Here's What The TFA Product Studio Learned From ASU/GSV

What you do matters. Whom you do it with matters more.

I am incredibly fortunate to be able to do the work I do with the people I get to do it with. For the last few months, I've had the pleasure to be a part of building a product studio out of The Reinvention Lab at Teach For America, the largest education non-profit in the United States. If you're reading this you probably know me but let me take a moment to introduce you to my friends and colleagues that I get to do this work with.

Meet Yusuf Ahmad and Aditi Garg . Both of these people are VERY accomplished (check out their profiles for me) and equally amazing human beings. It is an honor to call them friends and colleagues and you should know them, and follow their journeys individually.

So here's what we are doing together. We are building the processes, infrastructure, and conditions to build new products and programs that support reinvented learning at Teach for America. In short, we are building and testing products that build the future of learning. Think of us as a startup within the large non-profit.

We've been interviewing tons of innovators and young people as we get our first few prototypes off the ground...which is what brought us to sunny San Diego, California for the ASU/GSV Summit. We came to be where the innovators are and to find out what they need. Wherever we go, we STAY learning and learning and learning and learning! So...

Here's what we learned at ASU/GSV! Insights from my amazing teammates:

Aditi- "The most valuable conversations about building the future of learning happen outside of the conference sessions"

Don't get me wrong, conferences are awesome and they have some great offerings for sessions and gatherings. But any frequent conference attendee knows that the real value is in the networking, the hallway moments, the hugs, and connections. The shop talk and the scheming that happens in bars after hours and restaurants over a meal is where the real value is, at least for us.

The time we got to spend building community with innovators was so valuable. Community building comes out of pounding the pavement and doing the work. That's why these spaces become so valuable. It is learning in public. It is sharing notes and wins and losses and learning to support each other in pursuit of a brighter future.

As we recounted our learnings Aditi made this dope observation:

"There's something about us hosting our own spaces. It is valuable for us as a new product studio to float and test our thinking but it is also important for the innovators we know to do the same. There is a two-way value add. We're building with."

Yusuf- "TFA can be the app store for reaching public education"

People think a lot of things about Teach For America. One thing we can agree on with respect to TFA is that the organization has a lot of power and influence. What we are learning is that our org has the potential to be the "app store" for innovators to reach students and educators within public education.

In other words, we've got the reach and the talent. We can use that to help.

I absolutely love the way Yusuf and Aditi put this:

Yusuf: For a lot of the innovators we met, it is clear that they see us as an entity to plug into and work with. I am proposing is that we be the app store to help innovators reach and impact public education.

Aditi: Yes people are really interested to see TFA in this space and looking to us, the Lab, to model ways to set up the systems to do this really well.

Mike- "Go"

My message and my learning is simple. Go. Let's do this thing. The more people I meet doing cool work and the more time I spend working with good people makes me want to go get it. It makes me want to keep building.

I don't think we in this product studio or we at Teach for America are going to solve all of the world's education problems. But I do know that we are going to do a ton of good and help a lot of innovators, students and families with this work.

We are so early in this work but we are moving.

Go.

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Until next time!

PEACE!