Why Distance Learning?

Seth Fleischauer (00:00.783)
Hello everyone and welcome to Why Distance Learning, the podcast that challenges misconceptions about live virtual education. Hosted by three seasoned distance learning professionals, myself, Allison and Tammy. Hello ladies.

Allyson (00:12.61)
Hi.

Seth Fleischauer (00:14.381)
We bring you real stories, expert insights, and research-backed strategies that uncover the true impact of distance learning in today's world. And today, what we're going to be talking about is the idea that for some students, the physical classroom isn't just challenging, it's overwhelming. The rigid structure, the sensory input, the one-size-fits-all approach may leave many feeling disconnected, anxious, unable to thrive.

Parents of neurodivergent children often asked, what if my child simply can't succeed in a traditional school? Are neurodivergent students being left behind in virtual learning? Is that even an option? And we will address those questions through the experience of Kate Longworth, CEO and founder of Gaia Learning, a global online school for neurodivergent children. Welcome to the podcast, Kate. Sorry, hold on. Welcome to the podcast, Kate.

Kate Longworth (01:05.522)
Thank you.

and professional.

Seth Fleischauer (01:13.627)
Allison, sorry, is her audio funky for you?

Allyson (01:18.028)
I'm hearing click. I just heard a clicking. Sorry clicking.

Seth Fleischauer (01:21.707)
Yeah, I'm hearing a bunch of clicking happening. Okay. Yeah.

Kate Longworth (01:22.876)
this I heard the click it's just started it's just started clicking so if I take if I take my headphones out and try it without which I normally do it without.

Seth Fleischauer (01:38.999)
Okay. I can.

Kate Longworth (01:39.408)
Can you hear me?

Allyson (01:43.117)
I can.

Kate Longworth (01:45.2)
Do I sound like a normal human that you can hear when we are speaking on a podcast?

Seth Fleischauer (01:45.381)
Keep talking.

Allyson (01:53.132)
Yes.

Seth Fleischauer (01:53.223)
Yes, the clicking is no longer there, which is good. Might have you speak up a bit or I don't know where your microphone is, but if you can get a little closer to it, if that's possible at all. But otherwise, we can probably handle it in post.

Kate Longworth (01:57.648)
for

Kate Longworth (02:05.232)
Yeah, I would say.

Seth Fleischauer (02:10.531)
Okay, so Kate, welcome to the podcast.

Kate Longworth (02:15.236)
Thank you so much for having me. It's very exciting to be talking about something that we live and breathe every day. Share the love, share the news.

Seth Fleischauer (02:24.069)
Can't wait to hear more. One of the other things we're going to dive into is a recurring theme on this podcast, which is the balance between personalization and, sorry, I lost my notes. Sorry. Which is the balance between access and personalization. As Gaia learning expands, how can it scale effectively, which is a natural outcome of increased access, while maintaining the personalized culture that makes it successful?

So that's something we'll also be diving into. And through all this, we'll be exploring the perception. We explore these perceptions here on this program that people have of distance learning. The perception we're addressing today is distance learning is not for marginalized communities. We're going to unpack that and speak some truth to it. But first, Tammy, please introduce our guest.

Tami Moehring (03:12.917)
I'd be happy to. Kate Longworth is CEO and founder of Gaia Learning, a global online school for neurodivergent children. Kate has worked across education for 15 years, helping young people to develop learning pathways and innovative solutions. As a parent of a neurodivergent and neuro-typical child, Kate has a unique insight into the challenges of special education children and parents worldwide.

Kate leads a team of 14 educators to deliver online classes and courses for learners around the world, enabling young people to experience and benefit from personalized education and thrive. So with this in mind, Kate, what led you to founding Gaia Learning and what do you credit for your success thus far?

Kate Longworth (04:00.916)
my goodness, well doesn't that sound like a great organisation? So I'm a little bit like, woo! I love it when people tell us about what we do and share the passion. So first and foremost, my daughter has a plenty handful of challenges. And actually, new news, she only got her dyslexia diagnosis only last week. So, know, news shot, exclusive, all that jazz.

Seth Fleischauer (04:05.541)
You

Allyson (04:06.862)
you

Tami Moehring (04:25.917)
wow.

