October 1st, 2019
A number of you have followed Kepler's progress over the past year as it has developed from concept to creation. As you've probably discerned, a project of this magnitude takes time. It also requires a significant investment of effort and financial resources from a team of skilled and innovative people who are passionate about classical education.
Most of all, however, it takes the prayer and support of educators like you who believe a platform like Kepler is worth creating. On behalf of Kepler, let me be the first to thank you for your interest in and support of this exciting endeavor!
In this post, I would like to take a few minutes and walk you through Kepler's vision and mission. In a subsequent post, I'll layout the launch timeline.
Kepler is a consortium of independent teachers unified by an innovative online platform to bring classical education to junior high and high school students. We have been asked if Kepler is a school, a network, or a teaching platform. The answer is, Yes!
While Kepler is not a school, per se, our culture, platform, and diploma track will provide the best features of an online school while allowing homeschool parents as much flexibility and choice in teachers as possible. At the same time, our innovative Agile platform and the academic consortium will provide teachers with all the tools, resources, and flexibility they need to develop their unique brand as independent educators.
Kepler was created to unite students with high-quality teachers through a powerful platform designed to support the best possible educational experience and economical benefit for both the educators and students. One way to think about it is a free market for classical liberal arts education.
For the educator, Kepler provides the unique platform mentioned previously that allows teachers to fulfill their vocation while simultaneously providing a sustainable income and ample margin for personal and educational development.
For the student, Kepler provides a network of distinguished educators, quality courses, and a diploma track that fits their personal budget and schedule all on one simple and easy-to-use platform.
In future posts, I will develop this point further and explain how we will accomplish this by providing teachers with the opportunity to set their own course prices and take a larger share of the tuition and students will have the opportunity to choose the teachers they want while fulfilling their educational requirements. For now, it's important to understand our vision is to advance quality online classical education. Our mission is to leverage the unique technology of our age to help educators and students do their best work in their respective roles.
Why Kepler? Kepler is inspired by the medieval scholar, Johannes Kepler, widely known for his commitment to Christ, the liberal arts, and the advancement of science in the West. As we at Kepler embrace and advance liberal (also called classical) education in its full orb, we feel Johannes Kepler accurately exemplifies the courageous, innovative, intellectually honest, and robust approach to education and human flourishing needed in the modern age. We are humbly attempting to cultivate such a spirit within our academic consortium.
In the coming days, I want to share more about our core values, how Kepler can meet some of the more pressing challenges educators and students are facing, and demonstrate what it would look like to be an independent teacher at Kepler. In the next post, I'll share our launch timeline so you can stay in the loop and see how each stage of the launch is expected to unfold.