Josh Dahn: Building A School with Elon Musk (REPLAY)

Danielle Newnham Podcast

What does the future of education look like? This is a question I have pondered for the last ten years or so and today’s guest - Josh Dahn – has the answer.

Eight years ago, Josh Dahn was teaching Elon Musk’s kids at Mirman – a private school for highly gifted children in LA when Elon approached him about rethinking the traditional education model. Josh jumped at the opportunity and in today’s episode, Josh talks me through that first meeting with Elon and how they worked together to found the Ad Astra school based at SpaceX.

Based at the SpaceX site, it was a school where the children weren’t separated out by year group or grades as you say in the US, but instead, the education matched the aptitude of the children, and the education was focused around problem solving and teaching to the problem, as opposed teaching to the tools.

Josh went on to co-found Synthesis which is an innovative online school, helping students to prepare for the future by getting them engaged and excited about complexity and solving for the unknown.

Josh is Founder and Executive Director of Astra Nova School (previously Ad Astra) in Los Angeles.

Enjoy!

NB This interview was recorded in August of last year and first appeared in Series 4 of the podcast.

Josh Twitter

Synthesis website / Twitter / LinkedIn / Instagram

Danielle Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter

Episode edited by Jolin Cheng