Hello and welcome to the AIGA Design Podcast.
My name is Lee Sean Huang. You may have noticed if you're a
long time listener to the podcast that we've paused on our
regular release schedule, but we are still working behind the
scenes on all sorts of exciting learning experiences for
designers like you here at a IGA.
But we're still doing some special episodes, so I wanted
to. Talk today with our special
guest Ratish Gupta, founder of Useful School.
He's actually a return guest. He spoke with our former
executive Director Benny F Johnson last year in an episode
of the podcast, and we thought we'd bring him in for an update
to learn about what he's learned so far with Useful School, which
is a Pay what you can online design school aimed at POC
designers and aspiring designers.
And I think it fits really well with our general summer of
learning here at AIG as well, where we have our own learning
experiences available for designers and what we call
design adjacent areas to really grow as professionals.
But without further ado, welcome Ratish.
Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.
You did talk about the origin story of Useful School in your
previous interview, so folks can go listen to that and we'll post
a link in the show notes. But can you give us a recap, a
little bit of just what Useful school is?
Sure we are. Are a virtual school that aims
to help people of color thrive professionally and also
personally. And I'm happy to get into
details around how we're thinking about both of those
things in a bit. But that's really the main goal
here. We started with product design
classes, we started with some branding classes, but we're
quickly starting to spin out a lot of other classes that are
helping folks address some of the key issues that I've heard
and noticed that. POC are experiencing
professionally, but are also experiencing personally.
You set out to solve some specific problems with useful
school, and in some ways it was like a conversation with AIGA.
So you were taking a data set from a previous AIGA design
survey. You were crunching the data
yourself to really look at some of these issues that Poc
designers faced in the industry, and also using your original
econ major in the process. So can you help us understand a
little bit about the kind of core problems that you're
addressing with useful school? Sure, there's a few and they've
changed focus, or rather that we've added focus over time, but
the initial focus was all about helping junior level.
And senior level product designers be happier.
The one metric is helping POC junior product designers enter
the design industry. And for those who are senior
level product designers, helping them move up, so helping them
get new jobs, whether it's at their current company or it's
helping them get new jobs at a new company.
Or starting a freelance practice.
So that's where we started. We started really focused on
product design, specifically at the junior and senior level.
Now what we're looking at is helping branding folks in the
junior and senior levels do something similar.
So helping fill roles at the junior level, but also help fill
roles at the midweight all the way through design director
levels. So that's where we're at right
now. What we've noticed is a decent
number of POC want to be entrepreneurs.
They either are entrepreneurs already or they want to be.
So expanding the curriculum to include how to start and how to
execute on this freelance desire.
And what we're also looking at is some of the more intangible
metrics, the number of folks that are feeling happier, folks
that are feeling less impossive syndrome.
Feeling more confident and of course there's ways to track
that, but those are more of the quote UN quote soft skills or
the soft outcomes that we're looking at as well.
What we're also thinking about, which I'm really excited about,
is looking at classes that aren't just quote UN quote
purely professional, meaning we focused initially on product
design, we focused initially on on branding.
But now we're starting to, for the first time, starting to
explore classes outside of those realms, still appealing to
designers but addressing a slightly different issue.
So what we've noticed is that our applicants, about a third of
our applicants, have wanted financial Wellness classes.
We've also noticed that the first week that we've have
focused on for the last year and a half or so has been on
decolonization, and individuals are.
In our class are fascinated by the topic and it's obviously
really, really important and meaningful.
So what we've actually started doing is actually creating an
entire curriculum purely around decolonization.
So in the fall, we're going to have not only advanced branding,
not only junior and senior targeted focused classes for
product designers, but we're also going to be having
financial, Wellness and decolonization classes and those
are literally from. Application and graduation
graduate feedback. Well, a lot of things I'd love
to react to and follow up on, but I'll just jump in the middle
of it. First of all, I just think it's
awesome that you are looking at multiple metrics of graduate
success and also keeping in touch with them, polling them
about what are continuing needs that they have in terms of their
own learning. And I think it really is a
great. Model that complements that like
traditional Business School, MB, a kind of thing of like what is
the average salary of the graduates, right?