Kate Longworth (04:28.784)
She has a pathological demand avoidance profile, which anybody who knows anything about autism and PDA is one of the particularly exciting and challenging strands. Undiagnosed ADHD and just she's 10. She's coming into her own as a young woman that I think spans and covers lots of other things. So my background, I'm not a teacher. Nobody wants me to teach the children. I lead the business.

Seth Fleischauer (04:56.463)
Hehehehehe

Kate Longworth (04:57.422)
and help our educators. But what I am is I have the privilege of having worked in education in different capacities in leadership and marketing and growth for the past 15 years. But I have the privilege of having birthed a human called Poppy who needs the services that Gaia offer. And so you asked Tammy about what can I attribute to success. And I think as a business owner, we'd love to say marketing and digital ads and, you know, culture.

And actually it's the fact that we have this unique insight into the needs of that child, the families that we support that are like me and the schools, because all of our staff have been in schools, worked in schools, are qualified teachers. And I think at least half of them are neurodivergent and diagnosed or self-diagnosed and have children in that same camp as well. So we're in a, we were kind of a beautiful, unique combination of a variety of things. But yeah, my, my,

My privilege of having Poppy and Annabelle, obviously, two children, and Annabelle gives me a perspective that no other, I believe no other organization can emulate, certainly not easily.

Seth Fleischauer (06:10.319)
Hmm. I love these stories of organic birth, right? This idea of I had this need and therefore I created this solution. think that's just such a hard to find a story that resonates more than that. If we back up a little bit and like look at the data here, right? There's some studies that suggest that for marginalized communities that virtual learning can really work by increasing

Allyson (06:12.344)
beautiful

Seth Fleischauer (06:40.101)
flexibility, providing greater flexibility, removing geographic barriers, and offering personalized support. That really challenges this idea that it's not for marginalized communities. You are coming from this unique perspective, and I'm wondering if, like, what is that perspective? What do you know, having gone through this as a parent, and how does that square with these benefits for marginalized communities? Like, is it just about flexibility, removing barriers,

personalized support, is that what it's about or is it something more that makes Guile Learning tips?

Kate Longworth (07:15.016)
I think there's a few things. I'll start with saying all online learning is not created equal. Like any education setting, like any organization, they're not all the same. And I think we're so quick to be like online works or online doesn't work. And we have that every day with families who say, online doesn't work for my child. He struggled during COVID. And I'm like, I hear you. Trust me when I say, if I throw my child into certain settings,

Allyson (07:20.855)
you

Kate Longworth (07:43.212)
online or otherwise they don't all work so it doesn't work like anything for all children all of the time but when your child will only wear one pair of leggings and socks and they will not get out of bed if those socks are not available and trust me I've done the firm hand in parenting and the sort of time out and all of that malarkey and then you just hit a point and you go something as I knew from birth is a little bit different about this one than this one. So you try all the strategies

And all you actually want as a human is to help your child feel safe and seen. And then if they engage with learning or my life, what's an actual dream. But the parents that come to us aren't coming to us and saying, they need X number of GCSEs or they need to get this at A level. These parents are sat on the floor crying. Their tears, their cup of tea has gone cold. They've not had their breakfast. The child hasn't eaten for.

two days properly because I'll only eat certain types of food in the shops and all of these sorts of scenarios that I and we have been through and live in. And so the statement around who online does and doesn't work for, and we know there's many an online learning provider, that's not new news, but.

If you focus on the needs of that human on a Maslow's hierarchy of needs sort of way before you think about their education, your ability to engage them in the path that they go on has a much higher success rate. You will help them back into our journey is to help them back into like a little sparrow. Off you go back into an educational setting where they can kick a ball with their mates. They can climb a tree. They can play netball at lunchtime. They can moan about each other.

10 year old, right, and a 12 year old, I know how girls bitch, all of that jazz, I want that for them. And so it's about appropriateness. I don't know if you can say bitch in America or on a podcast. Great. So it's about appropriateness of education at a point in time where they need it. And we are having children from around the world, rightly or wrongly, whether you want it or you don't walk towards us and parents walk towards us and say,

Seth Fleischauer (09:36.133)
you

Allyson (09:40.014)
Yes, you can.

Kate Longworth (09:58.614)
All this stuff over here doesn't seem to be working for them. Is there another way that we could try for a bit? Because I've not had breakfast for a long time and my tea's gone cold and I'm crying and she's crying. So how can we move forward with that? And that's very realistically where Gaia came from. And I think hopefully answers the question around, is it for everybody? No. Is it for an increasing amount of people? Cause babies like Poppy exist around the world? Yeah.

