Dialogue:
The English Language School
of the People

the scroll for the deep dive -

Frequently Asked Questions

Dialogue: The English Language School of the People

dialogueschool.org · EIN 41-2923319 · 501(c)(3) · Fort Worth, Texas

Launching September 2026

I. What Is Dialogue?

What does the name "Dialogue: The English Language School of the People" mean?

The word dialogue names what people do together through language every day, especially while learning another tongue.

It reaches back twenty-five centuries, to the Greek island of Lesbos, where the poet Sappho wrote lyrics to be sung aloud between human voices. A later ancient commentator names what's in her poetic exchanges: παράγει οὖν ὅμως ἡ Σαπφὼ διάλογον, Sappho presents a dialogue. Voices answering one another in turn.

That is what dialogue meant then. It is what the word still means now.

It traveled early into English. The Oxford English Dictionary records it in Shakespeare, whose characters speak of dialogue not as software or methodology but as living human exchange. And forms of that same ancient word now circulate through the tongues of the world: diálogo, dialogue, dialog, диалог, 対話, الحوار, đối thoại, carried across continents, alphabets, scripts, translations, and histories. The word itself has entered into dialogue with humanity.

Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author who learned Italian as an adult and wrote In altre parole entirely in that learner language, understood this. Reflecting on her struggle, she wrote: "Perché alla fine per imparare una lingua, per sentirsi legati a essa, bisogna avere un dialogo, per quanto infantile, per quanto imperfetto," which means, because in the end, to learn a language, to feel connected to it, one must have a dialogue, however childish, however imperfect.

That sentence captures precisely what Dialogue means by its name.

In our teleclassrooms, learners read, and so enter into dialogue with writers. They write, and enter into dialogue with readers. They listen, and enter into dialogue with speakers. They deliver monologues, and enter into dialogue with an audience. And yes, they also speak directly with their instructor and classmates, in the most literal sense of the word. All five language activities recognized by the Common European Framework of Reference, listening, reading, spoken interaction, spoken monologue, and writing, are forms of one human reaching toward another through language.

The word dialogue names that reaching. Not a method. A philosophy.

"Of the People" is a phrase with a long history in English political and religious thought, made famous in Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address: of the people, by the people, for the people. Dialogue applies it to learners. The school exists to serve them; its educators are paid by donors who fund only what learners need; its governance, over time, will pass into learners' hands.

The subtitle also echoes University of the People, and we say openly: we are glad that it does. Shai Reshef's tuition-free, accredited online university demonstrated that higher education could be genuinely free and genuinely rigorous. Dialogue holds the same conviction about intensive English instruction: free, rigorous, human, and for everyone.

"Of the People" also names a deeper commitment we call Learnerocracy: the principle that learners ultimately hold authority over the institution that serves them. In the classroom, learners have real standing to shape what and how they learn. In governance, the school is architecturally designed one day to be led entirely by former students: alumni instructors, alumni administrators, alumni board members. The people the school serves will one day run the school. That is not a distant aspiration. It is the intention behind every structural decision the school makes today.

What is Dialogue: The English Language School of the People?

Dialogue is a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides tuition-free, intensive English language instruction to adults worldwide. We operate with no physical classrooms. All instruction is delivered live and synchronously through teleclassrooms (video-based sessions on Google Meet) so that expert instructors and enrolled learners can be together in real time, from anywhere in the world.

We were incorporated in Texas on December 3, 2025 (EIN 41-2923319) and are governed by a credentialed Board of Directors with expertise in education, law, linguistics, and finance.

Why is Dialogue headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas?

Fort Worth is the home of all four founding board members, each with deep roots in international education and cross-cultural work in the city. The city itself reflects this global orientation: according to the most recent U.S. Census data, nearly one in five Fort Worth households, 19.5%, speaks a language other than English at home, with Spanish, Vietnamese, Arabic, and French among the most common. More broadly, Fort Worth is wired for global connection in ways that matter for a school serving learners worldwide.

