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Future of Education Podcast · July 6 · 30 min

S2E345: "I'm Not Smart": How Identity Labels Trap Our Kids

What happens when a child decides by the first grade that they simply aren’t the "smart" one? When Elle brought home a family portrait labeling her sister as smart and herself as dumb, her teachers and parents feared she had already been put in a box. But an unconventional school model and a tactical "confidence anchor" completely flipped her trajectory. Now a graduating senior, Alpha Valedictorian Elle joins MacKenzie to share her incredible journey from struggling student to history-making researcher. She breaks down the exact psychological shifts that unlocked her potential, the reality of building a massive teen dating app with AI, and what happened when she hounded a top scientist to run a study that is now up for publication in the world's leading scientific journal.

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What happens when a child decides by the first grade that they simply aren’t the "smart" one?

When Elle brought home a family portrait labeling her sister as smart and herself as dumb, her teachers and parents feared she had already been put in a box. But an unconventional school model and a tactical "confidence anchor" completely flipped her trajectory.

Now a graduating senior, Alpha Valedictorian Elle joins MacKenzie to share her incredible journey from struggling student to history-making researcher. She breaks down the exact psychological shifts that unlocked her potential, the reality of building a massive teen dating app with AI, and what happened when she hounded a top scientist to run a study that is now up for publication in the world's leading scientific journal.

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