Mile High Education Services

Background Statement

Like many entrepreneurial ventures, we got into this by accident. We began as an online publishing company in 2002, making college textbooks. Then we decided to write our own curriculum in 2009 after partnering with (the AMAZING) Lori McCauley, a master special education teacher in Colorado Springs who wanted us to adapt our lesson plans for kids with learning disabilities.

The more we learned about how to do this, however, the more it occurred to us that everyone should learn this way, not just LD kids. The key is direct instruction - constantly asking a student questions about what they just read in order to master basic facts and ideas.

Most classes, from kindergarten to master's degree programs, use the indirect instruction methodology. This is what most of you knew in school: the teacher lectures, you listen and take notes (when you're not nodding off). If you're lucky you might get one class in 16 years that is small enough, with a teacher motivated enough, to use direct instruction.

It is like a breath of pure oxygen. At first it's unsettling because you are constantly put on the spot. It demands your utmost attention, because if the student next to you can't answer a question, it goes to you. It requires you to think on your feet and respond to follow-on questions immediately ("What does intransigent mean?! Is it a verb, a noun, or an adjective? Convert it to a noun!"). It is unnerving because it exposes your weaknesses, but quickly provides a remedy to correct them. In short, it makes you up your game.

After an hour of this, you wonder why anybody teaches any other way. Of course small classes are a luxury, but why should they be? Why not start with what works, then organize your workforce, schedule, and funding around it?

We love classroom instruction and we're good at it, but we also think kids need hands-on activities, and that's why we take them into the field. I first encountered the Leadership Reaction Course when I was at Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia. We worked in fire teams - four Marines who had to run a gauntlet of tactical problems for 24 straight hours, running with a full pack and rifle from one to the other.

It was exhausting. It was also exhilarating. We staggered into this walled compound where a drill instructor casually presented us with a task, usually involving a water obstacle that had to be overcome with some wooden planks and a few ropes, and told us we had fifteen minutes to accomplish our mission. At first glance every one of these tasks seemed impossible, but we found a way.

What better skill to teach young people? It's really the only one that matters because none of us knows what problems they will face in 30, 40, or 50 years.

Yet for 240-plus years, we have found a way as Americans to overcome our challenges. Looking back, it's amazing we have survived this long.

But we have. And America's youth will too, provided we teach them how to find a way.