The city hosts two major international airports: Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, one of the busiest passenger hubs in the United States, and Alliance International Airport, a dedicated cargo and business aviation hub. Fort Worth is also a Sister City with municipalities around the world, creating formal institutional relationships and cultural ties that extend the school's reach and reinforce its commitment to genuine global engagement.

The local higher education market, anchored by Texas Christian University, Tarrant County College, and other institutions, sets reasonable salary benchmarks for expert educators. This matters directly to Dialogue's founding commitment: fair compensation for instructors is built into the Year 1 budget because Fort Worth's cost of living and labor market make full compensation parity achievable without extracting profit from learners.

Finally, Fort Worth's own demographic composition, its immigrant and refugee resettlement communities, and its history as a city of cross-cultural exchange mean the school is rooted in a place that already understands why free, location-free education matters. The city and the school's mission align.

When does the school launch?

Formal student instruction is scheduled to begin September 3, 2026. We are currently in our pre-operational phase: building infrastructure, developing our assessment platform TOEML™, and raising the funds to hire our founding instructional team. To learn how to apply, see our Apply page.

Who founded Dialogue, and why?

Dialogue is the founding work of Kurk Gayle, who is contributing more than 30 years of English language education experience, including 25 years directing a university-based Intensive English Program where he raised over $1.5 million in funding for student access and helped launch the world's first fully online university IEP in 1998–1999. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he co-founded the Free English Collaborative, a tuition-free, multi-university teleclassroom program that served students on six continents, each individual learner making progress in English language proficiencies measured by the before-and-after Duolingo English Test.

Dialogue was founded on a simple observation: the learners who need intensive English most (refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, stateless or undocumented individuals, mobile professionals, and bilingual families) are precisely the ones priced out of existing programs. Traditional Intensive English Programs cost $7,000–$27,000 per semester when you add tuition, visa fees, travel, housing, and testing fees. Dialogue eliminates every one of those costs.

UNESCO's first-ever Global Higher Education Trends Report, released 12 May 2026, documents the structural gap Dialogue was built to close: "Some 90% of OERs are produced in Europe and North America and mainly in the English language. Similarly, while global digital platforms feature providers from around the world, English is often the primary language of instruction. As such, learners from other regions with different linguistic needs may find that their access to relevant educational resources is limited." In other words: the world's open educational resources are produced in English and yet remain inaccessible to the very learners who most need English to reach them. Dialogue closes that gap.

Is Dialogue a charity?

We are a nonprofit, but we think of ourselves as partners, not providers. Learners at Dialogue are not recipients of charity. They are participants in a school that exists to serve them, governed by a board that will eventually include alumni of the school itself. We pay our instructors fairly because we believe that genuine access to education should never be built on the exploitation of teacher labor. We are funded by named foundation grants and individual donors who share our conviction that high-quality English instruction is a human right, not a product. Every dollar, and every category of cost, is accounted for openly on our Donate page.

Why is Dialogue a nonprofit? Why not tie it to an existing education institution, a for-profit company, or a volunteer organization?

Dialogue is a nonprofit because the choice protects the school's mission, ensures fair labor, and enables genuine learner governance: three things no other organizational structure can deliver together.

A for-profit company would need to extract value from learners or educators to return to shareholders. That means tuition, fees, or underpaid instructors. A volunteer organization would rely on unpaid labor, burning out the very experts learners need. An institutional partnership with a university or established education company would embed Dialogue's mission inside someone else's priorities: accreditation requirements, institutional politics, budget constraints controlled by another board. The school's independence, and therefore its ability to stay free, stay rigorous, and stay focused on learners, would be compromised.

Nonprofit status, by contrast, does five things at once. First, it unlocks grant funding and donor tax deductions that enable the tuition-free model. Second, it allows the school to pay instructors fairly, benchmarked to top-tier rates in the local education market, without those salaries flowing to external investors. Third, it protects the mission against funder pressure through a permanent endowment: no donor, no foundation, no government can use financial leverage to soften what the school teaches or how it governs. Fourth, it creates the legal and fiduciary structure for Learnerocracy, the gradual transition of governance to alumni, which would be impossible under for-profit or institutional structures bound by shareholder or institutional fiduciary duty. Fifth, it establishes the school as a public trust held in service to learners, not as property owned by founders, investors, or institutions.