And so and if we can answer Seth the question of how you scale an organization with personalized learning and humanity at the core to a global level if we can do that as a community in this podcast now that would be great that would tick my box

Allyson (10:40.631)
Yes.

Seth Fleischauer (10:40.837)
Hehehehehe

Allyson (10:43.472)
Yes.

Allyson (10:47.886)
Wow, that's so, I'm just like processing everything and also trying to myself be like thinking about those types of mornings, what that would look like, how the, how, you know, that really does impact any type of day, way you're starting your day is gonna then have that ripple effect on how the rest of the day will go and how important that is for the personalization, but also the idea of.

creating that learning living environment, being able to have that flexibility that the online setting provides and that idea that it can actually reduce, not enhance stress and anxiety. And even in that way then helps you personally grow as well as academically grow. So I wonder, when you're talking about Gaia, it's more than just the academics, which is amazing. So I wonder how do you help, how do you, excuse me.

How does your approach help students discover their interests and learn more about the ways that they can thrive so that they can then find, you know, what helps them tick and then maybe that's academics, maybe it's a career or college pathway, maybe it's just a better way to have a good day. So I wonder how do you craft that style environment?

Kate Longworth (11:56.208)
So we would all like to use the term personalised 24 seven and deeply personal to me because we all love to think we're special and we're so different for everyone else. And actually the reality is communities exist. People have things in common, challenges, interests, experiences, whatever. At Gaia we have a secret thing behind the scenes where when we are doing what we call a taster session or an explore session with a learner, it's a one-to-one session.

with our head of learning that's then shared with our head of inclusion. And in that session, we're showing the child often, often mom is that usually the female biological care in 99 % of circumstances. So usually mom is there with child on me and child not looking at the camera, you know, no engagement whatsoever. And in that, that assessment as it is to us, it's about understanding.

where is that child at on what we call our tiers? So our tiers one to six, we're looking at are they able to engage with the audience, with our head of learning in any way whatsoever? Are they fully independent learning and actually it's just the format that they need that's a bit different. So we have a tier system and that gives us the insight into where should we start them?

What does a personalized learning pathway look like for that child? Do they need all one-to-one provision? So we have some children who wholly need one-to-one provision. We are their academic framework. We are their entire school. And then we have some children who will just do some one-to-ones and then some group sessions. And then our job is about

bringing them from one tier up to tier six and then releasing them back, ideally back into their, into another learning environment. Or they stay with us for a bit longer, but that's the path that we try and encourage. And so that can take quite a long time. It can take quite a short amount of time. But typically you're talking about a minimum of six to 12 weeks and then they will move on to another setting and then we'll stay with them whilst they move on.

Kate Longworth (14:15.184)
So the creation of that pathway comes down to the experience of our team right from the beginning, having that first interaction with Niki, our head of learning, that is then emulated in all of the sessions that they have with that, the educators have with that child.

Seth Fleischauer (14:32.101)
So I'm interested about this tier system that you have. Is the tier linear? Like do they go from 1 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 to 6?

Allyson (14:33.422)
Love that.

Kate Longworth (14:44.339)
They, they, they, you mean you'd have to say yes, let them move through. They can come in at different levels, right? So for the children who come to Gaia who are maybe autistic, very clearly presenting autistic, maybe are selective mute and have a lot of school-based trauma, emotional school-based avoidance, they might have a very difficult personal, private circumstance around them as well.

Seth Fleischauer (14:48.31)
Hehehehe

Kate Longworth (15:12.972)
We know that encouraging them from day one to go into a group session with eight or seven other GCSE learners is not appropriate. but that's a step, that is a final step to encourage them to then do that class in physical real time with their school. So there's a, we've kind of created and it's a bit of a, just the thing we do, we don't share it with the world, but kind of created our own linear pathways through tiers one to six that have.

certain learner behaviors associated with them, not diagnosis, but things that we expect to see. And again, not academic either, but the sorts of things we would expect to, for that learner to present with in a learning setting. And then the sort, how many one-to-one sessions they have and that path that moves over time. So they can go on that pathway, but it really, it doesn't matter in a sense. It's more about the ambition of helping them re-engage with education and reintegrate to a setting that's right for them.

