01 / Mastery
Progress follows understanding.
Children advance after mastering the material, rather than simply because the calendar says it’s time.
Current mission · Alpha School
Alpha School pairs personalized, mastery-based academics with motivation and practical life skills. I’m a software engineer building AI-powered learning systems toward its ambition of accelerated learning for a billion children.
01 / Mastery
Children advance after mastering the material, rather than simply because the calendar says it’s time.
02 / Motivation
Meaningful goals, clear feedback, and time for what children care about make hard work worth doing.
03 / Time Back
More efficient learning creates room for life skills, projects, and the things children love.
My part in the work
My work spans dynamic content generation, rigorous evaluation, and full-stack product development. The systems I’ve helped build have been used by thousands of students.
The engineering challenge is to make educational work verifiable, so increasingly capable models can do more while the standards remain explicit.
Joe Liemandt is Alpha School’s principal and a software entrepreneur. His advice has shaped how I think about education and building with AI. The resources below offer a deeper look at the ideas behind the work.
Explore Alpha SchoolConversations, pedagogy, and writing on learning and motivation.
Huberman Lab · August 31, 2026
Joe Liemandt with Andrew Huberman on mastery, motivation, individualized learning, and life skills.
Invest Like the Best · Episode 439
Joe Liemandt with Patrick O’Shaughnessy on Alpha School’s model and the ambition to reach a billion students.
Math Academy · Pedagogy
A practical account of mastery learning, automaticity, spaced repetition, and minimizing cognitive load.
Becky Allen · Falsifiable
Why a convincing lesson is not yet evidence of learning—and why teacher judgment needs to be tested against what students learn.
Peps McCrea · Newsletter
Short, evidence-informed writing on effective teaching, motivation, attention, and habits.