Learning in the Morning, Surfing in the Afternoon

How Alpha School Santa Barbara’s
Two-Hour Learning Model Challenges Traditional Education

By Tiana Moloney | November 20, 2025

Read more from Schools of Thought 2025 here.

Imagine a school day where your core learning happens in the morning and your afternoons are spent surfing the Santa Barbara coastline. It may sound far-fetched, but that’s what a typical day looks like at Alpha School Santa Barbara. And it’s their two-hour learning model that makes it all possible.

Alpha School’s mission is to rethink education through deeply personalized learning. Their model uses AI-driven assessments to create individualized plans that target each child’s strengths and gaps, ensuring true mastery rather than simple grade progression.

Every morning, students engage in a focused two-hour learning block where AI presents lessons tailored to each student’s level and needs. The lessons adapt continuously: If a student struggles with a concept, the AI reintroduces it in different ways until mastery is achieved; if a student advances quickly, new material appears right away.

As Alpha’s Head of School Dr. Tasha Arnold says, “What we’re looking at is for our kids to have high levels of mastery at minimum 85 percent before they move on to the next grade.”

Dr. Arnold says that Alpha’s approach is especially transformative in subjects such as math. She notes that many students come in believing they’re simply “bad at math,” often due to previous negative experiences or self-doubt. At Alpha, however, students are assessed individually and given targeted support to fill in their unique learning gaps.

This means they only move forward after demonstrating true mastery, rather than being pushed ahead before they’re ready. As a result, students who once struggled with math often discover new confidence and success. “It changes the whole perception of yourself and your abilities, too,” Dr. Arnold explains. Students, she says, walk away from completed lessons with more confidence.

Here’s what a typical Alpha School day looks like: After their two hours of core, individualized academic learning in the morning, Alpha School students spend the rest of the day engaged in a variety of purposeful workshops and life skills activities. These include options such as surfing, cooking, financial literacy projects, and even trapeze — each designed not just as enrichment, but to help students practice real-world skills such as goal-setting, receiving and giving feedback, teamwork, and reflection.

While Alpha doesn’t have traditional teachers, Dr. Arnold assured that there are adults in each classroom. “There aren’t robots teaching our kids,” she jokes. However, rather than the traditional teacher, each classroom at Alpha School is equipped with a “guide.” The guide is responsible for monitoring students’ progress, offering real-time feedback, coaching, and support based on data from the AI system.

A former teacher, Dr. Arnold argues that Alpha School’s model is not about taking jobs away from teachers or replacing them with robots. Instead, she emphasizes that their approach allows educators to focus on what drew them to the profession in the first place: inspiring and guiding students. “This is actually what we [educators] wanted to do,” she says. “This is what we came into the field for — to inspire kids.”

See alpha.school/santa-barbara.