Seth Fleischauer (16:11.065)
Got it. So these are, it's a set of behaviors that build toward the goal of reintegrating into, I guess I'll call it a more traditional setting, even though you might come along with them to that setting, providing ongoing support, but those behaviors are building towards that not just independence and agency, but also that social ability, right? Is that what you're building towards?

Kate Longworth (16:37.936)
Absolutely, so there'll be some work with that child. One of the questions that we often get is when can they start sessions, when can they start classes? And the child might be at tier one. So you've got, and it's not usually mum, it's usually local authority or teacher saying, know, they can, I'll give you real example. We had a phone call from a mum a few days ago, last Friday. And what they said is the local authority and the school that they're attached to is saying,

this child needs to do academic, they need to do maths, English, science. And that child has got a lot of school-based avoidance, a lot of trauma, has recently had an autism diagnosis, and mum is going, I just want them to have something. Please don't try and force them to do maths, however you do it in a traditional way or whatever. Please don't force them to do that. Can you do interest-based stuff with them? They're really into Formula One and STEM subjects.

Seth Fleischauer (17:33.029)
you

Kate Longworth (17:34.692)
Can you just do some interest-based stuff with them? And if we tell them it's academic, then that's fine. But can we just, we need to build some trust with this child. So we'll do interest-based stuff first, then we'll have some interest-based merging into academic. Then they might join a small group class and then they might move on to a larger, an eight person group class and then hopefully a physical setting over time. So it's really about meeting the child where they are and understanding them and then pulling in.

Allyson (17:44.792)
close them.

Kate Longworth (18:03.296)
other support services that are required. We're not clinical, it's not a clinical pathway in any sense, it is an academic pathway but it's born from the needs of that child and how you engage them versus start-up maths at this particular level.

Seth Fleischauer (18:17.689)
And so is the emotional safety piece, is that kind of implied here that you're essentially like, because I know that this part of your approach, right, is to make sure that these students feel safe and able to engage socially, to engage with your professionals, to engage with their peers. Is the fact that you are placing them into appropriate situations where

the social and academic load is limited less and less as they go up the tiers. Is that the emotional safety piece? Excuse me. Or is there more to it than that? Because I imagine there's like being a parent yourself, there's probably a lot of little things that are done here and there that provide that essential piece.

Kate Longworth (19:10.81)
And we are and will always be on a learning curve around that, right? Because you're trying to build trust is actually what you're trying to do. So somebody feels emotionally safe. So as the leader of this organization, your brand, everything about Gaia Learning comes from my understanding and my relationship with my daughter and how you emulate that relationship and that safety through education with...

our team and the relationship with parents and that that trust relationship that you forge and so when the learner trusts us and part of it you know there's lots of things around you know consistency of the tools we use the consistency of the communication the educators that we use you know this isn't a global part of freelance associates this is employed people that

know us, that know me, that I speak openly with and freely to and cry together and we do winner of week every day and then we discuss it every Friday. So the trust and the bond that we have between us is then emulated across with the learners and the parents. And actually what we find and where the growth has come from is, and I do this like triangle, is you've got the parents, you've got a school organisation and you've got the local authority, the local government.

and you've got the child in the middle and guy around the outside. And we form a bond and a relationship with all three of those stakeholders. But there is nothing more powerful, as we know, than the parent of a neurodivergent special educational needs child kicking that door down off that school special education needs coordinator to go and fight for the rights for their child. They understand the law, they've done their research, they've not drank a cup of tea in a week or had any breakfast for three weeks because they've been sat on the floor crying.

and they're in every Facebook group going. So the emotional, the amount of trust that is put in us, it makes me scared when I say it out loud, is palatable when you are speaking to parents. And I think as an organization that have grown or growing, we don't get everything right. Okay. I think what we do get right is how we engage with the kids and how we engage with the parents, which is the most important thing. But do we send invoicing alerts by accident when we shouldn't? Do we have, you know,

Seth Fleischauer (21:34.757)
I'm

Kate Longworth (21:35.248)
breakdown in processes. Yeah, we absolutely do. And it does my head in that that happens. But that is the stresses and strains of growing an organization with 14 people who are all figuring out figuring it out and building and wait, you know, this new wave of what we do. So, you know, agile is the name of the game. And I think and I hope that the parents that buy into us, they stay for as long as they need to.

And they see we're trying to make something in the world that helps kids like mine. And it's like, it's kind of that simple. Like we're just trying our best. We're trying our best.

Allyson (22:16.568)
Well, it's that I'm so I'm just so excited to be learning from you. So I'm trying to keep my words together. It also sounds like a lot of what what you do as a team is really the best foundation to start from because what you're doing with one another and how you're interacting, it seems like you're just bringing that right into how you're working with.

the student most importantly and then the support systems or the systems that they, you the student is surrounded by in the triangle. And they say that that idea of teacher training or being able to have that staff, that connection to staff and modeling in that way is such an important way for individuals to grow trust, feel safe, but is really seems like a big part of your approach.

So I wonder, how you said that you're growing and you continue to grow. So with that idea of working so intimately as a team of 14, you said, and then also that then translating to your students and parent groups or guardian groups, how do you see yourself scaling? What do you see in the future and how do you see yourself being able to sustain the wonderful model that you have put together?

Kate Longworth (23:26.298)
So the model on the subject of the word model is really complicated. You know, I say to our investors all the time, I wish we were selling KitKats and pens to the other side of the world, like just ship in boxes of thousands and buy. And it's not that, you know, our model and everything about this organization is always on a fight for making it simpler and cleaner and easier. Like we talk a lot about lighten it. How can we lighten this? How can we lighten this process, lighten this experience?

Allyson (23:30.798)
You

Kate Longworth (23:55.856)
And at the same time, what comes with the nature of the children, with the nature of the schools and the parents and the Zencos and with us as a team is a lot of vulnerability, a lot of complexity all of the time and high level of emotion. You know, this is not an easy job. And I don't say that as like, Oh my God, it's a really hard job. But it's not, not, not mine. Mine's compared to what the educators do. Mine's easy. Let's go with easy.

But the educators carry that emotional load of these children and they're trying to engage them and find a way to hook them in with bit of what banking is. And if you're 14, like, is a pension? How do we get a child to understand a pension? No matter. I don't understand pensions. So how you get a 13 or 14 year old lad to do it? don't know. there's a huge, I talked about trust. There's a huge amount of trust. There's

I think, or I believe I'm very open with the team. So culture and the people we have, they are the key to this in terms of scalability. You know, I can talk about the business model in terms of scalability, but actually the key is finding the right people. And we have been burnt on that. We've learned lessons through that over the past two years. And I now make sure that I interview everybody just at the end and have a 10 minute chat.

and I would love to say it's because I want to check them out. The absolute God's honest truth is that they need to know what they're dealing with. They need to know that I talk about what I talk about, that it is open, that it is vulnerable, that it is just fricking paws up as honest as we can be. And you know, we're going, we've been through a funding round, we're to go through another funding round. We're just trying, we're crying sometimes. And I have all of the...

Seth Fleischauer (25:29.509)
You

Kate Longworth (25:47.788)
insecurities you would imagine around like don't tell your people too much and don't get too close to them and I'm a bit like f off. These are my immunity. These are my people. They're here for the same reason that I'm here and our business model is complicated. And as I say to the board, every eight weeks, we just have to work harder. That's it. We just have to work harder. So finding the right people. Yes. Putting the model in place from a commercial perspective. that's

not easy and moving and all that jazz but I have an absolute firm belief that for as long as there is the need and I wish there wasn't but there is but for as long as there is a need I'm pretty good at figuring out how to make stuff happen and getting a group of people and going should we just give it a go and so that's what we're doing in a simple way.

Seth Fleischauer (26:36.453)
Man, I feel so much, there's so many parallels between your experience and my experience running a company. And I love everything that you've learned thus far. It is all about bringing on good people. And it's about, you know, what I hear in your story is building systems and simplifying them, but retaining that flexibility and keeping that like intuitive piece, right?

Allyson (26:40.674)
you love it.

Seth Fleischauer (27:05.155)
you're operating in a dynamic social system and so things are going to shift and change and you just have to be vulnerable and authentic and honest in order to be able to navigate that in a way that brings you to a place that's consistent with your values which is the thing that anchors you from the beginning and I hear that in spades throughout your story.

