Back to Prep GPS Self-Narrative — Working Bullets

GPS Self-Narrative — Working Bullets

Cycle: Aug 2025 – Aug 2026 (9 months covered, Aug 2025 → May 2026) Submission target: June 30, 2026 — submit prose-only in GPS, draft externally first.

How to use this doc: Raw material organized by R/R/R + reflection prompts. Reuben writes the narrative; these are the facts, quotes, and threads to pull from. Bullets are deliberately un-narrative — no setups, no transitions. Pick what to use, ignore the rest.

Three-year arc (the spine, if you want one)

  • 23/24: Executor of workshops.
  • 24/25: Capacity-builder. Build-a-Bot scaled from “workshop I run” → “program others run.”
  • 25/26: Strategic connector / systems designer. Toolkits ship, ISTE moves to licensing, Build-a-Bot multilingual, faculty buy-in becomes a pattern.
  • Closed loop from 24/25: I named the “IT guy” perception as a gap last year. Josh’s Apr 23 line back to me — “you’re not just an IT guy, you’re a relationship writer” — is that loop closing.

REACH

Build-a-Bot ran without me in rooms I didn’t design for

  • Courtney Garza — submitted + delivered Build-a-Bot at TCEA 2026 (Feb, Texas).
  • Andy Hock — Eugene 4J, CTE conference. Adapted my deck, his framing.
  • Gregory Wilson — completed first formal facilitator training walkthrough (Mar 3).
  • Multilingual ship: German confirmed (Christian Haake). Status of Spanish / French / Mandarin needs Reuben’s check before claim.

Oman — Flash Lab format, ported internationally + into inclusive ed

  • 2-hour Flash Lab workshop, “Reimagining Learning Differences with AI” (Feb 1-6).
  • ~10 tables of Oman educators. Designer / Builder / Advocate phases.
  • First international port of Flash Lab. First time applied to special education / inclusive ed.
  • Honest gap (Josh said it post-event): we underbuilt for the range of special-ed cases the room held.
  • Dr. Shariffa Al-Said (EdD, Columbia; 30-year Oman MoE veteran; visually impaired since birth) saw the session → proposed deeper collaboration.
  • Maryam Alkhzami (autism PhD) folded in by Feb 8. Whitepaper thread on AI-supported interventions still active.
  • “Effort is a tax on change” — phrase Reuben picked up from a talk during the trip. NOT his coinage. He’s been reusing it.
  • Open question: was Fatma Al-Dohani a co-deliverer? She’s in Reuben’s April outline but doesn’t appear in Feb meeting notes. Confirm or drop.

AI Flash Lab — format crossed domains

  • designkit.stanford.edu went live + in active use. Copyright notice added post-OTL (Mar 11).
  • Anna-Lena Neurohr (Learning Planet Institute, Paris): two AI Flash Lab pilots, Nov 2025 + Jan 2026.
  • Rachel Wolf (Mar 16): Flash Lab “exactly the scaffolding that would work” for her USDA aquaponics-and-AI K-12 grant. Agricultural science ed, not tech training. The format ported.
  • Gregory Wilson Tinkery Toolkit: website-format Flash Lab variant for on-campus reuse.

ISTE Live 2026 — accepted, July slot

  • Wed July 1, 9–10:30 AM, AI Pavilion.
  • Co-presenting with Josh.
  • Acceptance is the artifact. Real reach moment is the stage itself — audience that doesn’t share AS vocabulary (librarians, classroom teachers).
  • This year set it up. Doesn’t yet cash.

Legal 101 (Feb 18) — first cross-cohort workshop

  • Pulled seed grantees + tEquity + Create+AI together. First offering that crossed program lines.
  • Kristen Pilner Blair: “Ooh. This is great!”
  • Josh forwarded broadly.
  • Reach in a different register: not more people, people from previously-siloed groups in one room.

Seed grants — the portfolio I lead

Four direct seed-grant leads + advisory portfolio across the year. The reach story isn’t just workshops — it’s holding the relationships.

