Friday Feature: MARS Microschool

Colleen Hroncich

It feels like we’re going back to the future today. Two years ago, I profiled Log Cabin Schoolhouse, which was created by Jennifer Wolverton, a homeschooling mom with an engineering background. Despite the old-fashioned name, Log Cabin embraced the latest technology, including AI, “smashing” it (as she put it) with classical education.

Jennifer has tossed any semblance of being old-fashioned aside and leaped fully into the future with her latest undertaking: MARS Microschool, a hands-on, AI-focused high school. 

As MARS begins its third year of existence, it’s undergoing major changes. For starters, it has a new location: a classroom Jennifer rents at the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. (Jennifer stresses that MARS is simply renting space and is not affiliated with the center.)

Although MARS isn’t affiliated with the center, Jennifer is excited because it will serve as an extension of the classroom. “We’ll have access to space for flying drones, hopefully including some of their FPV drones, a real lab with running water and safety infrastructure for chemistry, and the ability to request spaces throughout the plaza depending on what we’re working on that week,” she explains. The classroom is well equipped with technology, and students can go to the Space Camp cafeteria for lunch and hang out in the outdoor areas during downtime. She’s hoping they’ll be able to use the stage for their end-of-hackathon presentations. 

“I’m also excited about all the things we can’t predict yet—the mentors, partners, grants, speakers, equipment, and opportunities that may come simply because people can see what our students are building and doing there,” she adds. “But maybe the coolest part to me is that no matter where these kids go in life, when someone asks where they went to high school, they’ll have an easy answer that people everywhere will recognize: ‘I went to MARS in Huntsville for high school, and our campus was at Space Camp.’ That’s a pretty incredible way to experience high school.”

Another change is that enrollment is now limited to grades 9–12, allowing Jennifer to tailor her content to older students. “I used the words ‘motivated high schoolers’ when I did all my marketing,” she says. And she’s excited by the “really cool group of kids” who will be attending. 

One incoming freshman illustrates what she means. Before he’d set foot in a MARS classroom, he told Jennifer there was a class he was excited to take. She explained there was a coding class he needed to complete first. He finished it in 30 days, then asked for more, which led him to earn his Entry-Level Python Programmer certification before the school year even started. 

MARS Microschool is built around flexibility. Students who are in at least 10th grade spend Mondays and Wednesdays on dual-enrollment coursework. Tuesday is reserved for virtual learning, including a chemistry class that uses ChemExplained, a curriculum designed for homeschoolers that can award students college credits. There’s also an online book club that includes books from a variety of perspectives and genres. 

Students come together in person on Thursdays at the Rocket Center campus. A retired principal, new to MARS this year, runs the Thursday sessions. This will help free up Jennifer to work on yet another project—building software for microschools that she’s piloting at MARS first. Fridays are optional and are built around a CyberPatriot cyber defense team that MARS helps support. 

Academically, students work through core subjects plus a rotating menu of extras that are mostly tech-based, including a Microsoft Excel certification, a game-design class using Unreal Engine, weekly drone flying, and coding.

Another extra this year will be ukuleles “because there’s nothing more adorable than a bunch of tech-bro teenagers with colorful ukuleles sitting in a circle playing,” Jennifer says. A friend who runs a California homeschool resource center helped Jennifer connect with a “young and kind of cool” musician in Los Angeles who has written some movie scores. He’s going to meet online with the kids on Tuesdays and Thursdays for ukulele lessons.

To support the changes she’s made this year, Jennifer raised tuition from $2,000 to $7,000. When tuition was $2,000, Jennifer says people treated it like a club, not a school. With a new $7,000 price tag, which she says is still around half of what most private schools in the area charge, she finds people take it more seriously. The higher tuition also helps make MARS more sustainable. At the lower amount, she says it was essentially a hobby that she would have had to “quit at some point and close up.”

Jennifer is seeking accreditation this year so she can participate as a full-time private school under Alabama’s CHOOSE Act. Once approved, her families will have access to up to $7,000 for tuition through refundable tax credits in an education savings account. Without the accreditation, she can only be included as an education service provider for homeschoolers, who are limited to $2,000 per child with a cap of $4,000 per family. 

Today’s Friday Feature closes out our AI in Education week, which includes a series of blog posts (listed below) as well as an X space with several experts—Jennifer among them—who hold a variety of opinions on the topic. We hope you’ll check them all out!

Monday: “Kicking Off a Special ‘AI in Education’ Blog Series”

Tuesday: “AI in the Classroom: Why It Matters and Who Decides”

Wednesday: “AI Won’t Replace Great Teachers”

Thursday: “In the AI Era, School Choice Is Crucial”

Friday: “AI in Education: There Are No Solutions, Only Trade-Offs”

Source: https://www.cato.org/blog/friday-feature-mars-microschool-0