Today we're announcing the Lambda School Mentor program, the best way to get involved with Lambda School by mentoring and spending time with students in your local area. Many students come to Lambda School with no network in technology. But we've learned that many folks in the broader community who follow Lambda School are among the best and brightest in their community, and have offered or are looking for ways to give back to help new developers and designers in their area. We want to help make that happen.

We'll continue to build on the Lambda Mentor program, but today we're launching Weekly Checkins, a regular ~45 minute one-on-one with a new developer in your local area who's still attending classes to check in, give them feedback on their work, offer support, and help orient them to the tech community in your area.

Bring your expertise and willingness to help someone new in your community, we'll provide an agenda, an e-mail summary of what the student's been working on, and suggested questions or discussion topics every week. Most meetings can take place on Zoom or over the phone, but we would love for students to start building their in-person local network as well, so meeting in real life occasionally is encouraged.

Everyone can think of a few key people in life that got them where they are, this is your best chance to be that person for someone who needs it.

We're building a pilot group of 35 mentors willing to work with at least one student per week as we experiment and prove the model. Once we have a consistent, repeatable, reliable experience for mentors and students alike, we'll expand the program to support as much of our student body as possible.

Q&A

What do I get for becoming a Lambda Mentor?

The first group of Lambda Mentors will be extremely important in helping us build a next-level experience for all of our students. To recognize that, we'll be featuring Lambda Mentors on our upcoming Mentors page, adding regular shoutouts in our newsletter and social media, inviting mentors to our internal Lambda Slack community, and creating exclusive Lambda Mentor swag.

How else can I get involved?

We've had hundreds of people ask us how they can get involved helping students in their local area, but we know a weekly one-on-one is not the right fit for everyone.

We're experimenting with other ways to build hyper-local in-person networks for our students, including sponsoring meetups, casual nights of code at coffee shops, and office tours. We want to provide the venue, the drinks, the food, the agenda, or whatever else it takes to help build these local communities. We're still exploring the right way to do so, and would love your input. Send us your feedback and ideas on Twitter, or e-mail mentors@lambdaschool.com.

What's the commitment here?

For the one-on-one weekly checkin, we're hoping for 45-60 minutes a week at a consistent time.

How many students would I be working with?

We expect most mentors will start with one or two students that live or want to work in their local area. Our students are spread pretty evenly across the United States. Bigger metropolitan areas will have a few dozen students, while smaller cities may not have any yet. If we have more students and you want to work with them, we'd love that. But no pressure.

If you're interested, sign up and we'll get in touch with some more specifics about students in your area right away.

How do I get started?

We're just building out the program, but we're taking signups now and hope to start meetings with our pilot group of Lambda Mentors in the next two weeks. Go ahead and follow the link below to sign up.

Sign Up

Sign up for the mentor program here.

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