I regret I respect you for doing a career. The curriculum stuff is constant. You can take old, old curriculum and add a fresh twist to it and teach it away.

Kirk Spahn

Absolutely anyone interested that has a student, a child, or wants to learn more about the ICL Academy and the way we go about our six PS and you want to enter? It's a school for grades five through 12. We're looking for great teachers. We're looking for great families and students. It's www dot ICL academy.org, and our foundation, if you wanna learn more how we all got started, and what helps fund us is the WWW dot, the ICL foundation.org, and yeah, thanks so much for for having me. It's great. Great chatting with you.

Lily Jones

Wonderful. Thank you so much, and we'll put all the links in the show notes as well.

Kirk Spahn

Awesome. Thanks a lot.

Lily Jones

Thanks, Kirk, great to see you.

Kirk Spahn

Appreciate it.

Lily Jones

it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai