G Retro

Always

• Educators first
• Students first
• Have a clear and compelling mission and vision
• Act ethically
• Agile + Education
• Outcomes-based education
  • Create assessments before content
• Build an empowered team
• Be honest about the point of diminishing returns on lesson planning
• Mix of full time and contractors
• Be mindful of not guarding the gate
  • Know best practices in admissions and interviews
• Group projects
• Personalized, mastery based learning
• Cross-functional teams: hr, marketing, teaching, admissions, software
• Radical Candor
• Staff Retreats
• Interviews that are assessments
• More than one person on an instructional team
• Daily surveys
• Inspiring and scary first days
• Teacher soft skills
• Be silly
• Immersive experiences
• Frequent and small meetings
  • Adds up to more planning than another system

Prefer

• One central location
• Hire experts, oversee them but let them do what they do best
  • Be aware of absentee-management and micromanage
• More emphasis on getting non-traditional people into the industry
• Book clubs and study groups
• School visits
• Guest speakers
• TA opportunities
• Assessing on community involvement
• Assessing on public speaking
• Advertise on platforms that professional developers use
  • Twitter
  • Podcasts for non-beginners
• Multiple cohorts on break at once
• Being proactive about time off
• Shit-talking lectures
• Talking about 'hidden curriculum'
• Checklist for non-mastery items
• Lightning Talks
  • Not just presenting, it's thinking and speaking clearly
• Open Air Classroom

It Happened

• L-type executives. Curious but toothless.
• A charismatic CEO who can sell a vision, but can't make it happen
• It can always get worse
• Warmups (what is the outcome we wanted during this time?)

Rather Not

• VC money
• Skeleton crew with little to no vacation time.
• Fixed time, variable mastery
• Layoffs
  • Hard or soft
• Doing things because that's how they've always been done
• NPS as a way to measure student satisfaction

Never Again

• "Because that's what the board wants.."
• Lack of commitment to innovative adult education
• Putting a lot of money and people behind a product for only one part of the company
• Obsession with ops: standardizing when it's not helpful
• Go along to get along/ just follow the rules
• Scale too fast
• Try to be a tech curriculum platform
• Mis-aligned leadership
• Expensive curriculum production
• Play business