  • Direct leads (4): Fan/Chu Math Games (Learning Through Creation), Forssell-Ramirez Makery (Learning Through Creation), DeVeaux Dancing through Time (Joyful Learning), King Our Voice (Joyful Learning).
  • Advisory mode in the same cadence: Health Coach Bot (Marily Oppezzo), MyBook (Wen Ma), AI Comic Studio (Dan Schwartz’s lab + Cathy Chase), HarmonAI (Elizabeth Schumann), VFT Special Projects (Rachel Wolf), Oman special-ed thread, CRISPRkit (transitioning to Belinda handoff), SofIA (medium-high touch, the canonical vibe-coded MVP case).
  • Touch-rate calibration via the seed-grant lifecycle: SPARK → BUILD → SHARPEN → SCALE. Each project sits at a known level of intensity. (The framework itself is the Robustness contribution; the practice of holding the portfolio is the Reach contribution.)
  • NOTE: Earlier drafts of this file conflated this lifecycle with “the Three C’s.” Those are two different frameworks. The actual Three C’s (from reference/capacity-building-model.md, shared with Josh pre-Feb-26) are Critical Boost / Capacity Building / Cross-Pollination — about how capacity-building delivers value, not about per-project touch intensity. Don’t paste them together.
  • Apr 13 batch: Sent 4 [CHECK-IN] emails to my direct leads inviting them to Shaping the Narrative + offering to meet. Logged in Airtable.
  • Apr 16 Shaping the Narrative workshop (Joe-organized, Reuben co-facilitated, invited 4 seed grantees) — first cross-cohort touchpoint of the year for them.
  • Apr 23 Dancing through Time check-in with Cyan — first sit-down since winter. Project status flipped Stalled → Active. 5+ intro lines opened (Kathy Kerns, Brian Brown, Tech Interactive, Tim/Tammin, Cathy Chase). Recurring 4-6 week cadence agreed.
    • Honest follow-on (May 12 strategic huddle): intro chain stalled three weeks. Down-shift by neglect, not by design. Worth naming.
  • Apr 24 Seed Grant Info Session — Jessica Tsang cleared COI on AI+CT track (“the Studio will not be supporting thought leadership awardees… please go ahead and apply”).
  • May 8 Forssell-Ramirez — quick verbal update with Jacob Ramirez. Steady light-touch mode.
  • Seed grant mailing infrastructure (Mar 19 1:1): launched sal-seed-grantees@lists.stanford.edu + secondary seed-grant-affiliates for broader prospects.

VFT — formats, tools, and infrastructure traveled

VFT work this year crossed three modes: tooling built, architecture shipped, and the seed-grantee cohort held.

  • VFT moderation architecture (Mar 11) — drafted moderator-bot approach + OpenAI content-flagging policy research for the AI-with-minors safety question. Sent to Sarah Williams-Habibi → passed to Howard for implementation. Rachel Wolf suggested disseminating the pattern across GSE.
  • Photosphere viewer app for Rachel Wolf (Apr 23-24) — built a viewer-only photosphere app for the Cal Academy of Sciences VFT collaboration. Rachel: “AMAZING Thank you.” Resolved in two days.
  • VFT Seed Grantee Monthly (Apr 9, Kristen Pilner Blair-led) — ongoing cohort cadence.
  • Apr 16 Slack ask from Kristen — reply-all to Alison’s VFT seed grantee email with VFT cam link, photosphere tool link, Google Doc link. Delivered Apr 22.
  • ThingLink contract renewal discussion surfaced Jan 29.
  • Continuity of 24/25 work: VFT Resource Site rework with Joe, 360 camera proof-of-concept, sharing-site planning — all groundwork from earlier years now feeding active grantee tools.

ROBUSTNESS

AACDS toolkit shipped

  • Four-quadrant facilitator kit: Pre-Event / During-Event / Resources / Post-Event.
  • Open-sourced with Stanford + Alana credit (per OTL convention).
  • Karen Murcia and alpha-test cohort gave feedback shaping next iteration.
  • Q3 2025 deliverable on Goal 3 (Build Scalable Educator Capacity Programs).

ISTE — from booking to licensing

  • Feb 25: pivot conversation. Workshop booking → train-the-trainer + revenue-share.
  • Mar 4: Isabelle engaged OTL.
  • Mar 9: OTL meeting → two-tier IP model confirmed (open curriculum + proprietary TTT).
  • Structural decision: keep open layer open, build proprietary layer separately as licensable IP.
  • This is the decision that determines whether the program scales for a decade or a season.

Team scaffolding got more robust

  • Seed grant lifecycle framework: SPARK → BUILD → SHARPEN → SCALE, mapped against Three C’s (Consultation / Co-creation / Commission).
  • Co-developed with Josh. Now shared vocabulary across the Studio. Calibrates touch-intensity per project; lets the whole portfolio be held without every project demanding the same level of contact.
  • Tag analysis plan agreed Mar 12: AI-assisted, 3-month rollout (April calibrate, May-June retag, July confidence).
  • Retag of 140 historical interactions: completed early April.
  • May 12 Strategic Huddle established quarterly capacity-calibration framework (3 reflection questions about per-grant support, drift, what to cut). Moves capacity conversation from “as-needed” to scheduled. Handbook update pending.

Seed grant infrastructure — the work behind holding the portfolio

This is the under-the-waterline work that makes the seed-grant Reach possible. Some of it lives in the framework bullet above; this section is the operational layer.

  • Per-project status tracking maintained in projects/partnerships-projects.md with contact dates auto-synced from email/Slack via daily-prep cache.
  • Capacity audits (Jan: 18→14 threads; Mar: 20 active threads; May 12 huddle: explicit up-shift / down-shift / steady markers per project). The shifts get named, not papered over.
  • VFT seed-grant cohort cadence held via monthly meetings with Kristen Pilner Blair (Apr 9 example).
  • Direct-leads check-in cadence — Apr 13 batch was the first explicit synchronized touch across all 4. Worth doing quarterly.

Three C’s strategic proposal + lifecycle framework

  • Feb 18.
  • Personas mapped to partner pathways (CSET, Tinkery, ISTE, international) — Feb 24.
  • Market research on 9 comparable orgs — Feb 19.
  • Logic model shared with Josh Feb 13.
  • Personal logic model: living doc, operating modes, defensibility roadmap, evidence chains.

Personal infrastructure — name it honestly

  • Built Claude-based executive assistant system: daily prep, end-of-day, inbox processing, synthesis engine, web dashboard, SQLite ETL, qmd semantic search, Fizzy sync.
  • This serves me more than the team right now. Honest qualifier matters.
  • Patterns it surfaces feed Strategic Huddle + end-of-month + weekly reviews.
  • Step from a year ago: I didn’t have the visibility at all then.

Health Coach Bot — technical robustness

  • Reactivated with Marily Oppezzo (Prevention Research Center).
  • Built moderation pipeline: keyword → moderation API → custom prompt flow.
  • Provenance links to peer-reviewed sources.
  • Edit-tracking UI + bot-version logging.
  • IRB consent language drafted with Marily.
  • “Robustness” here = failure-mode planning isn’t optional when an AI talks to teens about health.

RESONANCE

Faculty / researchers shifted into agency

  • Cathy Chase, AI Comic Studio reactivation: “you really re-invigorated the project. It had stalled.”
  • Marily Oppezzo, Health Coach Bot restart: “Ahhhh Reuben You’re SO AWESOME for doing this!!” (Michele Patel folded in; IRB language now in flight.)
  • Rachel Wolf + Sarah Williams-Habibi unblocked on VFT moderation question (Mar 11 — moderator-bot draft + OpenAI content-flagging research). Rachel: “I bet there are plenty of folks in the GSE who would find this very useful.”
  • Wen Ma, MyBook: “went above and beyond for a sustainable app.”
  • Elizabeth Schumann, HarmonAI Cheddar adapter (3D-printed magnetic latch): “WOW!!!!! This looks amazing!!! I could not love it more!!!”
  • Pattern: shift from “I’d like to try AI someday” → “I’m running an active project.”

The IT-guy → relationship-writer loop closed

  • 24/25 self-narrative (last year): named “IT guy” perception as a gap, committed to shifting it.
  • Apr 23 Josh 1:1: “When Reuben steps into the room, you get unsucked. We make interesting and novel connections we didn’t know were there. We don’t feel quite so alone… You’re not just an IT guy — you’re a relationship writer.”
  • Twelve-month loop closing in real time. Worth naming explicitly in the narrative.

