Nikki Duslak, Founder & Head of School, Create Conservatory

In an interview with Invest:, Nikki Duslak, founder and head of school at Create Conservatory, talked about the key differences between the Conservatory, a private school, and public schools. She also highlighted how Create Conservatory aims to meet students and professors where they are to promote learning. 

What are the key differentiators between Create Conservatory and public schools? The biggest thing that differentiates us is that the public school system is a mass production machine where lots of children cannot do well. What Create Conservatory seeks to do is teach children how to think, as opposed to teaching them to memorize facts and spit them back later. We achieve that through a methodology called arts integration where we use the arts to teach and assess information. Our students are constantly doing, building, synthesizing, analyzing, evaluating, creating things, and getting messy. Kids are excited and engaged to come to school.

We do not have desks or textbooks at our school. Instead, we build the curriculum around how the children would want to learn this information and what would be a real-world application that would hook them. 

What are the core values and principles that guide the school? 

We strive to create a student-centered, student-led, and student-focused environment. Every decision that we make is in the best interest of the child. That can boil down to something as simple as spending an hour on something that has nothing to do with what we had planned for that day if students organically evolve into it as long as children are learning and are engaged. For us, it is about letting them drive that while following state standards. We want to ensure that we hit rigor, scope, and sequence. 

We also empower our teachers to make decisions on what is best for their students within their classrooms. That sets us apart mission-wise. Having a student sit down and remain quiet for seven hours while reading a textbook and bubbling answers at the end of the chapter is not in the best interest of a student. 

What are the unique aspects of Create Conservatory’s curriculum, and how does it support the holistic development of students? 

We do not have textbooks. What is the point of reading a science textbook that is 4 years old when we can go on NASA’s website and look at the latest, greatest development happening in our universe right now? That kind of approach takes work, which is part of why our methodology is not used more widely. It requires knowing standards and arts inside and out, going for resources, and knowing students very well. 

We focus on finding relevant things and tapping into that to drive the curriculum. For instance, when studying the Revolutionary War, our students had to pick a historical figure, write a soundtrack for them, and create a meme around that figure. We are using language that students know and are comfortable with, alongside areas where they feel confident so that they can learn and express more than in a traditional format. 

What are some of the specific teaching methodologies used at Create to foster creativity and critical thinking? 

We do a lot of everything. When you look at a traditional model, they might have centers like we do. Nevertheless, we do a ton of differentiated instruction so it is not uncommon for us to have multiple grade levels in one classroom at one time. Having students learn something because they are a certain age and in a certain grade is not the most innovative or effective approach. We aim to break out of that mold. For example, we have multiple sixth-grade students who are taking honors high school algebra for high school credit. That is hard to find in a lot of school settings. 

We also do a lot more kinesthetic things and train multiple intelligences in the classroom as opposed to sitting down and reading about something. The problem with the latter is that students who struggle with reading will struggle in science and social studies if they are taught

science and social studies just by reading a textbook. In lieu of that, we play a lot of videos from, for instance, the Smithsonian channel. That empowers students who struggle to read to stay engaged and excited about the other subject areas. We also do a lot of differentiated instruction focused on how we can alter the process, product, or content of what we put in front of children to be able to reach them as individual learners. 

What is the strategy of Create Conservatory to support and train faculty to align with the school’s educational philosophy? 

When we opened in 2020, it was just me and seven kids in a space we rented from a church. I even taught in the classroom full-time in the past year as we had only another three staff members. Next school year, we will have six staff members teaching full time, plus myself and administrative assistants. In that sense, bringing new people on board is new for us. I approach teacher training the same way that I approach students. It is about differentiating their instruction as well. 

For us, training teachers is about tailoring that professional development to where they are as educators. If we have a veteran teacher, we will not have them sit through a three-hour professional development course on classroom management. For instance, I have some teachers diving into arts integration and how to ensure rigor in it. 

Sometimes our methodology gets a bad rap because there is a significant difference in how we integrate arts, where we try to hit rigor, core, and content areas. We might be training some teachers on looking at things like identifying their average wait time for a question to be answered, tracking student movement in a classroom, and paying attention to when and how students get up to move around. We aim to train teachers the same way that we teach students. We provide them whatever they need to be successful. 

What are the biggest challenges that you have faced in establishing and running Create Conservatory? 

Starting a nonprofit elementary school during COVID is insane. The biggest, most consistent challenge is money. Five years into the business, this is the first year that I am taking a real paycheck. It is also hard as it impacts what we can offer teachers in that we do not have a 401K, a pension, or health insurance. While we are barely competitive in terms of a salary, we are competitive in a ton of other benefits. 

We are looking to add a new building on our property, which is hard because banks will only look at your financial history rather than our projections. When I ask for a $1.8 million loan but only made $290,000 in profit this year, it is a big ask. Banks tell us we need to enroll more students, but we do not have a place to put them, so we have rented more space from another church to continue enrolling students while working for this building. 

The other hurdle that we face is the perception of private schools, how we exist, and why we exist. There is a push for public money to go toward supporting public schools. If we are going to do what is best for students, then it is necessary to admit that a public school is not what is best for all students. Therefore, the money should follow the students. If you choose to go to a traditional public school, the money should follow you there. Nevertheless, if your kid is not a mass production student, why should the money that you pay in taxes not follow what is best for that student? We need to educate people out of their perceptions and preconceived notions of what private schools used to be versus what private schools are now.