Missed Last Night's Spring Open House? Here's Everything That Happened (And Why Your Child's New Year Head Start Ends Tonight)

Watch the replay: Spring Open House on YouTube

If this fall was a lot, I want you to read this

Fall has been a lot.

That is what I keep hearing on calls with families. And October is when the struggles start showing their familiar faces.

If you have been thinking, “This year was NOT supposed to feel like this”… if you really believed this fall would be different from the past… I get it. And I am really glad you are here.

Last night, Young Scholars Academy (YSA) hosted our Spring Open House. More than 100 people logged in from Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Toronto, Sydney, Hawaii, Chile, and a whole lot of places in between. There is no building on Earth where families from all those places would sit in the same room for the same reason.

This was not a typical open house. It was a look into 2027. Here is what happened, what is new, and how to grab the New Year Head Start before it closes tonight.

I spent most of my school years feeling stupid

Not because I was. Because the system pointed at my gaps, and never my strengths.

High highs. Low lows. Years of believing the story the system told me about myself.

Everything changed when I started leading with what I was great at.

That is why I built Young Scholars Academy. Not to fix what is “wrong” with our kids… to ignite what is right! To raise the roof, not pull up the floor.

So many of our kids have bright, older brains, and it is hard for them to find their people. So I built a place where they dive deep into what they love… Gilgamesh, Tolkien, Model UN, World War I weapons, theatre… and the friendships come naturally, because who else signs up for Gilgamesh?

Adults do this all the time. They join Facebook groups and special interest groups. Most of our kids never get that chance.

Until now.

Our kids were never the problem. They just had not found the right place to belong. So I built it.

“They don’t need to change themselves. They just need to change seats.”

Mr. Sam

A peek through the glass

One of the hardest parts of running a virtual program is that you cannot walk the halls and peek through the window of a classroom. Last night, for the first time, I could show you.

A compilation of clips from just one week of classes. Rubik’s Cube joy. Laughter. Kids who are completely lit up. That is not a highlight reel. That is a regular week at YSA.

Then came two families.

Anikh and Mita

Anikh started at YSA in 2022, with improv. Then a social class. Now he is in a pop culture discussion class. His mom, Mita, and Anikh recorded a video for us (and a song!). The audio failed, so they re-recorded the whole thing a couple of hours before the event. That is how much this community means to them.

“What that class does is really draw them out of just reciting the facts and the details, and into expanding their thinking. I noticed so much growth and development. I knew right away it was the right place.”

Mita, Anikh’s mom

Dalia and Nito

Dalia and Nito joined us live. Nito told 100+ families that his favorite thing about YSA is the people:

“You could meet someone you have never met in your life, and you could actually become friends with them.”

Nito

And Dalia was honest about her doubts, which is exactly why I wanted her to speak. At first, the cost gave her pause. She wondered whether the gaming classes were worth it.

“There are so many skills being built in those classes. I would have thought, oh, it’s just some kids playing games together, why are we paying for that? But I kind of ate my words.”

Dalia, Nito’s mom

What won her over? Before the first class, she emailed every one of Nito’s mentors to introduce him.

“Within a day, I heard from absolutely everybody. Thoughtful email responses from every single person. Just a real warm blanket, a warm hug.”

Dalia

Her advice to any parent sitting where she sat:

“Don’t think, just do it. If you have to start small, start small, but jump in. It’s hard to imagine not having these experiences as part of our whole life, week to week.”

Dalia

Your New Year Head Start (ends tonight at 11:59 PM PT)

Here is the short version, so you can see why tonight matters. Enroll by midnight Pacific tonight, in even one class, and your child gets these New Year Head Start bonuses, worth $1,587:

• Head Start Socials ($297). Two live events this Friday, Nov 13: ages 5 to 10 at 3:00 PM PT, ages 11 to 18 at 3:30 PM PT.
• Virtual Campus ($497). Up to 5 hours a week hanging out with other YSA kids until January 4. Your child can start right away.
• EF Kickstart self-paced mini-course ($297). My executive function course, with a middle school or high school version.
• Early Coffee & Connects ($297). Parent meetups in November and December, before the semester even starts.
• New Year Kickoff ($199). A live welcome session with me on December 18.
• First Pick Seating (priceless). Choose seats and times before the public does.