II. The Learning Experience

When does Dialogue run, and what does the annual calendar look like?

Dialogue runs ten consecutive four-week cohorts across the academic year, each with a fresh group of twelve learners and one expert instructor. Every cohort is its own complete learning arc: students enroll, learn together, and complete together. There is no rolling admission within a cohort.

For the 2026–2027 academic year, the ten cohorts are:

Cohort Dates

1 September 3 – September 30, 2026

2 October 8 – November 4, 2026

3 November 12 – December 9, 2026

4 December 17, 2026 – January 13, 2027

5 January 28 – February 24, 2027

6 March 4 – March 31, 2027

7 April 8 – May 5, 2027

8 May 13 – June 9, 2027

9 June 17 – July 14, 2027

10 July 22 – August 18, 2027

Each cohort meets twelve learners with one expert instructor for fifteen clock hours per week, four weeks per session, in the Central Standard Time zone (Fort Worth, Texas). Across a session, that is sixty hours of live teleclassroom instruction. (A clock hour is fifty minutes of instruction with a ten-minute break completing the hour.)

This is comparable to the total coursework hours in a single nine-week University of the People term, where students are expected to spend fifteen to twenty clock hours per week per course. A learner who completes one Dialogue cohort has put in the equivalent instructional time of one full UoPeople term.

This alignment is not accidental. Dialogue's four-week cohorts are scheduled to overlap naturally with UoPeople's five annual terms, beginning in September, November, January, April, and June. Two Dialogue cohorts fit inside each UoPeople nine-week term. A learner who wishes to simultaneously enroll in UoPeople's English Composition course (ENGL 0101) — the tuition-free pathway to university admission that requires no prior English proficiency test — can do so while attending Dialogue, with both programs running in parallel and ending in the same general window. That combination is not required. It is simply available, and our instructors are happy to support learners who choose it.

Dialogue is an intensive program: fifteen clock hours per week of live, synchronous instruction, totaling sixty hours over a four-week cohort. This is not background study or self-paced coursework. It is the equivalent of an intensive academic schedule, comparable to a university Intensive English Program, but delivered entirely online at no cost to the student.

Research consistently shows that intensive formats, where learners engage deeply over concentrated time periods, produce language gains equivalent to or exceeding those from semester-long courses at a fraction of the total study time.

What actually happens in a Dialogue class session?

Learners and their instructor meet live via Google Meet in a small group of twelve. Every session is structured by a credentialed expert instructor and develops all five of the language activities recognized by the Common European Framework of Reference: listening, reading, spoken interaction, spoken monologue, and writing. A session might involve close reading of a text, a learner delivering a prepared monologue, a written response to an argument, a listening task drawn from a film or podcast, and, yes, live back-and-forth discussion between learners and instructor. All of it happens in English. All of it is guided, corrected, and built upon by the instructor in real time.

Before each session, learners prepare by engaging with freely available input, watching, reading, listening. When they arrive in the teleclassroom, they are ready to work across all the language activities. The preparation is the warm-up. The live session is the game.

How is this different from Duolingo or a language-learning app?

Duolingo and similar apps are useful preparation tools, and we encourage learners to use them, and to maintain their streaks. But five to fifteen minutes of gamified exercises per day, earning streaks and badges, is not a substitute for fifteen clock hours per week of structured instruction across all five language activities.

Apps can build vocabulary and pattern recognition. They cannot teach a learner to construct a sustained written argument, to follow a complex spoken monologue and respond critically, to deliver a prepared presentation with confidence, or to read a difficult text with a skilled instructor guiding the comprehension. That is what Dialogue's instructors and classrooms provide, and at the center of all of it, connecting every activity to every other, is human relationship. Lahiri's insight applies: whether you are reading, writing, listening, or speaking, you are always reaching toward another person through language.