R/R/R framework itself emerged from this thread

  • Apr 23 1:1: Reach + Robust language landed.
  • Apr 30 1:1: Robust deep dive. Looking for the third leg.
  • May 7 prep doc: Resonance proposed as the third.
  • May 14 1:1: Josh adopted R/R/R as shared grammar for the year ahead. Two-doc deliverable agreed (retrospective + forward plan).
  • The framework is now ours, not mine. Shared infrastructure for the next 12 months.

Threads that didn’t carry

  • Cyan DeVeaux: Apr 23 plan was for me to make 5 intros (Kathy Kerns, Tech Interactive, Brian Brown HCI, Cathy as sounding board, Tim/Tammin Joyful Learning) + recurring 4-6 week check-ins. Follow-through stalled. Project went Active → de-facto-Stalled by my neglect, not by design. Named explicitly at the May 12 huddle.
  • Some seed grantees moved into agency; others paused. Not every quote becomes a persistent shift.
  • Honest portfolio note: across my 4 direct-lead seed grants, depth of engagement was uneven. Forssell-Ramirez and Fan/Chu held steady-light touch; DeVeaux saw the swing from neglect to engagement to neglect; King was the quietest. The Three C’s gives me language to calibrate, but I haven’t yet made the calibration call cleanly on each project.

WELLNESS / SUSTAINABLE LEADERSHIP

  • Weekly review held since January (Friday 2pm block).
  • Capacity analyses: Jan 18→14 threads, Mar 20 active threads. Drift named when surfaced.
  • Strategic Horizon (rolling 3-month-back / 6-month-forward) launched March, still overdue from April update.
  • Reflective + mental routines: solid.
  • Physical routine: not solid. Snowboard-ready Dec 10 landed; spring/early summer lull is real.
  • 24/25 narrative gap (“fell short on implementing my fitness plan”) didn’t fully close this year.
  • Honest framing: I built the visibility of my own capacity this year. I don’t always honor what it tells me.

AREAS FOR DEVELOPMENT

  • Airtable / CRM hygiene — still inconsistent. Joe is the model; I’m the cautionary tale. Pattern: capture in markdown + Fizzy, under-update the shared system.
  • In-the-moment capacity triage — better at retrospective. Still default to yes too fast.
  • Case-study / documentation writing — 10+ strategic consultations, zero publishable artifacts. The writing gap is the gap, not the deliverable.
  • Saying no earlier in the funnel — LAUSD Foundation, parts of Cyan’s chain, ambiguous early King conversations. Earlier discernment would have served everyone.
  • Resonance is uneven — name explicitly which threads carried vs. paused.

CHRISTINA’S THREE REFLECTIVE PROMPTS

Tip #3 from her May 18 slide. Useful as a cross-check on the R/R/R draft — answers can fold into the prose where they fit, OR live as their own paragraph near the close.

What did I enjoy most?

  • Reuben answers (raw):
  • Candidate seeds: Cathy reactivation moment, Marily restart, Oman trip itself, Apr 23 conversation with Josh where R/R/R first landed, building the Claude system, Lake Forest Tinkery + Flash Lab combo trip.

What did I learn?

  • Reuben answers (raw):
  • Candidate seeds: “effort is a tax on change” reframe, IP licensing layer mechanics from OTL, special-ed inclusive design from Shariffa/Maryam, that I’m better at retrospective capacity than in-the-moment, that durable team frameworks come from joint construction not solo design.

What would I do differently?

  • Reuben answers (raw):
  • Candidate seeds: triaged Cyan thread earlier, built case-study habit alongside consultation work, started physical routine in Jan, declined LAUSD earlier, prepped harder for the special-ed range in Oman.

STANFORD CORE COMPETENCIES (last year’s anchors)

For each example you use in prose, optionally tag (Christina’s tip #4 bonus):

  • Develops Self & Others — facilitator training, mentoring posture with seed grantees, R/R/R adoption with Josh.
  • Vision & Strategy — ISTE licensing pivot, Three C’s, Strategic Huddle framework.
  • Drives Results with Quality and Excellence — AACDS toolkit ship, Build-a-Bot multilingual, tag analysis retag.
  • Leading Change — OTL two-tier IP model, capacity-building model upstream to leadership.
  • Communication / Collaboration — Legal 101 cross-cohort, seed grant lifecycle co-development.
  • Creativity & Innovation — Flash Lab cross-domain ports (Rachel Wolf USDA, Oman special ed).
  • Emotional Intelligence / Resilience — vulnerability-met-with-scaffolding move with Josh on May 14, naming honest gaps.