And obviously that there's things that make sense about
that when people are taking on lots of student debt to do these
expensive masters programs. Something that useful school
graduates aren't necessarily dealing with.
But maybe they do have student loans from previous experiences
that they've done. But looking at that.
Happiness and general Wellness thing, I think it's just really
important in terms of shifting the norms in our industry.
And then in terms of the financial Wellness and the
decolonization, I think that's great too.
It sort of connects with what we call design adjacent here at a
IGA, not just the name, the previous name of our podcast,
but also our general strategy to learning where we don't
necessarily teach specific software.
Like design software, whether it's from Adobe or Figma,
because there's other places to learn that, but we really focus
on those skills that you need to be thriving as a professional
and as a person. So I guess my follow up is on
the decolonization point. Can you tell me a little bit
more by what you mean by that for folks who may not be
familiar with that concept? Sure.
So decolonization. In broad strokes is around
literally decolonizing our learning and our practices.
So thinking about how much white supremacy and other colonizers
have affected our thought processes, how we operate, how
we think, what we do, what we say, all those types of things
is a really important thing to like, be aware of and also like
unlearn. So what we're thinking about is
how might we take this decolonization concept?
And it applied to students at useful school who are really
interested in it and they want to have a specific outcome and a
specific output from it. So what we're having students do
starting in the fall is they're gonna be going through a 12 week
curriculum with some absolutely incredible special guests.
And by the way, before I continue going, our curriculum
was Co created by Annika Hansi Nazora who's incredible and
helped create the curriculum help invite the speakers and
everything. So shout out.
To Annika. And what we've done is we've
realized that after 12 weeks, we want the students and graduates
to have something to show for it that they're really excited
about. So what we're going to have them
do is actually build a project and ideally launch it by the end
of 12 weeks, which is like kind of a scary idea for many folks.
But a lot of designers and and creators in general are are
really excited about it, I think.
What's important is blending the theory and the actual practice.
And I think that's where a lot of programs unfortunately are
missing that link. So what we're challenging our
audience. And our communities to do is to
think about deconization specifically with regards to
their own practice. So this is also, I should say, a
class that's appealing not only to designers but creators in
general. So we're we've had applicants
who are like TikTok creators, we've had applicants who are
writers, we've had applicants who are adjacent to the design
world, and we're welcoming all those types of individuals.
So I'm really excited about that.
And they're gonna literally be creating something by the end of
12 weeks that's decolonized. So we don't care if it's a Zine,
if it's a website, an app, or something different, as long as
it has the decolonization lens throughout the entire part of
it. And I think it's really a really
clear thing to look at. This project is OK, what kind of
fonts am I using? Are am I using fonts that are by
people of color? What platforms am I using?
Like, am I using a platform that's decolonized?
Like, can I create my own? Like, there's all these types of
questions that happen in terms of our tools and the tooling and
everything that we're doing. And it's also in terms of like
the community that the designers are looking to to pull in and
draw in from their project and and all of these types of
questions I've only just touched the tip of the iceberg here is
really important to thinking about how.
Deconization actually affects your your practice.
So I'm really excited about this class.
It's generally the first of its kind because it's not only pay
what you can, but it's taking deconization out of the the
expensive classrooms and into hands of students that that
really need it and actually encourage them to actually
create and launch the project. So the speakers that we're
bringing in not only talk about deconization from a broader
strokes view, but also at each juncture we have a different
person come in every class. We're teaching them specific
skills, everything from Ramon the Hida from RIZD, he's gonna
be talking about like Bipoc archives.
We're gonna have individuals who are talking about like how to
launch and market your platform to like an audience that like
you're part of, you know, all those types of things.
So I'm really excited about what's gonna be happening with
with the decolonization class and similar to what we did in in
previous classes is. Getting feedback from students,
sponsors, speakers, like literally every step of the way
to make sure we're tweaking the curriculum and making sure it's
refined, refined, refined, refined.
So that way we can just keep the amazing outcomes that we've had.
There's a lot I can say about that, but First off, I love how.