Here is my favorite part. One reason this place exists is that our kids need wins now, not someday. When you enroll early, your child does not wait until January to belong. When January 4 arrives, they are not the new kid. They walk in with friends already.

What is new at Young Scholars Academy this spring

This spring, YSA got a whole bunch of updates. Here is the rundown.

• Weekend classes. A full Saturday and Sunday lineup, for the first time ever. Families have been asking for this for years. If your weekdays are packed, this one is for you.
• 18 new courses, 9 of them science. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, chemistry, trains, planes and cities, World of Warcraft, AI vibe coding, Gilgamesh and the Sumerians, Biology, Pre-Vet and Pre-Med… there is a lot to get excited about.
• University of California A-G approval. Some of our high school courses are now officially UC A-G approved, so they count toward college requirements. If your teen attends another school and wants courses that school does not offer, those courses can be listed on that school’s portal and worked into the transcript.
• College Board AP approval. After almost three years of work, College Board officially recognizes YSA as an Advanced Placement online course provider. For a student with a spotty or messy transcript, this is an official record that they took a College Board approved course.
• The Virtual Campus is open every weekday. Think video game meets Zoom. Kids move around, hang out, and connect between classes, like virtual hallways and a virtual playground. It is the piece most virtual programs are missing.
• Two new team members. Nathan leads Admissions and Onboarding, so he is the person who gets your family set up. Leonardo is our new Family Support Specialist, helping enrolled families with day-to-day questions.
• YSA T-shirts. Limited edition, and only available to Gold All-Access Pass families. (One was also raffled off last night.)

Meet the mentors

Twenty mentors teach at YSA this spring. Here is the part that surprises people: you cannot apply to teach at YSA. There is no “join us” page on the website. Mentors are invited, by me, by another mentor, or by a parent. Every one of them goes through my full onboarding training, and most are gifted or 2e themselves, or they parent gifted or 2e kids. They have been there.

I always say my goal is to hire teachers who are cooler than me. They are. Families keep telling me these are the best teachers their kids have ever had, and new families ask for specific mentors by name.

How YSA actually works

• About an hour a week per class. Spring runs 21 weeks, January 4 to May 28. (Younger kids may have 30 minute classes, and AP classes run 75 minutes.)
• Tiny classes. An average of 5 students, capped at 6 to 8, so every child is truly seen.
• Ages 5 to 18, with 200+ courses and camps. Families in 17 countries and 47 states plus D.C. Over 1,200 families served since August 2020.
• Friendship Social Club. A weekly live social class, like a homeroom but fun, free when you enroll in 3 or more other classes.
• Cameras are optional. Our goal is to make class so good that kids cannot help but participate.

The results families report: a 39% jump in kids’ happiness in their first four weeks. 76% of current families rate YSA a 9 or 10 out of 10. And 93% of families re-enroll.

Who YSA is for

• Homeschoolers. About 60% of families. You want a daytime home base, accredited legitimacy, and a community so neither you nor your child has to do this alone. Families use YSA from 5 hours a week to over 25.
• Enrichment. Your child is bright, maybe a little bored, and needs depth, complexity, challenge, and their people, even if it is just a few hours a week. One mom coined a term for it: the “YSA glow.” Her son gets through a full day at his other school, takes a YSA class, and glows for 24 hours.
• College prep. A teen headed toward college who needs real rigor, executive function, adulting skills, and a transcript that counts.

The 3 C’s

Everything at YSA comes back to three things our students need to thrive: college-level content (they crave depth and complexity), a community of like-minded friends (our kids NEED one another), and caring mentors (adults who have walked the walk).