FORWARD PLAN STUB (next 12 months)

Companion doc Josh referenced May 14. Not the retrospective. Listed here as starting bullets to expand later.

Carry-forward through-line

  • Capacity building for localized experimentation — with documented proof and a clearer expertise claim.

Four Josh-categories

  • Technical: publishable case studies (2 by end of Q2 was the original SMART target). Candidates: ISTE TTT model, Build-a-Bot multilingual, Health Coach Bot moderation, Flash Lab cross-domain port.
  • Communication: R/R/R as quarterly cadence. Strategic Horizon monthly. Tag analysis through confidence phase (July).
  • Wellness: one physical practice that actually sticks. Sustain weekly review. Build in slack.
  • Time/PM: say no earlier. In-the-moment capacity triage. TPM hire scope co-designed with mine, not sequentially.

Quarterly theme rotation (proposed)

  • Q1 (Aug-Oct 2026): Reach (ISTE Live afterglow, authorized-provider launches).
  • Q2 (Nov-Jan 2027): Robustness (case-study publication, IP licensing operationalized).
  • Q3 (Feb-Apr 2027): Resonance (strategic-connector identity formalized, role evolution conversation revisited with data).
  • Q4 (May-Jul 2027): Integration (retrospective for the cycle).

DRAFTING NOTES

  • 24/25 narrative was ~700 words. This year’s scope is wider; aim 900-1100.
  • Submit prose-only in GPS, no headings (per Christina’s submission format).
  • Each GPS save notifies Josh — draft externally until ready.
  • Voice anchor: 24/25 narrative in ~/Downloads/2025 Thiessen - GPS Self-narrative v2.pdf.
  • Pre-flight: run /stop-slop on the prose draft before sharing. (Reuben’s correction May 18.)

CALLBACKS FROM 24/25 NARRATIVE

Things you explicitly committed to or named as gaps last year. Worth surfacing in the new narrative — closed loops are some of the best evidence.

Delivered this year

  • “IT guy” perception → technical strategist with learning design lens. 24/25: “I’ve also become aware of how I’m sometimes perceived as an ‘IT guy’ rather than as a technical strategist with a strong learning design lens. This is a perception I will be actively working to shift through more intentional participation in design and strategy conversations in the coming year.” — Apr 23, 2026 Josh handed back unprompted: “You’re not just an IT guy — you’re a relationship writer.” Loop closed in real time.
  • Build-a-Bot Facilitator Training cohort (Q2 2025 launch). 24/25 closing: “As I review the reports from our initial alpha testing with the train-the-trainer trial, I’m excited about the evidence we’re accumulating.” — This year that aspiration became evidence: Courtney Garza (TCEA), Andy Hock (Eugene 4J), Gregory Wilson (Tinkery). Three rooms I wasn’t in.
  • “Jumping into strategic conversations earlier — treating low-stakes consultations as practice reps.” (Growth area #2 from 24/25.) — Delivered through 10+ strategic consultations across the year, the ISTE-OTL licensing pivot, Three C’s framing with Josh, and Strategic Huddle as a scheduled forum.
  • “Tiny experiments” (Anne-Laure Le Cunff framing). (Growth area #3 from 24/25.) — Tag analysis plan is structured exactly this way: April calibrate / May-June retag / July confidence — a phased experiment rather than a one-shot redesign. Strategic Huddle is another instance.

Gaps that carried over

  • Measuring long-term impact (24/25 growth area #1). I haven’t yet built the metrics framework for whether educators we train are effectively implementing AI education. Case-study writing is the missing link; it’s named again this year.
  • VFT camera project was flagged in 24/25 as “more technically challenging than anticipated, teaching me valuable lessons about project scoping.” That scoping lesson held this year — the VFT work pivoted to architecture-level contributions (moderation pattern, photosphere viewer) rather than ongoing camera development.
  • Fitness plan — last year: “While the I-Did-Five app I built helped with reflection, I fell short on implementing my fitness plan.” Same admission this year. Snowboard-ready Dec 10 landed, but the spring lull is real.