You've reframed usefulness as also addressing some of these
larger social, cultural, economic issues related to, say,
colonialism and and decolonization.
And that usefulness isn't just like a narrowly tactical or
vocational kind of training of look, you just learn the
software, and that's. What design is right?
Because we all know that it's also about the human aspects of
it and dealing with the systems that we live in, whether it's
big systems like capitalism or smaller systems, just like the
interpersonal politics of whatever organization or design
team that you're in. So in terms of these sort of
concrete projects, is this the first time you've run this
decolonization class, or have you done this before?
And can you tell us more about some of these projects?
Yeah, this is our first. Time running this curriculum,
specifically with regards to what I'm talking about of a full
12 week class. We've had every student up until
this point. We've had nearly 100 students
over the course of about a year and a half.
We've had every student be exposed in some sort of way.
Deconization, typically, it's within the first week and given
the feedback that we've gotten from our guests.
We've got Aziz Ali, who helped Cocreate and runs this.
It used to be called Design to Divest and now it's called Oroco
Cooperative. And he, Shaquille, Greeley and
many others are doing incredible work with regards to these types
of concepts. And every time Aziz, Shaquille
or some of the other folks in this community come and speak or
on these topics, everyone's like, this is amazing.
This has blown my mind. I love it.
Like how might I bring this in my own practice?
How can we like do this more? Like I want to talk about this
more, more and more. So we're we're literally just
taking the feedback that we've gotten from students and and
expanding from there, which I think.
In my opinion is probably one of the better ways to approach the
release of our our classes is taking the feedback from from
students and and speakers specifically.
I think I am particularly excited by the fact that many of
our past students have applied to these upcoming classes.
We've had a good number of advanced and beginner
individuals from various classes raise their hands and say like,
yeah, I want to do this like I'm working on my own app.
And I'm working on my own like TikTok profile or whatever.
And I want to like really be held accountable to, you know,
to creating it more, more with y'all.
And I think what would be a fantastic outcome is we have
these projects out in the world in some way.
Of course everyone will have a case study of sorts, which is
incredible and that's like one of the best ways to get hired in
in this day and age. But I think also having folks
actually potentially start. A company or some sort of like
Instagram profile that's actually running up after the
class is gonna be something that I'm really excited by too.
We don't know what the outcomes will be specifically on this
class cuz it's kind of won the first of its kind.
So I will have more to report probably by the end of the year,
early next year. Awesome.
It'd be great to have you as a return guest again.
I'm down. Yeah, Devin, I always have so
much I could talk to you about. In terms of this codesign ethos,
you know, I don't know if you've mentioned this term codesign
yet, but it's definitely one of these buzzwords that we hear a
lot that can be both lip service on one end but also real on the
other end in terms of how do we design with people rather than
just for them. And it seems like you've been
fostering this community at useful school where there is a
kind of accountability and feedback loop with the learners
and the alumni as well who come back and.
Help you develop this curriculum as it moves forward.
How do you think about what that collaboration looks like?
I think you've already name checked one of your
collaborators, like officially on the curricula, but then
there's this kind of larger network both of students and
alumni, as well as some of your your sponsors.
But how do you think about all of these different stakeholders
in codesigning what useful school is?
I think one of the most powerful types of projects that I've seen
out in the world. Have been where you are
essentially creating something that you personally have
experienced and felt and like have wished that you had this
out in the world. Like even if it was a week ago
or a year ago or whatever. That's kind of the way I created
Useful School where I was like, OK, I'm seeing this data I
presented about it at the Brand new conference.
Forrest, who at the time was a Chief credit officer of Wolf
Allen's, was like, OK, Ratish, you you should do something
around this. This is, this is really
interesting. Come up with some sort of model.
And I was like, OK, let me do it.
Cuz like, I literally experienced that.
I literally experienced the problems that we're trying to
solve through useful school myself.
So I think what's interesting and kind of ironic is this idea.
When you create something that you've personally experienced,
you kind of have this idea. Of codesign in your mind and
cocreation and all these types of things.
But because you're the the one of the key audience members or
populations that that would would use the thing or or love
the thing or whatever, whatever term you might want to use, you
just kind of do it. And you don't really have like
this like OK, I need to reach out to 50 stakeholders.