How is this different from the University of the People or other free online programs?

The University of the People is an admirable institution, a tuition-free, accredited online university serving thousands of students globally. Dialogue is a different kind of institution serving a different purpose. UoPeople offers degree programs taught primarily through asynchronous coursework with volunteer faculty. Dialogue offers intensive, live English language instruction taught by paid, credentialed professionals.

We believe that expert teaching is worth paying for. A qualified TESOL instructor with a master's degree and years of experience is not interchangeable with a volunteer. Dialogue's founding Instructor is paid $100,000 and its Executive Director is paid an $80,000 annual base salary, benchmarked to the top-tier rate for online graduate-level master's faculty in the local higher education market. Full compensation parity between the two roles is intentional. Fair pay is what serious looks like, and Dialogue means it seriously.

How does Dialogue have fun?

The late educator bell hooks taught that teaching and learning should be exciting, sometimes even fun, and that this excitement can co-exist with and even stimulate serious intellectual engagement. Dialogue teaches in that spirit. We reject the idea that adult education must be grim to be rigorous, or that serious work in the world's lingua franca cannot also be a place of laughter, surprise, and pleasure.

In our teleclassrooms, this looks like laughter at the wrong word that turned out to be the perfect word, applause for a learner's first delivered monologue, debate about a film or a poem that nobody expected to care about, and the kind of conversation that runs ten minutes past the hour because no one wants to leave. Learners bring their home languages into the room. Instructors share their own learner stories. Mistakes are funny. Being a beginner is honorable. The work of reaching toward another human being through language is, in Jhumpa Lahiri's words, infantile, imperfetto, and worth it.

And then there is Dia. Dia is Dialogue's mascot: a teal groundhog who emerges from the earth into the light, named for día, the word for day in Spanish and Portuguese, and for dia, the Indonesian pronoun that means he, she, and they all at once. Dia's name is already multilingual, already inclusive, already Dialogue. Dia is small, soft, slightly confused about what day it is, and entirely committed to coming up into the light anyway. Which is to say: Dia is every adult learner who has ever sat down to learn the world's lingua franca knowing it will be hard and showing up anyway. The work is real. The joy is real. Dia knows.

What is your policy on learners' home languages?

We practice translanguaging. We actively encourage learners to use their home languages as resources for learning English, for clarification, comparison, nuance, and cultural grounding. We reject the idea that a learner's primary language is an "interference" to be suppressed. A learner who can move fluidly between their home language and English is not confused. They are multilingual, and that is an asset.

No learner at Dialogue will ever be told to "only speak English." Every learner will understand that the world's lingua franca is theirs, even as they learn and use it more and more.

III. Cost and Eligibility and Scale

Is it truly tuition-free? What's the catch?

Yes. Tuition-free always. There are no tuition fees, no registration fees, no application fees, and no standardized test fees. Learners need only a smartphone or networked computer and a reliable internet connection.

A $500 refundable seat-guarantee deposit secures a seat in a cohort and is returned in full upon successful completion with 90% attendance. Dialogue keeps no portion of the deposit. The school does not own the money; it holds it. The deposit is not tuition, and it is not a fee. Dialogue remains tuition-free and fee-free. Learners who cannot post the deposit may request a sponsor, an individual or organization who guarantees the seat on the learner's behalf. Sponsorship is one of two equally valid ways to claim a seat and requires no documentation of hardship. Full terms are on the Apply page.

There is no catch. Dialogue's Year 1 operating budget is $230,340, funded by grants from foundations and named individual donors. That budget pays full compensation parity to one founding Instructor, at an $100,000 base salary, and one founding Executive Director, at an $80,000 base salary, plus retirement, health insurance, and payroll taxes. Donations are processed at $0 fee through Zeffy and held at Thread Bank via Relay, all non-profit no-fee services. Over the longer horizon, Dialogue is also building a permanent endowment as a financial reserve that generates operating revenue year after year, protecting the school's ability to stay free regardless of any single funder's priorities. The endowment exists specifically so that no future donor or government can use financial leverage to change what we teach or how we govern.

