How do I start a school - with what documents and deepness?

Intro concept paper for parents, teachers, financiers, supporters, incl. mission, principles, goals, core ideas

Use it to get a group of people together who will help develop the concept and make it come to life

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Website

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- Budget; depending on financing: business plan; ownership & financing model

- A Learning Programme document, incl. why, what and how we'll learn, likely referencing external documents, e.g. an existing curriculum

- Physical environment requirements and envisaged multi-use spaces and functions

- Envisaged community concept paper, incl. kind of people, values, rituals, selection, etc. to help guide the community building

- Ecosystem concept paper, with how different elements of the ecosystem would interact with each other to create the envisaged experience and the financial flows

- Legally required documentation to get a school license

All the above should be short and sweet, except perhaps the Learning Programme doc, as it might need to be quite robust, both to guide teachers and to get a license. Developing this together with the future teachers would be key.

Where do you start? You just DO. Sharing your dream is a very strong way of finding like-minded people that might decide to help you on this journey. When it resonates with them, they will be happy to have the first meet-up with you and the group. Be very specific about what you need from this group. Create some structure on how to frame your design challenge. Make sure you have a mixed group with people from different backgrounds, that might support the process in different fields. Create a LinkedIn group, for example, to continue sharing after the first meet-up. After that, a core group will come out of that session that will stick around and are willing to invest time. Try to meet up online/offline to answer some of the bigger questions: Why, How, What? They need to feel like there owners of the process, in order to make them responsible. Discuss what needs to be done going onto the next steps, and set tasks for each and everyone in the group. Have one-on-one skypes/calls with them to hear about the outcomes of this specific task. Make sure you frame your communication tools for each group. Whether it's an investor, teacher.

Create tools for these different groups, such as a Pitch Desk, Dropbox to share documents, be very specific on what you need from them, but also make sure they understand what's in it for them. From there you can continue to ask specific questions to specific people in order do make the first causal steps. To be continued..