I need to make sure like this is working for this person, this
person, this person. And I'm at least I'm talking
about it from like a very early stage point of view.
You're just like you're just doing the thing right.
I think as the projects go on, there are really important
checkpoints that you have to think about when you're actually
creating, creating something and you're gonna be impacting other
people as well. So let me explain when you're
thinking about this idea of dignity and making sure that.
The population that your product or service is working for or
serving, you need to make sure that the product is really
culturally responsive. And there's a really important
role that dignity plays and making sure that the product is,
for lack of a better term, dignified and makes the
population that you're working with dignified.
So there's a certain juncture, like when you're actually
creating a prototype and you're getting feedback.
That you're not only thinking about yourself and how how you
might feel feel that, but also how might others feel, feel
dignified. And one of the best ways to do
that obviously is gaining initial feedback from from some
of your peers. But I do have mixed feelings
about this term generally about Co creating Co design because
like I said some of the best products have been ones where
like you're kind of creating something for yourself that you
want to see on the world and you just hope that other people see
it too. The other note I'll make is.
That it's also pretty likely that something that you've
thought of or created has been thought about or created in the
past in some shape or form. So making sure you're like
constantly checking your archives and making sure that
you're nodding to to the past history of the of the product
that you're working with is is also incredibly important.
It'll ensure that you don't repeat the same mistakes.
It's oftentimes really helpful to kind of stand on the kind of
the shoulders of the giants that have come before us.
And honestly it's just it's just the best and most moral thing to
do it there. There has been plenty of
projects out in the world that have been problematic because
they act like they're the kind of the the only one that exists
and they're the first ones that have thought about this thing in
the past. So I think those are my initial
thoughts on like Co creation, Co design and and all of that.
That's like a topic probably we could talk about for like hours
and hours, but those are my my initial thoughts.
For sure. Yeah, we could do like an entire
podcast series on codesign and all of that stuff.
But I just wanted to underline some of those things that you
said about like actually doing some sort of market research,
right. What's already been out there,
maybe it's a historical view as well, which I think is another
critique of some of these more. Vocationally focused or narrowly
tactical design education programs that don't really have
a sense of history. You know, it's that like design
existed before figma. And this is not to pick on
Figma. But there's often like, you
know, there is like the hot tool of the moment and then people
kind of gravitate towards it or they give too much weight to it
but push out other things that they should also be learning as
designers. I completely agree and I think
that's one of the reasons why we've heard from from various
people in our community about. Thinking about their own design
point of views and also thinking about like their own cultural
identity and their own personal identity at large and like how
that affects their work. We've heard from a variety of
designers, particularly ones that are actually in our cohort
right now, who are like, OK, this is my intersectionality and
this is like my lived experience and I want to help other people
as a freelancer who share similar lived experience.
So for example. There are numerous individuals
who are in our curriculum right now who are like, I share the
similar background with an entrepreneur and I want to only
serve those entrepreneurs. So for example, we've got like a
number of of individuals like right now who are like, I am a
black woman and I'm a designer and I'm gonna design only for
black women entrepreneurs And like thinking about that and
encouraging that to happen is a really, really important thing
cuz often times we think about we have to like, fit into this
like. This idea of cultural fit and
fit into like this mold of like what is happening in terms of
like the current design trends right now and we refuse
oftentimes to acknowledge like our own identities and those
identities oftentimes take a back seat.
And everything from our work to our biographies and our About Me
is about ourself like the fonts that we use, all of that.
So literally the first week of nearly every class.
We have a class on of course, deconization.
But specifically around like, how do you use deconization to
develop your own design point of view?
And like one of the bits of homework is like creating a
visual mood board that represents your personal and
cultural identity. And that kind of forces everyone
to think about where they've been, who they are right now,
where they want to be. And particularly nodding to like
the Bipoc archives there I was talking about earlier that I'm
really excited about like Ramon coming in and speaking on.
