Different Is Good: Comparing Amazon Prime Now Warehouses To K-12 Education

I recently came across this video blog on Business Insider, and it got me thinking about non-conformity. Amazon's Prime Now warehouses can store tens of thousands of items, and get them to customers in major U.S. cities within an hour. Even ice cream! Amazon's ingenious system of storing diverse items together, in a way that doesn't appear to make sense on the surface, allows the company to do things most people wouldn't have thought was possible a few years ago.

Sometimes, the things that look the most different to us work the best. Take education - today, the best schools don't always look like schools at all. In fact, one of my favorite responses from parents and students, when they first see a Method school, is "this doesn't look like a school." Method uses a rotational model, which, at first glance doesn't look like what you would expect a school to look like (it doesn't at second glance, either). But it works. Students who stay a full school year with Method can expect to jump more than one grade level in Math, Reading, and Science. It might not look traditional, but that's the point!

When parents realize how effective (and fun) non-traditional learning can be for their students, they typically share another one of my favorite responses: "I wish they had this type of school when I was younger." Yes, I agree. Welcome to the era of school choice.