Dear Alpaca Team & Friends:

Last week was TRULY one of the biggest weeks in our company history!

We surpassed our growth goal for the quarter (with a day to spare!), traveled to three conferences in a week where we built so many new relationships, and locked in our Back to School pack (and it’s amazing).

But perhaps the biggest was Camp Alpaca — one of the most transformative experiences I’ve seen for our product, our team and our company.

23 educators built a new library of Alpaca school culture resources together, found confidence in their creative skills, and built new relationships with other culturemakers, educators, and creatives.

The feedback from the educators, their principals, and our own team has been overwhelming, and the work the educators built in 2 weeks advances our company by months.

Truthfully, I was overwhelmed by the impact of those educators on our lives last week. So for our closing presentations, I wrote and read this letter to our campers. I hope you enjoy it.

KB

Special thanks is in order to Heider Family Foundation, who generously sponsored the first year of our camp. Their support was instrumental in making this happen!

The images of our campers you’ll see here, combined with the words they used to describe themselves, are courtesy of our own Kimberly Bailey, who delivered each camper a new set of professional photographs at the end of camp.

A Letter to Camp Alpaca

Dear Camp Alpaca Educators:

The world paints educators in a certain way, doesn’t it?

The world paints teaching as a profession of mission and heart. Of service and love and sacrifice. But your work is done behind closed doors, and very few people walk into those doors, take a seat in those tiny chairs, and understand the depth and breadth of your work.

So the world tells only the narrative of how tired, exhausted, or burned out teachers are — and while sometimes those words are real and true, they’re often not telling the whole story.

It seems the world forgot one thing: that education, in the words of Nelson Mandela, is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world. When the world doesn’t tell the whole story and paints you only as burned out, they forget that you, too, hold a paint brush.

Because as an educator, you are a creative. You always have been. You write the words that unlock a kid’s future. You create the images that unfurl an imagination. You design a future that a kid has not yet dreamed of for themself.

You’ve been a creative since the moment you selected this career path, and those who paint you with weakness, exhaustion, or isolation — they don’t know the paint brush you’re holding.

Because if you can be a creative for kids’ futures, you can be a creative for the future of the profession.

And we need it all. We need the words that tell the whole story. We need the images that show us the brilliance and strength in educators. We need to design this profession for a future it has not yet imagined.

We need a more complete conversation about the profession, because this is serious work.

But luckily, in this room, we have serious creative professionals.

In this room, we have a patient dual language kindergarten teacher and a
joyful second grade teacher, and a driven second grade teacher.

We have an accomplished speech language pathologist and a confident gifted & talented facilitator, and an empowered school psychologist. We have an energized teacher, a creative high school math teacher, and an
excited instructional coach;

An equipped elementary teacher, a confident school counselor, and a motivated kindergarten teacher. We have a practiced GATE facilitator, an appreciated 4th grade teacher, and an optimistic high school counselor.

In this room there is a focused teacher, a valued teacher, and a rejuvenated teacher.

We have a bold family support liaison, and we have an affirmed special education team leader, and a cheerful behavior interventionist.

And with all of you creatives in the room, we have the start of a real conversation about elevating the profession of education.

I hope this is the start, and that you will pick up every creative tool you had before you got here, and every one you’ve picked up while you’ve been here. Like most things in education — this will be yours to win, and own, and do. But a new conversation about the profession is worthy of our work.

The new narrative of being an educator starts with you telling the stories of the little wins you see at work. It starts with you owning the teeny corner of your school culture that resonates with you. It starts with taking care of yourself and building habits and relationships that build you up. And it starts with sharing what you make, what you’re proud of, and what you love.

You have given us so much in the past two weeks. You have inspired ideas, given us big things to think about, asked great questions, and built such beautiful, useful, professional, creative work. We owe you, big time. So here’s what you can expect from us:

We will publish your work, so others can benefit from it.
We will lift up this community, so that you might deepen these relationships you’ve started here.
We will celebrate your impact, so that others can see what’s possible when creative professional teachers come together to build something extraordinary.

And we will write thank you notes,
and tell stories,
and elevate every educator,
and bring out the best,
and above all,

we will listen to teachers.

Not because you “need it”. Not because you are weak or in need of anyone’s help. Because you are badass creative professionals with work to do, a future to design, and a story to tell — and the world needs to hear it.

Team Letter

Maybe my favorite week at Alpaca ever.