Yeah, I feel like that is definitely part of
decolonization too, is like recognizing that you don't just
have to design for a, like a quote UN quote mainstream mass
audience, which is often really just kind of a another way of
saying or a way of kind of hiding the fact that this is
actually about like dominant groups, whether it's kind of
dominant ethnic groups or kind of socioeconomic classes, right,
that are dictating taste and that.
Design is catering to them and to really say like okay, well
you can also be super targeted in who you're designing for and
with as a designer because those are necessary too.
Not everything has to be like big tech kind of design that's
meant for like the masses or quote UN quote everyone, even if
it still excludes people. Right.
So you mentioned a couple of students in passing.
I'd love to hear about maybe a couple more.
In terms of like where are they now since they've been with you
for over a year now in terms of where alumni of useful school or
current students, how they've developed as designers just in
the time you've spent together? Yeah, totally.
I love this. Whenever I talk about useful
school, I I get so stoked about it.
Particularly seeing a. The people in our community and
the graduates and what they've done.
So I'm really, I'm really, really excited about this, about
this question that you had. One thing I'll mention is that a
lot of our applicants, in fact most of our applicants come from
all different types of intersectionalities and all
different types of disciplines. So right now we are serving 18
year olds, old and up in the US only we have everyone from
product designers, product managers, we even have a
footwear designer. We have a amazing mascot
designer in our on our programs we've got many illustrators, 3D
effects people, animators, creative directors, you kind of
name it. They kind of span.
And we and we don't really look at the quote UN quote
traditional like branding people or traditional like product
design people or any of our curriculum necessarily like we
will accept if you're showing even an ounce of creativity and
everything in your application feels, feels right will be
useful to you. We'll try to make a spot for
you. So that's something that I'm
really excited about. I think the folks have
particularly in terms of the outcomes have been number one,
more confidence and less impossible syndrome based on
analysis of outcomes and and what students have done.
And also like talking through with people anecdotally, I've
noticed that without a strong focus on deconization,
confidence building. Focusing on like how you can
reduce this feeling of impossive syndrome, you need all that
stuff and then everything else is kind of like dominoes.
So we focus mostly first on the impossive syndrome, the
confidence building, feeling comfortable with your own
intersectionality and those types of things before starting
to talk about portfolio crits and all of that kind of stuff.
There's no point in doing a portfolio crit before those
initial things have been talked about, so.
What we've heard from most, the vast majority if not all folks
that they've experienced less impossible and felt more
confident. So I'm stoked about that.
That's really, really exciting and that's exactly where I want
to be. The other thing I've also
noticed is that folks have started increasing a
responsibility in their current roles.
So they're either running more meetings themselves, which is a
huge step for a lot of junior designers.
I would say, yeah, folks are being promoted to to more senior
level roles. Some individuals have started
their own freelance contracts and or have only done freelance
some people in their curriculum. For example Kindle is actually
just went freelance full time. So there's been numerous,
numerous occasions what that's happened.
I think also we've had two individuals become professors
which is like incredible. At useful school or elsewhere.
Elsewhere. Yeah.
Elsewhere we've actually so. I I do the lead teaching quote,
UN quote, like for for each of the classes.
I don't. I don't name myself like a
professor. Yeah, you don't have to name
yourself Dean of Useful School, Executive Dean, Provost.
Yeah, I don't know. It just feel.
It feels, yeah, Dean and Provost and like, professor and like all
that kind of stuff. Just feels so like, passe.
Like I want to come up with some sort of other other name or
whatever. But actually, like, all jokes
aside, like we had somebody who's become a professor at UCLA
and another College in California.
That's been awesome. Some individuals have also
started their own agencies and founded their own companies.
People are starting to like, mentor more people now that they
feel more comfortable in their own skin.
So these are the types of outcomes that are exactly the
outcomes that I want to see. Some of these I honestly didn't
expect. I didn't expect people to become
teachers themselves. I didn't, I did not expect folks
to necessarily start their own. Companies like this early on
that was obviously something I always wanted to happen, but
this early on was was awesome. So I think those are like some
of the outcomes that I've experienced.
We've had nearly 100 students go through our programs.
We're currently in our third cohort and our 4th cohort.
It's going to be in the fall, September through November and
happy to talk more about that in a second, but I'm just really
excited about supporting this community.