What does an 8-week Intensive English Program actually cost near the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, compared to Dialogue?

The figures below are drawn directly from the published 2026 cost pages of Intensive English Programs located near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, gathered April 11, 2026. All figures reflect the full estimated cost to an international learner for one 8-week session, including tuition, mandatory fees, health insurance, and, where applicable, on-campus or homestay housing.

Program 8-Week Cost

SMU Intensive English Program (Southern Methodist University — Dallas, TX) ~$7,000

DBU English Language Institute (Dallas Baptist University — Dallas, TX) ~ $5,200

ELI-UTA English Language Institute (University of Texas at Arlington — Arlington, TX) ~$3,704

UNT Intensive English Language Institute (University of North Texas — Denton, TX) ~$3,404

TLC — The Language Company (Accredited private institute — Fort Worth campus, TX) ~$3,360

Excel English Institute (Accredited private institute — Richardson/Arlington, TX) ~$1,850

Dialogue: The English Language School of the People (Online teleclassroom — study from wherever you already are)

$0

Sources: Program cost pages retrieved directly from each institution's website, April 11, 2026. SMU 8-week figure estimated from the published 4-month term cost of $14,113. TLC tuition reflects the Intensive English program at $1,625 per 4-week session × 2. Housing figures reflect the lowest available homestay option at each institution. All figures in U.S. dollars.

These totals also do not include costs that apply specifically to international students enrolling on an F-1 visa: the U.S. visa application fee ($185), the SEVIS fee ($350), a required English proficiency test for admission ($50–$300 for TOEFL, IELTS, or Duolingo English Test), and international airfare to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. When those are added, the realistic total for an international student in an 8-week DFW-area IEP ranges from approximately $5,000 to $13,000 or more. Dialogue's total remains $0 — because Dialogue learners study from wherever they already are. No visa. No flight. No relocation. No test fee.

Who is welcome to enroll?

Dialogue is designed for adults who hold a secondary school diploma or its equivalent and who want to reach the level of English required for admission to the University of the People, or any English-medium higher education institution. Our founding learner populations include:

• Refugees and asylum seekers who need English for resettlement, employment, and civic participation

• Immigrants whose professional credentials do not transfer without English proficiency

• Mobile professionals who travel or relocate frequently and cannot commit to a fixed-location program

• Families navigating bilingual households who want support for themselves and their children

Dialogue admits students of any language, "native speaker" status, race, color, national origin, ethnic origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or immigration status to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of any of these characteristics in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, and other school-administered programs.

Do learners need to travel or have a visa?

No. This is one of Dialogue's core distinctions. English learning at Dialogue never requires permission to enter a country. Learners study from wherever they already are, at home, at a library, at a community center, or anywhere with a reliable internet connection. There are no visa requirements, no relocation costs, and no travel fees of any kind.

The four traditional English-speaking destination countries, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada, are all, in 2026, currently seeing their international student programs simultaneously grow smaller in each nation for geopolitical reasons. Dialogue exists precisely because access to high-quality English instruction should not depend on a border crossing.

How does Dialogue plan to grow?

Dialogue's scaling plan is geographic before it is anything else.

Year 1 (September 2026 – August 2027): Fort Worth Central Time, one cohort at a time. One Instructor, one Executive Director, ten consecutive four-week cohorts of twelve learners each, 120 learner-seats across the academic year. All cohort hours fall on the Fort Worth schedule (Central Standard Time). Learners are anywhere in the world but must be available during Central-time class hours.

Year 2 (September 2027 – August 2028): parallel cohorts in additional time zones. Dialogue adds Instructors in time zones where there are the most demand; they are compensated competitively in relation to salaries of top tier teachers in the city where they reside. Cohorts begin running in parallel across compatible time zones. This roughly compounds the number annual learner-seats and opens Dialogue to learners who could not attend Central-standard-time classes.

