Dr. Tyler S. Thigpen is the co-founder and Head of School at The Forest School: An Acton Academy, a self-directed K3–12 microschool in Trilith, near Atlanta, Georgia, and co-founder of the Institute for Self-Directed Learning. He holds a doctorate in Education Leadership (Ed.L.D.) from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a Master's in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Master's in Theological Studies from Regent College.

Before founding The Forest School in 2018, Tyler wore many hats — church minister, Spanish teacher, and public-school principal — and co-founded Chattahoochee Hills Charter School and MENTOR Georgia, later working as a partner at the school-redesign nonprofit Transcend. Today The Forest School serves roughly 160 learners on campus, plus Forest School Online, which reaches students across the US, Kenya, Uganda, Costa Rica, China, Mexico, and Thailand. Tyler is also an instructor and Academic Director at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, where he teaches "Introduction to Teaching With AI"; the author of The Playbook for Self-Directed Learning (Routledge, 2025); and the creator of the Story Arts curriculum, which was adopted statewide by Georgia's Department of Education.

In this episode, Tyler talks with Svenia Busson about:

  • The thread connecting a church minister, a Spanish teacher, and a self-directed microschool founder
  • Inside The Forest School — no homework, no grades, guides instead of teachers, badges instead of tests
  • "Practicals": oral defenses and performance tasks that make learning AI-proof — you can use AI along the road, but you have to prove mastery at the end
  • Why discernment and judgment are "the new literacy" — and where he agrees with MIT's Justin Reich that AI literacy can't really be taught
  • Cognitive debt — keeping learners in the "challenge zone" so the thinking never gets outsourced to AI
  • The four phases of self-directed learning: desire, resourcefulness, initiative, and persistence
  • Scaling without cloning — the Institute for Self-Directed Learning and redesigning models with 20 Georgia superintendents
  • Sliding-scale tuition and "diverse by design" — why being self-directed makes the school leaner and more affordable


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