The Step-By-Step Guide to Starting a School With Your Friends
PART 2: Running your first semester.
This is the second installment in a two-part series. The first installment is here.
If you want to start a school with your friends, follow these steps:
Step 1) Plan the initial class
If you are founding a school, you should teach the first semester. This will help you test your own systems firsthand and guide instructors in the future. It's also fun and profitable.
What should you teach? It doesn't need to be what you do professionally. The most important thing is to choose a subject you're excited about.
Some questions you might want to brainstorm on to help you design a class:
How do you spend your free time?
What do you have fun doing?
What are you better at than other people?
What have you been wanting to learn?
It's okay to choose a subject that you’re new to and want to learn. In that case I’d suggest finding the best online class on that subject and acting as a TA.
Or, you may have a subject you know well that’s close to your heart. In that case you may want to design a class from scratch. For inspiration, check out our Course Template, or these excellent syllabi.
If you’d like to design your own course, I’d also suggest the following:
Keep the course on the shorter end: 4 to 6 weeks max. You can always extend the class in future semesters, but don’t get in over your head in the beginning. For new teachers, we’ve found that long classes often have a lot of students dropping off.
Test your class material before you teach it! Sit down with a friend and tutor them on your subject. Before Keesh taught a hands-on Indian cooking class, he taught a friend every dish. Before I taught my Twitter 101 class, I had Keesh go through all my material from the first lesson.
Then tweak your pedagogy based on feedback from your friend(s).Focus on student participation and output. Lectures are boring!!!! And most people aren’t very good lecturers. Especially compared to the best lectures of all time, freely available on Youtube.
Instead you should focus on creating hands-on learning environments. In the first session of Eric’s cooking class, his students cook an egg in a style they've never tried before. (Since he teaches from his house, they use his kitchen stove and some camping stoves). Eric then debugs and gives feedback to his students.
In Andrew's Foundations of Computing class, he gave short lectures then had students work on their problem sets during class. That way, they could ask questions and help one another.
Step 2) Recruit one to three more teachers
Think about your local friends and acquaintances: who among them has unique or valuable skills? Who might make a good teacher? Who do you look up to?
Message or call them to share your plan to start a school. (You may want to send them part 1 by way of explanation). Then say “I think you’d make a great teacher, would you be interested in teaching a class?”
Step 3) Secure space
I'd recommend teaching the first classes from your living room because it’s free and easy. If you have space for at least eight students, this is your best option. If your home doesn't work, you'll have to find a space to host your first classes. First, ask the teachers you've recruited whether any of their living rooms could work.
Another option is to search online for classroom space in your city. When we did this, we found out that Google offers free classroom space for community projects at Pier 57.
If you're struggling to find hosting space, I'd recommend announcing the classes anyways. In the class application form, ask whether the applicant would be open to hosting the class. As a thank you, you may want to offer to let them take the class for free.
Step 4) Launch
Once all classes have been finalized, it’s time to announce the semester.
The announcement should include:
A list of course offerings with details like dates, locations, and syllabi. We list these details on a Notion page.
A way to sign up for an emailing list so that you can tell people about future semesters. We use Substack for this.
A form where prospective teachers can express interest in teaching future semesters. We use an airtable form for this.
Finally, share the announcement widely. On social media, and in local newsletters, Facebook groups, and WhatsApp groups. You should do this at least twice: once to announce the semester, and once to remind people that applications close soon.
It also helps to make direct, personal invitations to friends, and to send frequent reminders. You can also ask your friends to share with their friends, and to post on their own social media or any other local groups they are a part of.
That’s basically it from an admin perspective. Then each instructor reviews their applications, emails accepted students, and teaches their class.
Want Help?
My goal in writing these posts is to give you enough guidance that you can go forth and start a school on your own. That said, the key insight that led to FractalU in the first place is that you are more likely to follow through on a project if you do it in the container of a scheduled, cohort-based course.
If you'd like help creating a school, we're running a bootcamp! We’re accepting five friend groups who want to start building one this summer. I’d love to help you start a school with your friends — apply here!