A few months back, after many requests from our community for more lengthy, detailed, intensive learning experiences, we launched our certification system for the UnSchool. It took us a couple years of design, iteration, and development, as we wanted to create three different tracks that would offer unique, specific levels of application — the Practitioner, UnMasters, and Educator certification tracks. Each track starts online and involves self-directed community activation points, direct mentorship, and personal agency development. They are connected to our face-to-face programs and enable people anywhere in the world to gain the tools and skills of activated creative changemaking.
We thought about why someone would or would not take a program like this and decided to list all the reasons why someone interested in activating their personal agency for a positive and sustainable future should not get certified with us. Without further ado, here are five reasons why you should absolutely NOT get an UnSchool certification:
We have no accreditation. We decided early on that the UnSchool is not interested in having some current, status-quo-system validation, and that instead, our approaches would speak for themselves. So, we intentionally got absolutely no external validation (and we certainly did a thorough review of many of them before rejecting them all!), and to this day, the ‘value’ anyone gets from attending any of our programs is the value they take away from it! Which, if you’d like some examples of this value, you can read some alumni profiles, like those of Laura Francois, Bao Yen, Loo Ly Mun, Neha Rao, Lourdes Martinez, or Zoë Palmer.
The content is complex. No easy A’s here! But that's the reality of the world — it's not simple, linear, easy-to-digest, pre-cut-up stuff. It's messy and interconnected, and the kind of content we teach includes the tools to design interventions for all of that. So, at times it can be a bit of a mess, but the outcome is a way more dynamic, detailed, and flexible mindset.
You have to be self-directed. This is the hardest thing for many people: finding the brain hacks to trick themselves into staying on the track, getting the work done, and overcoming the inevitable procrastination that we all deal with. We don't step in for direct support until you get 75% of the way through (but of course, we respond to emails, you have a LinkedIn support group, etc.). This is when the three-month 1-on-1 mentorship kicks in, and that's when you will have slayed all your procrastination demons and be ready to level up :)
Leyla speaks VERY FAST! People sometimes complain about this. And that's why you can slow all our videos down to half-speed, watch them again and again, or read the subtitles (handy for catching all the nerdy jokes!). But it’s true... we all get so overly excited about the content and that comes across in the speed of our it. Thus, many of the videos involve an excited, fast-talking Australian. So, you have to be able to put up with hours and hours of that to survive to certification — but don’t worry, each video is fairly short.
It will NOT solve your existentialism. We all wish there was a simple solution to the personal battles we each have with the purpose of the world and our role in it, but alas, there is not. Perhaps reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the best way to deal with this one, and of course, the tools of systems thinking and perspective shifting are fundamental in gaining some agency over the bigger questions we each hold. But an online learning system is not going to be the remedy for the universal, age-old conundrum: Why me? Why us? Why now? What it will do, however, is help you identify why YOU, why US and why right NOW when it comes to making positive change in our world.
In all seriousness though, we designed the certification tracks to be something that we would want to do; it's a mixture of videos, written content, and a bunch of challenges that you have to complete. AND then, we enforce you taking action (as that is the entire point) by doing random (fun, positive-changemaking!) things, like having dinner parties and running workshops to collect community activation points.
These combined experiences set you up to get certified, and once you have that UnSchool-issued validation (there’s even an official LinkedIn certificate you’ll get), you will know what you know and be equipped to go out into the world and mess with it in positive and provocative ways to help ignite changes for a more sustainable, regenerative, and circular future. Oh, and you get access to our stuff to do that :)
Guaranteed, or your money back ;)
Is 2020 the year for you to kick start your creative changemaking career? Sign up for any one of our tracks over the holidays (24 Dec until 4th Jan), and get the first month FREE! You can try it out before you buy. Just use the code ACTIVATING2020 when you register, and month one of any one of the tracks will be free. Payments will begin by month two, so if it's not for you, then you can unregister and not pay a cent.