Year 3 (September 2028 – August 2029) and beyond: further regions. Additional Instructors are hired to open cohorts in further time zones, Europe and Africa, then Asia and Oceania, until learners on every continent can find a cohort that fits their clock. The model stays the same: twelve learners per cohort, fifteen clock hours per week, four weeks per cohort, ten cohorts per region per year. Each new region is a new Instructor; learners-per-instructor stays at twelve.

This priority is deliberate. Geographic expansion serves more of the same kind of learner Dialogue was built for: adults priced out of intensive English programs by tuition, geography, or both. Only after the geographic footprint is mature does Dialogue plan to add an upper-level track for graduates who want to continue beyond the founding B1–B2 admissions band into C1–C2 study.

The endowment exists in part to make this possible: a permanent reserve that protects each new region's cohort against funder-driven change in mission. Each new Instructor hired into the model is hired into the same compensation principle that funds the founding role: fair pay for expert teaching, fully benefited, benchmarked to a real local labor market.

IV. Technology and AI

What technology do learners need?

The only technology requirements are a smartphone or computer with internet access, a working camera, and a microphone. That's it. Dialogue's entire infrastructure runs on free platforms: Google Meet for live sessions, Google Classroom for course materials and communication, and freely available content sources for reading and listening input.

We chose these platforms deliberately. If a tool goes behind a paywall, we find another way. Dialogue will never require learners to purchase software, subscriptions, or devices beyond what they already have.

What role does artificial intelligence play at Dialogue?

We embrace AI as an amplifier of human exchange, not a replacement for it. Learners and instructors use free AI tools including Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and others for preparation, self-pacing, and practice between live sessions. AI can help a learner rehearse vocabulary, generate writing prompts, get feedback on a draft, or practice pronunciation at 2am when their instructor is asleep.

But AI cannot do what Dialogue's teleclassrooms do. It cannot teach a learner to read a difficult text with genuine comprehension, to construct a written argument that holds together under scrutiny, to deliver a monologue with the confidence that comes from being heard and guided by a skilled instructor, or to develop the full range of language activities that open doors to education and professional life. The live session, with its reading, writing, listening, speaking, and structured instruction, is irreplaceable. AI supports learners in arriving at that session ready to engage.

Is Dialogue's technology infrastructure proprietary?

No. Our entire technology stack is free or open source: Google Workspace for Nonprofits (provided to us at no cost through Google's nonprofit program), Google Meet, Google Classroom, Google Drive, and freely available open-access content. Dialogue has no proprietary platform, no vendor lock-in, and no technology costs passed to learners. Our website at dialogueschool.org runs on Google Sites.

V. Assessment: TOEML™

What is TOEML™?

TOEML™ stands for Test of English as My Language™. It is a free, web-based English proficiency assessment developed by Dialogue as an alternative to traditional high-stakes tests like the TOEFL, IELTS, and Duolingo English Test.

Traditional English proficiency tests cost $50–$300 per sitting, require travel to testing centers, and are built on an algorithmic surveillance model. They also embed a particular bias: the framing of English as a "foreign" language that the learner is trying to acquire. We reject that framing. If you speak, read, write, or dream in English, English already belongs to you. TOEML™ is designed to document what you can do, not to catch you in what you cannot.

How does TOEML™ work?

TOEML™ is a portfolio-based assessment conducted via Google Meet with a qualified assessor. It begins with the learner's own story of learning English — written or spoken, in any format, and progresses through a series of communicative tasks that assess the five language activities: listening, reading, spoken interaction, spoken monologue, and writing.

Results are reported using the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), the international standard used by universities, employers, and governments worldwide to describe English proficiency. There is no single numeric score. Instead, a six-color CEFR-coded profile shows what the learner can do across each language activity at each CEFR level. Dialogue's three-layer arbitration system gives the candidate final authority over the interpretation of their own transcript.

TOEML™ is free. No test fee. No testing center. No algorithm. No surveillance. No "foreign."

Do you use the term "non-native speaker"?