And I do want to get back to like the personalization piece because in episode 50, which is a couple episodes ago, we interviewed Dr. Brianna Wall and she's the founder of and CEO of Collaborative Ed Solutions, an organization dedicated to empowering educators and improving special education leadership. And I wanted to bring in a quote from her and get your take on it. Tammy, could you bring that part in?

Tami Moehring (27:52.751)
Brianna discussed how to build an emotional climate that is conducive to reaching your academic goals. sorry. Brianna discussed how to build an emotional climate that is conducive to reaching your academic goals. She said online learning doesn't erase the need for human connection. It amplifies it. How I am spending time getting to know the people that I serve.

And once I know them, how do I show them that I know them? One student might need me to check in with them privately after class. Another might not want to be called out at all. The way we respond to them is what makes the difference. So would you agree with Brianna's conclusion that the key to building emotional climate with any student body is to simply get to know your students and that the only difference for not

neurodivergent students is how you respond to them. If so, what are some examples of how you personalize these responses in an online setting?

Kate Longworth (29:00.848)
I would love to say it's as simple as getting to know the student. We are dealing with humans who are young and who are experiencing their own path of understanding their neurodivergence. And so a big part of our role is helping them to understand themselves. so helping them to help themselves is the starting point.

and getting to know them and we have systems that help us do that in terms of taking notes from forms and things that have been completed and we have a lot of notes on our systems about the families that we're working with. And how you respond to them, I mean, my goodness, yes, you mentioned the word student might not want to be called out and there's like a deep trigger.

lots of things were asked at Gaia and one of the things were asked is about reward and recognition for those kids and were asked often asked about can my child at school might ask us or a family can my child just come and do a couple of classes to see how they get on right and as a business person I'm like I'd love that just pop in see how you get on sign up

and we'll see you on Monday. It doesn't work like that at all. You've got these kids who are the most beautiful, creative humans in the history and they're on their path to becoming so. And on that journey, they are building a relationship with each other online and starting to chat online. But some of these children are, before when I said they're sat on mum's knee and mum has got their arms around their waist and the child is slowly...

Allyson (30:28.75)
you

Kate Longworth (30:52.634)
taking over the lats off and the mom's moving away. You can't just throw in another human into that dynamic, that rocks the apple cart completely. So it is about how you respond to them and it certainly is about how you get to know them. And it is about understanding their neurodivergence because you will know things that they don't know about themselves yet, that they don't understand why they're triggered in a certain way. doesn't, you know, they often...

don't have the words, we don't as humans a lot of the time, they don't have the words to articulate why something has pissed them off or made them angry or made them sad. And it's another layer as an educator or a facilitator really is what I would say, who happen to be qualified in all of these fields. It's another layer. So helping them understand themselves to then learn how they learn and how their brain works.

And then the dimensions of that are how you get to know them upfront, how you, you know, their interests, their likes, all of that sort of stuff, their background, their emotional state of play when they come into you, the things that have happened in their life, maybe that morning, you know, circumstances around them. So it really does, I think Seth, you said the sort of social, emotional, educational, you know, line that we are weaving, we are figuring it out. This is not something that is...

they think is really being done elsewhere. But with the objective of, do you feel safe? Do you feel seen? Are you willing to try to go to Scouts? This is a huge achievement for us when one of our children said, know, hood up, camera off, audio off, just using chat, then would use the virtual classroom more, then camera on, then audio on, then hoodie off, then showed us his...

Allyson (32:43.662)
Thank

Kate Longworth (32:45.818)
pets that he got for his birthday. And then mum said he's willing to try to go to scouts. And if you think about the tier one to tier six example from earlier, you know, they're moving from tier one into tier three. We're trying to get them into some group classes because we want the social emotional stuff as well. And they're getting there. So there's the, how you respond to them, but with a, with a, understanding that they don't understand themselves yet. And that's not.

Seth Fleischauer (32:47.461)
Thanks

Kate Longworth (33:15.328)
easy that's not mass you know groups of tutors teaching maths online that's not this and so again if we can figure out how to scale this i've got some ideas how to scale this globally in multiple time zones i think alison we just need really good people really good people we've got everything else sorted so do i agree yeah is the devil in the detail yeah

Allyson (33:27.374)
Thank you.

Allyson (33:42.242)
You

Seth Fleischauer (33:42.725)
Well, and I love the addition that like they may not know themselves and you may need to bring some of that expertise as the adult in the room, as the trained person to understand their diagnosis, to understand their lack of diagnosis in different ways and know what some of the best practices are there and try some of them out, right?