We have a Slack channel right now.
That's specifically focused on wins and people are posting
around about their wins. And I'm just like super stoked
about what's been happening. Like one individual, Flatbush
Brown, that's his alias is his name is Son Air and he just like
did a like a 360 branding for like this super dope, like pizza
spot in upstate New York. Another person just like
published a paper on augmented reality.
Their name is Zach. It's just like really cool,
interesting things that have happened in addition to like all
the other things I've been talking.
About that is awesome. It's great where you kind of
have these like maybe immediately legible success
stories of like, OK, you're like moving up in a corporate
hierarchy or you're starting your own studio kind of thing
that we might readily recognize. And then you also have these
ones that surprise you too in terms of people becoming
professors or or doing things that maybe you didn't anticipate
but that are still like what they view and what your
community views as success, which is I think so important in
terms. Of really embracing diversity,
right? And understanding that being
successful as a designer has like many different stories
behind it, and not just kind of 1 in terms of, I don't know,
making partner at some big name firm or whatever that might be.
Yeah, yeah. And there and there are people
who are like, I'm going to do, I'm going to go up to corporate
ladder. I want to like like continue
like getting, you know, decent income and building generational
wealth and like that's incredible.
And at the same time, in parallel, there's also
individuals who are like running their own thing.
They are going through all the learnings around like being a
freelancer or or being some sort of running their own studio or
something. And I love, I love to see all
that. I love to see all that.
You can justify kind of like any role that a lot of the folks
have taken on in so many different ways.
And so I think what I would like to see in the future is folks
continue to hit all of these types of metrics and all these
types of outcomes. I think what would be really
great is at some point I would love to see in X number of
years, I would love to see a decent number of these
individuals as well as future students continue to start
startups. That's number one.
Number two, I would love to also see folks who are currently in
the corporate world continue to be on pace to becoming creative
directors, design directors, those types of levels because
those are the levels where you can manage a lot of important
outcomes and control culture, how people are hired, all those
types of things which are really, really important metrics
to to hit. So we're just, we're just
hitting the tip of the iceberg here and I would, I would really
like to see that happen over the next few years.
It's going to take some time. There's a lot of movement
towards this. We've got a lot of momentum.
But yeah, those are some of the other things I want to see soon.
We've already started to see it with with some different
individuals. We have somebody named Victor
who's like running a team and that's incredible and has like a
lot of, has a lot of like agency working for his consulting firm
and that's that's incredible. And I just want to continue
seeing folks like Victor continue to thrive after
graduating from useful school. Wonderful.
That's the kind of longterm cultural and systems change.
That we want to see in the world.
So Speaking of like the next generation or even just the next
cohort, I guess those are the two things I want to talk about
next, the next cohort. Can you tell our listeners a
little bit about that if they want to get involved and still
apply to the program? And then you'd also mentioned
before we started rolling wanting to work with younger
aspiring designers as well, high school aged people.
So can you tell us a little bit about both of those?
Yeah, totally. So we have five more classes
coming up in the fall. The application deadline is
August 18th. The classes will start early
September and they will go through the better part of
November. And we have five classes
specifically on beginner product design, advanced product design,
advanced branding, deconization and financial Wellness.
We are going to be doing classes once a week, basically.
So if you're part of any of these five classes, you're going
to be meeting weekly in the evenings on Zoom.
It's completely remote. As long as you're living within
the United States, you're all good to go.
And as well as you're also 18 years old and up, there's going
to be a different secret guest every single week.
And the way their classes are structured is we have the first
hour. Of each class is going to be
some sort of get secret guest dropping knowledge in some sort
of way, maybe doing a workshop with them, what have you.
And then the second hour is usually with somebody like
myself who might do crits, lead mini lessons, do another
presentation, time for crit, all those types of things now
something that's really interesting about our curriculum
that people have been particularly fascinated by.
Is on the advanced levels specifically, we actually have
students teach many lessons to each other because the designers
have so much knowledge. They're so, so smart and have a
lot of really interesting, unique experiences.
