School Name, Brand & Message

Naming your School or Project

Unfortunately, we don’t have a magic trick to help you come up with the perfect name for your school. Some of our schools have very plain and functional names (ALC Everett or Agile Learning Center NYC). Others have their own name and then incorporate ALC in some way (The Mosaic School became ALC Mosaic, Endor Initiative became Endor ALC).

Others keep their pre-existing identity (like The Farm School) and just integrate our agile practices. And still others have a simple name (like Cloudhouse) and being an ALC is a footnote. In fact, some groups have adopted “ALC” but expand the acronym as “Agile Learning Community.”

If the name of your project is not clear at the outset, one good approach to choosing can be to brainstorm a bunch of names, invite feedback from your community, then pick a few favorites and try them out for a while. Try using the names in meetings, feel how they taste in your mouth and how they sound to your ears. See which one starts to stick and run with it.

Visual Brand Identity

Having some visual/memorable way to present your name and/or logo is important for brand recognition. It’s more about an emotional connection to people who encounter your brand. An image, font, and layout creates a kind of emotional experience. That experience is what sticks and has them remember it upon multiple exposures to it.

The graphic designer that created the ALC logo and branding has some style guidelines that may be really helpful if you want to incorporate the ALC logo into your brand presentation. If you want to create your own independent vibe, and don’t already have those skills on your team, then find a graphic designer who can help you (maybe for free unless you have a budget for it). Getting your logo, font, and brand image in place early helps with all of your other marketing efforts. Eric F may also be available to help at a reasonable price.

Core Messaging & Target Audiences

Okay… Now you have a name, a logo, an educational model to talk about… but who are you talking to? ALCs are cool, but not everyone is going to come to your school. You need to figure out who your pioneers and early adopters are and what message makes them want to come check you out.

Some examples of people who may be early adopters at an ALC:

• Gifted students bored in the current system

• Parents who are high-tech professionals and understand the benefits of Agile

• Highly motivated self-directed learners

• People into makerspaces and the maker movement

• Homeschool families looking for a more social environment for their kids

• Social activists & changemakers wanting an alternative to a broken system

• Families with young children who they feel are losing their love of learning because of stress at school.

• People rebelling against standardized testing

• Families with children stressing about too much homework

• Kids with behavioral problems in normal schools

• Prodigies with extreme passions or skills who are looking for a place they can invest their time in those passions

• Unschoolers who want more people and some support structure

• People looking for Unschooling or Free Schooling places nearby

• Former Free School families who know they want some more structure, support and documentation while staying self-directed

• Anarchist and Libertarian families wanting to provide a school experience with very different power dynamics

• Families who travel a lot and want a flexible schedule which can include travel as part of their child’s education or even short visits at other ALCs

  Now imagine you have the space of a Google Ad to write a phrase to get their attention. Or you have 30 seconds of possible interest in a casual conversation in passing. Notice how different the things are that you would say depending on who they are. Is it about testing? The current system sucking? Freedom? Self-direction and Purpose? Agile tools? Gifted? Troublemakers?

Pick one or two groups to focus on because you have a way to reach them, and then get good at reaching them.

Yes… We know you probably want to able to serve all those people. If they have great kids, why shouldn’t they come to your school? The problem is that if you try to make a message that communicates “We meet your need” to all those different groups, you’ll probably fail to communicate with any of them effectively. This is the reason you have to reel in your message and figure out who you’re targeting and how. As the saying goes, “If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to no one.”

Figure out what your low-hanging fruit is. Do you have a lot of homeschoolers and a way to reach them? Do have a good angle through some tech companies into the families of techies? Are local tensions about extreme testing riling up parents? Did a nearby charter school just close down? Pick one or two groups to focus on because you have a way to reach them, and then get good at reaching them. You can expand your message to other groups later once you actually some students enrolled or a school up and running.

Unfortunately, we can’t give you your main message. It has to be yours. It must be tailored to your community and reflect your values and priorities. You can feel free to look at the web sites of other ALCs for ideas, but chances are you will need to alter it to reflect your own flavor or spin to work for you.

Elevator Practice

Practice making some “elevator pitches” so that you are comfortable sharing quick summaries with people. Try a single sentence version, a 20 second version, and a 2 minute version of summarizing your project and why they want to come find out more.

Try versions that connect to different audiences (like the ones listed above). Pretend you’re speaking to a potential parent of a teen who hates school, or a parent of a young child who is starting to be bored in school. Try some versions speaking to other educators, or speaking directly to prospective children.

Don’t just think through these pitches in your head, practice them aloud. Take some time in marketing meetings or founder meetings to have people practice. They might hate it for a few minutes, but they’ll appreciate it later when it helps them think on their feet in an important conversation with someone later.