Kate Longworth (33:43.716)
Probably a boobish answer that, so he's happy.

Seth Fleischauer (34:09.701)
They're not necessarily going to be able to ask you for those. I do want to ask you a question that we ask all of our guests here on the program. We talk about distance learning as an enabler of opportunity. And there is a moment with people that live in this world where all of a sudden they realize, wow, this is exactly what I thought this could do. And check out this.

beautiful golden moment and I'm wondering if you can tell us a story Kate Longworth what is your golden moment in distance learning?

Kate Longworth (34:46.832)
I received an email on Friday at about seven o'clock from a parent of a learner who has been with us since September. And the title of the email was X is leaving Gaia Learning. I thought hello, click bait, that's one, woof, let's go in, let's have a look at that. And it was a flood of compliments, and this is not the only one, we've got plenty of these, a flood of compliments and the...

best part of the email was that this child won't be coming to do a second academic year with Gaia because we have given her the skills and the tools and the confidence to go into mainstream school and she has had a year out with Gaia and she's loved it and she's an advocate and we love her and she's got the courage in every sense to go I've done that I've taken what I need from that and now I'm going to go and do this and it

flipping without sorry, made me glug my wine a bit faster with joy because that is the definition of why we are here because I know that child's story when they started and I have an understanding of where they are now and and they'll stay with us till July and then they'll go into school and that's great.

Allyson (36:07.628)
Yay!

Seth Fleischauer (36:07.961)
it's beautiful. Allison, can you tee up YDL?

Allyson (36:11.246)
Sure. We also always like to have opportunity to ask the question that is the name of our podcast, why distance learning? Because that's really what we wanted to know. Why do you think distance learning about this medium? Why do you think it is such a wonderful opportunity to help individuals?

Kate Longworth (36:33.36)
It's about choice. It's about empowering that child and that family to have choice. And what my daughter says is that every school should have a Gaia. Every school should have an online learning partner that that child can go to to get continuity of emotional regulation and re-engagement and academic and emotional respite to help them resettle and re-engage. We all go to therapy. We all have

different things in our lives that help us re-engage and resettle. And so that's her beautiful take on it. And so I think it's about providing choice and appropriateness at the point when it's needed and how you do that. I think the new world that we're moving into is how you do that synonymously when you can have online and offline and respecting the roles that all of these different types of education play.

And that's what I think, you know, when I said at the beginning, not all online learning is created equal. I think it has a space for everyone in some capacity. It's the extent to which you use it and you need it. And we just happen to offer it for the children who need it most and are in some of the most difficult circumstances. But I certainly don't want them to stay with it forever. I want them to use it when they need it.

Seth Fleischauer (38:01.733)
Beautiful. Well, Kate, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your story, for sharing the amazing work that you're doing at Gaia Learning. Our last question for you, where can our listeners find your work on the internet?

Kate Longworth (38:16.162)
Yes, you can go to GaiaLearning.co.uk, which is G-A-I-A. I might even say it on my jumper. it does!

Allyson (38:23.862)
Yeah. I actually was going to ask where does the name Gaia come from?

Kate Longworth (38:29.68)
The Earth systems theory that if you put the power back into the planet it will resettle and it will self-regulate and so if you empower the learners and help them to understand themselves that they will learn what they need to learn and they can do peer learning and all of that sort of stuff and it's obviously Earth and we work in a few countries now.

Seth Fleischauer (38:48.165)
You are speaking Allison's language right there.

Allyson (38:50.512)
my gosh, yes. was like, my gosh, I was thinking of a fairy that is in a specific novel. But yes, just as magical your work.

Seth Fleischauer (38:57.125)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much again for being here. For our listeners, please do check the show notes. You can go to cilc.org slash podcast for those and for information about all of our other episodes. Thank you as always to our editor, Lucas Salazar. If you'd like to support the podcast, please do rate it, leave us a review, tell a friend, follow us.

And if you're curious about the realities behind the perceptions of distance learning, stay tuned to the voices we highlight on this podcast. These are the innovators and educators proving what's possible in live virtual learning, challenging misconceptions and transforming education along the way. Why distance learning? Because it's evolving, impactful, and here to stay. See you next time.

Kate Longworth (39:45.764)
Thanks.