The secret: the X and Y axis of social success

Our kids spend so much time being told they need to change. I have found two ingredients that undo that. The X-axis is like-minded peers: kids who look to their side and say, “There are kids just like me. There just were not any near me.” The Y-axis is mentors who look like grown-up versions of your child: adults who say, “I have been there. It is going to be okay. Here is what I do.”

One mentor once told a class that looking people in the eye is really hard, so they look at the person’s nose instead. A tiny trick. It can make a big difference for a kid who has been trying to figure it out alone.

It is a repeatable formula. It has worked for over 1,200 families, and it can work for yours.

Support most families do not know about

One mom told me, “We get more support from you guys for 3 hours a week than we do from our school.” Here is some of what is behind that:

• Mentors meet daily to talk about your child.
• Courses do not repeat, so most students can keep going in a subject for two years or more.
• Weekly Progress Reports: two paragraphs, one on what the class did and one on how your child is doing. So even when your child tells you “it was good,” you know what really happened.
• Many classes come with a Google Classroom, and if a child misses a session, mentors often spend extra time catching them up.
• A parent community, with a private Facebook group and live parent meetups, because a real village helps kids and parents.

Two ways to take any class

• Enrichment: purely for the love of learning. No grades, no homework, no credit attached. You show up and have fun.
• Credit with Transcript: your child earns official, accredited credit (YSA is WASC accredited). Heads up, this one comes with 1 to 3 hours of work outside class for middle and high school. Homeschoolers can report it on their transcript. Students at another school can send the transcript there.

Same great class. You pick what fits your family.

And one more thing that matters to bright kids: there is no busy work at YSA. No worksheets. That is what harms our kids, not what helps them.

The big reveal: the New Community Hub

For almost two years, I have been quietly working on something. Last night, I showed it to families for the first time. Our mentors had not even seen it yet.

Families told us they want three or four things: community, connection, content that feels good, and care and life skills. The New Community Hub is built to take all of those to the next level.

• A dashboard made just for your child. Like a Netflix-style home screen, with recommendations, a welcome message, and the Village Voice newsletter.
• See what your friends are taking. Right now, YSA is the bottleneck. A family meets someone they love in a breakout room, then asks me which class that kid is in. In the Hub, kids can see it themselves, because most kids pick a class because their friend is in it.
• Safe messaging. Students message mentors first, and later friend classmates they share a class with. Every message can be mentor-moderated and visible to parents, with moderation built into the software. It is the last feature to roll out, because safety comes first.
• Virtual Campus, built in. Rooms where kids hang out around their interests. The science kids in the science room, the library crowd in the library.
• My Week. A calendar where your child clicks straight into class. No more digging through emails for links.
• Quests, streaks, tokens and badges. Mentors post challenges: write a 6-word story, solve a Rubik’s Cube, build a redstone machine. Kids earn tokens and spend them on avatar upgrades. Plus self-paced skill courses on the way, and a student job board where kids hire each other for projects. That is real 21st-century collaboration.
• A parent view with total visibility. Schedules, messages, work, and your weekly summaries in one place, plus a Parent Lounge to connect with other families and your child’s mentors.

Who gets the Hub?

The Hub is not for sale on its own, and it is not open to every family. Not yet. This spring it is a pilot for All-Access Pass families, at every level: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. If you already have a Fall All-Access Pass, you are already in. The only other way in is to enroll in a New Year All-Access Pass.

Two ways to enroll

There are two pathways at YSA. You can enroll in classes a la carte. Or you can enroll in a bundle of classes, called the New Year All-Access Pass. The big difference is the level of support you get.

Every family gets this, even with a single class

Before I explain the pass, here is what every family receives when they enroll in anything. I call it the Starting with Strengths bonus bundle. It is the part new families often miss. YSA is not an online marketplace where you buy courses. It is a village where you get real community support.

