When You See It, You Can Build It
Jennifer Kempin | October 4, 2025
When You See It, You Can Build It: Lessons from Kerry McDonald’s Joyful Learning
When you see someone succeed by breaking the mold, your dream stops feeling out of reach.
That’s the power of Kerry McDonald’s Joyful Learning.
This isn’t a feel-good book about why education should be more joyful—it’s a window into what’s already happening. It’s filled with stories of real founders who have built thriving schools and learning communities by daring to do things differently. Reading it, I kept thinking of Fáilte Microschool and of all the education entrepreneurs I know here in Pennsylvania. The founders in these pages could be any one of us.
When you read about people who have taken the leap—and succeeded—you realize the barrier between “someday” and “today” isn’t as tall as you once thought.
The Power of Proof
McDonald profiles people across the country who have launched microschools, hybrid models, and learning communities of every shape and size. Some started with three students in a living room. Others built nature-based programs or part-time homeschool partnerships. Each one began with an idea that felt risky, uncertain, or even impossible—and turned it into something real.
Seeing those examples changes everything. When you can point to schools that are already working, it stops being a theory. It’s proof. It’s permission.
That’s what makes this book so useful for founders: it’s not about imagining what education could be—it’s about showing what it is becoming.
From Vision to Practice
One of my favorite parts of Joyful Learning is that it doesn’t gloss over the hard parts. McDonald shows what actually goes into building something new: finding space, balancing freedom and structure, managing relationships with parents, and staying true to your mission when things get tough.
These founders faced the same questions many of us have:
- How do you create consistency without losing flexibility?
- How do you make the finances work?
- How do you explain to others what you’re building when there’s no existing template?
Reading their stories, you start to see patterns—what worked, what didn’t, and what kept them going. It’s a playbook of lived experience.
What This Means for Our Movement
As I read, I kept thinking about how these lessons apply to the movement we’re building in Pennsylvania. In states with strong school choice policies, the microschool and hybrid movement is already thriving. Families have more options, and founders have more support.
But what Joyful Learning makes clear is that transformation doesn’t have to wait for perfect conditions. These founders started with what they had—time, talent, conviction—and grew from there.
That’s exactly what’s happening here. Across Pennsylvania, educators and parents are reimagining learning in creative, courageous ways. Each new school, each new model, chips away at the idea that education has to look one way.
And every success story—every person who breaks the mold and builds something that works—makes it easier for the next one to try.
A Book for Builders
If you’re an education entrepreneur—or even just dreaming about becoming one—Joyful Learning is worth reading. It’s filled with ideas you can actually use and stories that remind you this movement is real and growing.
It’s one thing to believe change is possible. It’s another to see it happening.
When you see someone succeed by breaking the mold, your dream stops feeling out of reach.
And that’s where real change begins.
