Aug. 20, 2025
From Basement to Breakthrough
A chance encounter on a train to Delhi changed everything for Manpreet Kaur. When a fellow passenger asked why she wasn't pursuing her dream of creating an educational platform for children, she made the bold decision to quit her job and return to her small hometown in Punjab, India. That decisive moment in 2017 sparked the creation of The Learner's Pathway, a comprehensive literacy program that's now thriving in Edmonton with over 30 students.
Website: spotlight4success.com
00:06 - Welcome to Spotlight for Success
00:33 - Manpreet's Journey to ISTE
01:21 - Founding the Learner's Pathway
03:14 - Creating Interactive Educational Books
06:18 - Balancing Technology and Human Connection
07:20 - Episode Closing
WEBVTT
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Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company.
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I'm Devin Pintosi, your host.
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We are here in sunny San Antonio, texas.
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I'm here at ISTE and ASCD.
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We have a wonderful guest here in our place.
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Here we are here with Manpreet Kaur.
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She is the founder and educator of the Learner's Pathway.
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Welcome, thank you.
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So nice to meet you, manpreet.
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Nice to meet you too.
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Now can you tell me a bit about what brings you here to ISTE?
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Perfect.
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So what brings me here is the exposure.
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Okay.
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The exposure to the digital solutions and just being here with educators, the fellow educators and amazing people to connect with so I could learn and take back amazing solutions or experience and memories and connections that can really help and foster our work that we're doing back in Edmonton to make a difference in children's lives to literacy, enrichment, learning.
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And so you're the founder of the Learning Pathway.
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That's right.
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Can you tell me about how all that started and where you are today?
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Well, long story short.
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Once I was on a train to Delhi, which is the capital of India, and this amazing gentleman sitting beside me said Manpreet, what do you do?
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He's like I work in an educational consultancy.
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He's like, oh, is there something that you really want to do?
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I'm like, yeah, I want to build a platform for kids, a space for kids where they could learn and prosper and have an education that they deserve.
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It's like then why don't you do that?
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And that moved me from inside.
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So I really went up to my boss and I said I quit.
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So that day I quit and called my parents I'm going to come back.
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I come from a very small town, namashar Punjab in India, so I went back and I watched this amazing movie by Mr Vaughan Clark and, interestingly, he's actually presenting today.
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So, that man inspired me to really start something that is today the learner's pathway, and I designed this amazing program.
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It's called the Foundation Program, which is building foundation of kids in literacy development when it comes to grammar, foundation, reading techniques, writing essentially giving them a 360-degree exposure to what is really language and literacy and why is it needed?
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What are books?
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How are books or reading books is leisure and fun and not a chore or school, so just bringing their engagement and interest towards reading and writing and communication in general.
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So that's what the Learners Pathway is all about and that's the day when it started in 2017.
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And now we're in Edmonton.
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We started all the way from scratch, from the basement to now commercial space and we're thriving with more than 30 students.
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Wonderful, thank you.
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Thank you for watching Spotlight for Success.
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I am Devin Pintosi, chief Operating Officer of American Book Company.
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We are located here in our headquarters in Woodstock, georgia.
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All of our materials are printed in USA.
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We have course books, e-books and online testing in grades K through 12 in mathematics, ela, science and social studies.
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In mathematics, ela, science and social studies.
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These materials are all designed to help students achieve higher scores on their state-specific high-stakes assessments.
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We guarantee score improvement.
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You can get free samples of our materials either in print or in electronic formats at abck12.com.
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We look forward to hearing from you.
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Wow, that is great.
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Mentree.
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I understand you also write.
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Is that correct?
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Do you have books?
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I am.
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I'm a published author, I'm a poet, I'm a poet, poetry writing, and we also recently started publishing books for elementary kids Wonderful.
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We came up with books for handwriting, pencil control oh nice.
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And I think something that we really love about creating these books is we come up with these interactive characters Like Doodle the Dino in our handwriting book is so much fun and it's so famous with all of our kids.
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I had this parent coming to me.
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She said my child has 10 different tracing books but he doesn't touch any of those, but your book because it's so interactive.
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He loves getting acknowledgement from doodle the dino, the character which we have inside, and another series that we came up with is blend and read series for kids who struggle with blending sounds okay and then we have a character for that as well.
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It's blendy.
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So so I teach them that you know the magic fingers that this is blendy if I can it.
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Or it's blendy, so I teach them that you know the magic fingers that this is blendy if they're right-handed or this is blendy and they really want to blend the sounds with it.
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So it's a little fox with a blendy hat on it.
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So essentially creating an environment for kids where they have that workbook in their hands but they really want to enjoy the process of reading and learning.
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That's so much fun.
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Integrating characters into the book to make it engaging for the students.
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That's so cool.
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Thank you for the acknowledgement.
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Something that we also do by the end of the book is give that little space for parents to reflect and then just write down their thoughts.
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How did the child do through the book?
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And also a little certification of acknowledgement that kids can cut it and really paste it somewhere so that they feel good about it.
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That they completed a workbook.
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That's so neat, it's an achievement and you get the certificate too.
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That is so awesome.
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I love what you're doing.
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That is such great work.
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Thank you so much.
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Wow.
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Do you have anything you'd like to share with the ISTE ASCD community?
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Wow, do you?
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have anything you'd like to share with the ISTE ASCD community?
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Well, all I would love to say is our kids, our youth, the coming generation, really want them to be independent learners, critical thinkers and creative thinkers.
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With the advent of AI and digital tools and everything coming up which is great, by the way, in every sense but we still want them to learn and understand one thing that it's all about communication and expressing yourself.
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So I think, all of our educators, if we can blend the technology and still keep that human essence and element in place, that would be great, because there is something about being human that is irreplaceable, right.
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Right, absolutely.
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So just blending those two techniques together is what's going to take us far, far away and achieve what we want.
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That is awesome, manpreet, thank you.
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Thank you so much for speaking with us today.
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This is Manpreet Kaur with the Learning Pathway.
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Thank you so much for joining us.
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Thank you for having us.
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Thank you.
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