So we'll have a decent portion of the curriculum where the
designers themselves, the students themselves will
actually prepare like a short, like 5 to 10 minute lesson
that's like really practical and really useful that all the other
designers can learn from. So for example, we have like a
social media. Genius who runs social for a lot
of bigger brands named Georgia who came in and talked about
like how you can do social media for your own like portfolio and
how you can help grow your own social platform given your own
like experience and intersectionalities.
Another person has taught a class on how to run an inclusive
design critique, which honestly is a really, really difficult
thing to do. Running an entirely or mostly
inclusive design critique is very challenging.
So was really excited to hear from Jasmine on that one.
So there's like these little things that we're doing that are
making huge impacts for these outcomes where we're not only
having guests come in, teach some knowledge, show me how I
did this so I can do it, two types of things and get me
inspired. But also we're building
community within our classes where everyone is actually
learning from each other and supporting each other.
Both live in the classes and like on our Slack community.
So I think those are the types of things that you can look
forward to. If you're if you're interested
in learning more about the program, you can go to
usefulschool.com. And you can see all the classes
there and you could also apply if you want to get involved like
on a sponsor level or partner up.
Maybe you're part of a company or something and you want to do
some do some work together and make some impact.
Happy to talk about that. There's a lot of different ways
we we work with partners that are really beneficial to
everybody. And yeah, and if you also like,
want to get involved in like another way besides being an
applicant slash being a partner, just let me know, Just e-mail me
for tshirtusefulschool.com. And hopefully we can make
something happen. We have we are always looking
for more guest speakers. We're always looking for like
more help or was looking for more ability to spread the word.
Please let me know. Thank you for that call to
action. And just to follow up on the
maybe there's younger people listening to this or folks
listening to this have like high school aged people in their
lives. I know this is a kind of coming
soon thing so that there's maybe not an immediate call to action
for those folks, but can you maybe give us a teaser for that?
Sure, so. What I would love to do, in
addition to running Useless School as it currently is, is I
would love to. At some point, probably early
next year or late next year, we'll see, is to start working
with people who are 17 years old and below.
There are a variety of models that I'm thinking about that the
Useless School community has been interested in doing #1 is
doing some sort of after school programs for K through 12.
Students, the second thing is thinking about how might we do
some sort of partnership or something with like another
agency or another studio or another brand to doing like a
little bit more of a longer term curriculum.
That's not just after school. Maybe it's just maybe it's like
an intensive between somebody's junior and senior year or
between senior year and college. You know, whatever might be
particularly to help people understand.
A lot of the curriculum that we're teaching both on the
design avenues but also in the financial Wellness and
everything like that. Like I would love to be able to
to work with younger students as well.
We're just hitting the tip of the iceberg.
Those are my initial ideas and if anybody like, wants to help
out set that up, let me know. There's some schools that I'm
particularly fascinated by. One is called the Marcy Lab
School. The Marcy Lab School, It's Marcy
lab.org. I'm not affiliated with them in
any way. But my partner had shared them
with me and some other folks had have shared this with me and
it's an alternative college basically where like kind of
over the course of about a year you kind of unlock and do all
the things related to a career in in tech specifically coding
and things like that. So I'm I'm, I'm fascinated by
this model and I would love to see schools like you school,
Marcy lab school and others like work more at this level and and
younger. That's wonderful.
And like I think that's how we're going to build these
pipelines, right? Is like focusing on young people
as well as people over 18 or even mid career people which
some of your classes focus on. And just really having this
larger community and just options for people to to learn
in different ways that work for them what their interests are,
what their communities are and what their finances allow for.
So Ratish keep up the amazing work and thank you for giving us
this update. Coming back to visit us, we'd
love to have you again and see where.
Things go with useful school. Yeah, happy to.
Happy to come back. I'm stoked I have to get better
about this, but I try to post on social media like LinkedIn or
Instagram every now and again whenever I have some literally
useful news to share. So yeah, feel free to hit me up
on LinkedIn or follow us usefulschool.com on Instagram
and hopefully you can hear the latest.
News. Awesome.
Thanks again everyone. Have a wonderful summer of
learning this is Leshawn. See you next time.