Whatever you do, don’t call it a school. In the brief time WeGrow was running, it was far more than that. To CEO Rebekah Neumann, it was really more of a practise and an approach to life; a place where children could elevate their consciousness (if their parents could afford the fees of up to $42,000, of course). Unfortunately, Rebekah’s own teachers,
His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Mother Nature, weren’t on staff. Maybe that was the problem.
In episode six of WeCrashed, we see Rebekah arrive at the idea for WeGrow. It was to be a more holistic approach to education, one that would feed children’s souls and “unleash every person’s superpower”, much like the one Neumann’s own home-schooled kids had enjoyed. The curriculum would feature “conscious entrepreneurship”, yoga, weekly field trips to the Neumanns' upstate farm, podcasting and other mind-expanding pursuits, often with the help of visiting WeWork staff.
In the show, we see Neumann looking around an empty floor in WeWork’s headquarters in the affluent Chelsea neighbourhood of New York, imagining the private school – sorry! Not school! – she is about to create.
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“I see clouds,” she says to the designer tasked with bringing Neumann’s vision to life. “And… a meadow, right? Oh, this is incredible! Can you feel the energy that we’re creating in here?”
“Yes, I do,” says the designer, looking like he can’t quite believe his luck. “This energy will be, er… expensive.”
“Our mission is to unleash every child’s superpowers!” replies Neumann. “You can’t put a price on that.”
Around 100 children aged 2 to 11 were enrolled when the ambitious project launched in 2018. WeWork announced in 2019 that it would close at the end of the academic year. Just how many children developed superpowers in that time is unclear, but a lot of angry parents were left under the wreckage of WeGrow.
Speaking to the Daily Beast in 2019, Amanda Uhry, founder and CEO of Manhattan Private School Advisors, said that she had fielded 10 to 20 calls from "furious" parents. “They’re kicking themselves for getting involved.”
The closure came as part of Adam and Rebekah's lucrative departure from the company, as new CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham attempted to trim the fat and transform WeWork into a profitable business. In 2020, Forbes reported that Rebekah had acquired the school's curriculum from WeWork, but not the name itself. A spokesperson said that she planned to continue the project under the title Student of Life For Life, or SOLFL, aka "soulful."
SOLFL's website, slick as it is, offers little more than a 'Landscape Inventory Toolkit' for parents and a form to find out more, although the blog was last updated in 2021. Watch this space.
Nick Pope is the Site Director of Esquire, overseeing the digital, video and social media strategy for the brand. He has worked in culture, fashion and lifestyle journalism for over a decade, with a focus on menswear, food and film.
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