What you get	Value
Weekly Progress Reports	$917
Expert Circle: 6 live expert talks this spring	$1,194
Friendship Social Club: weekly live social class (with 3+ classes)	$609
Masterclass Library: 5 recordings	$645
Virtual Campus: daily through May 28	$647
Coffee & Connect: parent meetups	$597
Parent Circle: private Facebook group	$497
Task Manager Toolkit	$49
Line-Skipper: Summer 2027 registration 24 hours early	$147
Ambassador: a credit for every family you refer	$199 each
Try It From The Inside Guarantee	Priceless
TOTAL	$5,302 ($4,693 with 1 to 2 classes)

That is free, with any enrollment.

This spring’s Expert Circle

These are live, interactive sessions with some of the biggest names in gifted or 2e education, and they are free for YSA families:

• Dr. Matt Zakreski, psychologist: helping gifted or 2e kids manage anxiety
• Sharon Duncan: Gifted 101, and how to talk about giftedness without it sounding elitist
• Sarah Lovell: executive functioning, self-talk and self-care
• Jerid Maybaum, education lawyer: pro tips for navigating the system and positioning with your district for maximum support
• Rich Isaacs, California Special Needs Law Group: navigating the legal system
• Julia Storm, “Unplugged”: screen time, tech addiction and your kid

The Masterclass Library adds recordings from names like Dr. Temple Grandin, Debbie Reber, Dr. Barry Prizant, Emily Kircher-Morris, and Dr. Joseph Renzulli, the godfather of enrichment himself. You get all of it when you enroll in even one class.

The New Year All-Access Pass

Let me tell you what the Pass is really about, because it is not just a bundle of classes. It is about belonging.

Every family here wants the same thing: a place where their child is with their people. Kids who think the way they think. Mentors who get them. A community that feels like home. The Pass exists so your child does not just take a class. They get the whole village around it, all spring. You pick your courses, and the entire Village comes with them. Your child gets their people. You get yours.

Here is how it works. There is one pass per child. You enroll in the pass first, and you tell us how many classes you want. Then you tell YSA which classes, and YSA enrolls your child for you. The team handles everything on the back end. You do not need to figure out every class tonight.

Every level includes everything in Starting with Strengths for all 21 weeks, plus the New Community Hub, the EF Kickstart and Debate Primer mini-courses, the full Parent Cheat Codes, a Growth Summary, your Transcript and Portfolio, and Line-Skipper access to Summer 2027, 48 hours early.

	BRONZE	SILVER (Most Popular)	GOLD
Price	$2,797, one payment for all of spring	$3,597, one payment for all of spring	$5,797, one payment for all of spring
Classes	4 classes a week for the price of 3 (1 class FREE)	6 classes a week for the price of 4 (2 classes FREE)	10 classes a week for the price of 7 (3 classes FREE)
Friendship Social Club	FREE, weekly	FREE, weekly	2 FREE, twice a week
Masterclass Library	10 recordings	15 recordings	Full vault
New Community Hub	Included	Included	Included
1:1 Blueprint Call with Mr. Sam	n/a	Included	Included
ESA Concierge + PTA Inner Circle	n/a	n/a	Included
A YSA T-shirt	n/a	n/a	Included
Parent Social Club	Free	Free	Free
Everything in every pass	Included	Included	Included
You save	$1,508 (35%)	$2,556 (42%)	$4,661 (45%)
Total value	$12,323 ($13,316 with New Year Head Start)	$15,015 ($16,008 with New Year Head Start)	$21,962 ($22,955 with New Year Head Start)

Savings compared with the same classes and clubs bought one at a time at $44 a week. One payment, one child per pass. All-Access Passes have their own terms. Read them here before you enroll.

There are only 25 passes this spring. Once they are gone, they are gone.

Try It From The Inside

Let me take the risk off your plate. You would not buy a house without walking through it first. Same idea here. Enroll, show up, and if your child is not in love with their classes, here is what happens.

• Pay in full: switch to another class of equal or lesser value that is a better fit, or take a credit toward a future class.
• Payment plan: take a credit toward a future class, switch to a class that fits better, or stop all future payments, starting 30 days from when you contact us.
• All-Access Pass: swap classes any time during the semester.