No. We do not use "non-native speaker," "foreign language learner," or similar designations. These terms define learners by what they lack rather than what they bring. A person who learned English as a second or third language, who navigates multiple linguistic worlds daily, who code-switches with ease across cultures, that person is not a deficit. They are a resource.

Dialogue recognizes the learner's ownership of English from the first session. Our job is not to make English available to you. It is to recognize that it already is.

VI. Governance and Learnerocracy

Who governs Dialogue?

Dialogue is governed by a four-member Board of Directors. The founding members are:

• Lizdelia Piñón — President

• Carlo Capua — Vice President

• Tracy Rundstrom — Treasurer

• Kurk Gayle — Secretary

All four members are lifelong language learners. All hold graduate degrees they use professionally. All reside in the school's headquarter city of Fort Worth, Texas, and all are alumni of Texas Christian University. The Board meets quarterly.

Our governance architecture is designed to evolve. Dialogue's long-term goal is for its Board of Directors, Executive Director, and instructional staff to be comprised entirely of alumni of the school, people who learned English at Dialogue and now lead it. We call this principle Learnerocracy: the idea that learners hold authority over the institution that serves them. None of the founding board members, including the founder, intends to govern the school permanently.

What does Learnerocracy mean in practice?

In the classroom, it means learners have formal standing to revise the syllabus, redesign outcomes, and contribute approximately 20% of the curriculum themselves. We do not ask "What do students need?" and then deliver it. We ask learners what they need and build accordingly.

In governance, it means every structural decision Dialogue makes, about hiring, curriculum, endowment spending, and mission, is evaluated against one question: does this increase or decrease the authority of learners over their own education? Institutions that claim to serve learners but keep learners out of power are not serving them. They are managing them.

Why does a free school need an endowment?

Dialogue's long-horizon endowment is not about prestige or financial reserve for its own sake. It exists to protect learner agency. The immediate work is funded by Year 1 grants and donor gifts totaling $206,810; the endowment is the insurance policy that protects that work in the decades to come.

Grant funding comes with conditions. Donors have priorities. Governments have agendas. A school that depends entirely on external funders can be pressured, subtly or directly, to soften its mission, change its curriculum, or compromise its governance in exchange for continued funding. The endowment generates operating revenue from investment returns, giving Dialogue the financial independence to say no to any funder whose conditions would compromise the school's commitment to learners.

VII. Educators and Partners

Who teaches at Dialogue?

Dialogue instructors are credentialed professionals, not volunteers, not AI, and not peer tutors. Each instructor holds at minimum a master's degree in TESOL, Applied Linguistics, or a closely related field, plus demonstrated experience teaching English intensively to adult learners and via teleclassroom or other live online formats.

Dialogue pays its founding Instructor $100,000 and its founding Executive Director $80,000 as their respective annual base salary, with full compensation parity between the two roles. Both are benchmarked to the top-tier rate for online graduate-level master's faculty in the local higher education market. Compensation parity is not a clerical decision; it is a cultural signal of mutual commitment between the school's two founding employees, and a reflection of the value Dialogue places on each role. Salaries are accompanied by a 10% retirement contribution, individual health insurance, and standard payroll-side benefits (FICA, FUTA, Texas SUTA).

Genuinely free education for learners should not be built on unpaid or underpaid labor from teachers. Radical access and fair labor are not in tension. At Dialogue, they are the same commitment.

Are there opportunities to support or partner with Dialogue?

Yes. Dialogue is actively seeking:

• Grant funding from foundations and government programs that support adult English language learning, refugee resettlement, workforce education, and educational equity

• Individual donors who want to support a specific endowment contribution or operational need

• Organizational partners, refugee resettlement agencies, immigrant service organizations, community colleges, and faith communities, who serve the populations Dialogue is designed to reach

• Credentialed TESOL instructors interested in teaching with us when our first cohort launches September 3, 2026

To inquire about partnerships, write to info@dialogueschool.org.

To apply as a learner or instructor, write to apply@dialogueschool.org.