No risk. No stress. Just the learning and belonging you have been looking for. And you keep the bonuses. 93% of YSA families re-enroll, and many add more classes each semester. When you see YSA from the inside, you will understand why.

How to enroll (it takes about 10 minutes)

If you are new to YSA, here is the path I recommend:

1. Start at the spring catalog.
2. Browse by teacher, age or time. Click into a class, watch the mentor’s video, and read what families say. Then pick Credit with Transcript or Enrichment.
3. Overwhelmed by the awesomeness? Chat with Schedulie, our AI admissions helper. Tell Schedulie, “I have a 9-year-old who loves technology and history,” and see what it recommends.
4. Want the pass? Go here. Then tell YSA which classes you want and your child gets enrolled for you.

If you are a returning family and already know the mentors, jump straight into Active and filter by age and time.

All class times are listed in Pacific Time.

Most classes fill up FAST. The average class has just 5 students, and when a class only has 6 spots, it does not last long. If you see the right fit, do not wait.

Using ESA or other education funds? YSA works with ESA funds in 10+ states. Sign up on the payment plan so you save your seat, and YSA will work out the invoices and reimbursement with you.

Questions, or want to talk it through with a real person? Book a call with the YSA team.

Questions I heard last night

”Will my child get enough time to talk? He needs a moment to get his thoughts out.”

This is one of the most common questions I get. Our mentors are differentiation gurus. Classes are tiny, so there is room for a child who needs extra time and a child who is fast as a whip in the very same room. I taught at a leading 2e program for about a decade, and I put everything I learned into the onboarding training every mentor completes.

”My child has not done well in other places. Is this a big risk?”

That is exactly why the Try It From The Inside guarantee exists. See above. And remember Dalia’s advice: if you have to start small, start small, but jump in.

”Do the cameras have to be on?”

No. YSA is camera optional. Kids show up the way that feels comfortable.

”How do AP classes work?”

AP classes meet 75 minutes a week in a flipped format. Class time is for activities and discussion, and students take in new content at home. Bright kids rarely need the content part. They need help channeling their voice, understanding structure, and doing labs.

”I only heard about this yesterday. I do not know if I can decide by tonight.”

You do not need to figure everything out tonight. If you go with an all-access pass, you simply say yes to the number of classes that makes sense for your family, and you pick the classes together with the YSA team afterward. If you enroll a la carte, one class is enough to unlock the Head Start. Either way, you are covered by Try It From The Inside.

”Are classes live? Is there an on-demand option?”

Classes are live, because community comes first. Self-paced, on-ramp style content is something I am working toward, and the Hub will start with self-paced skill-building quests. YSA is also adding earlier daytime classes each semester to help East Coast families.

Your move

Our kids are often struggling, and it is not their fault. They are simply not in the right setting. The world does not get our kids. Young Scholars Academy does, because it was built by our kids, for our kids.

This is the most important time of year to get your child into a supportive community. Timing is everything. These interventions compound. The sooner your child is somewhere they are seen for their strengths, the faster they thrive, and the less they struggle.

You can literally graph out two different lives. The choices you make tonight can set your child up for a totally different outcome.

If your heart feels like this is the space you have been searching for… you are right. You have found your village.

I created this space because our families needed it, and could not find it anywhere. So I built it. For the quirky. The clever. The wildly original kids who did not fit into anyone else’s box.

You are home. Your child is home.

You are not committing for the rest of your life. You are saying yes to seeing this community from the inside, the way 1,200+ other families have. Take the first step. The team will walk with you the rest of the way.

See you inside,

Mr. Sam

Founder, Young Scholars Academy

P.S. The New Year Head Start bonuses (the Friday socials, the Virtual Campus, EF Kickstart, early Coffee & Connects, the December 18 Kickoff, and First Pick Seating) disappear tonight at 11:59 PM PT. Spring registration stays open through December 10, but your child’s early start does not. See spring classes.

P.P.S. Know a family who needs this? Forward them this page. This community changes lives, and I believe it should get in front of every family it can help.