SENTENCE STARTERS (one per paragraph)

Match the 24/25 cadence — direct, declarative, no throat-clearing. Each starter is the first 8-12 words; you finish the paragraph. Cut, rearrange, or rewrite freely — they’re scaffolding, not constraints.

Target structure: ~10 paragraphs + numbered growth list + closing. ~1,000 words.

1. Opening thesis

My third year at the Accelerator for Learning has been about… (Land the shift: from capacity-builder to systems-designer / strategic connector. Name R/R/R as the grammar that emerged in conversations with Josh.)

2. Reach — Build-a-Bot scaling

This year, Build-a-Bot moved from a program I delivered to… (Courtney Garza TCEA, Andy Hock Eugene 4J, Gregory Wilson Tinkery walkthrough. Multilingual ship as the second reach axis — work reachable in conversations you literally can’t have.)

3. Reach — Flash Lab traveled across domains and oceans

The AI Flash Lab format also traveled this year, first to… (Oman special-ed port + Rachel Wolf USDA aquaponics. Two ports: international, and cross-domain. designkit.stanford.edu live. Anna-Lena Paris pilots. Note the Oman honest gap on special-ed range.)

4. Reach — Seed-grant portfolio + cross-cohort audiences

On the seed-grant side, I held a portfolio of four direct leads… (Fan/Chu, Forssell-Ramirez, DeVeaux, King. Apr 13 batch + Shaping the Narrative + Cyan re-engagement. Legal 101 as cross-cohort moment. ISTE Live July as the upcoming stage that this year set up.)

5. Robustness — External: shipped artifacts + IP architecture

Some of the year’s work was about hardening what we’d already built so it could last… (AACDS toolkit shipped open-source. ISTE moved from booking → OTL two-tier IP model. Structural decision determines decade vs. season.)

6. Robustness — Internal scaffolding for the team

Internally, we made the team’s scaffolding more durable this year too… (Seed grant lifecycle SPARK→BUILD→SHARPEN→SCALE + Three C’s. Tag analysis plan + 140-record retag. May 12 Strategic Huddle quarterly capacity-calibration framework. VFT moderation architecture → Sarah → Howard as a pattern that could disseminate across GSE.)

7. Robustness — Personal infrastructure, named honestly

I also want to name a piece of the year’s robustness work honestly… (Claude executive assistant system, Logic Model, dashboard, ETL. Serves me more than the team right now. Visibility I didn’t have a year ago. The patterns feed Strategic Huddle but the system is still mine.)

8. Resonance — Faculty / researcher agency + the IT-guy loop

What I’ve started calling Resonance showed up in a pattern of faculty and researchers shifting from… (Cathy reactivation, Marily restart with Michele Patel, Rachel + Sarah VFT moderation unblock. Then the closed loop: “IT guy → relationship writer” — last year’s named gap met by Josh’s Apr 23 line. R/R/R as the framework that emerged from that thread.)

9. Honest gaps — uneven threads and growth edges

Not every thread carried, and there are edges I want to name directly… (Cyan re-engagement → stall by neglect, named at May 12 huddle. Airtable hygiene still inconsistent. Case-study writing gap is the gap. In-the-moment capacity triage still defaults to yes too fast. Earlier discernment about fit on LAUSD / parts of Cyan / King ambiguity.)

10. Wellness — work in progress, with new visibility

My personal wellness goals remain a work in progress… (Weekly review held since January. Capacity analyses surfaced drift; named it. Physical routine didn’t land this year either. But: I built the visibility of my own capacity — a real step from a year ago. Keep this paragraph short, 2-3 sentences, like 24/25.)

11. Growth areas — numbered list of 3

Looking ahead, I’m focused on three growth areas:

  1. Documenting strategic influence in publishable form — converting 10+ consultations into case studies, not letting the work live only in conversation.
  2. Pushing train-the-trainer from “we’ve trained facilitators” to “the licensing economics are proven” — operationalizing the ISTE-OTL structure.
  3. Continuing to lean into the strategic-connector identity in a way that’s measurable — not just by what I build but by what gets built in my absence.

12. Closing aspirational

My role continues to evolve. This year the direction has been… (Toward strategic influence that’s documented, toward systems that travel without me, toward a year-from-now I can describe in terms of where the work persisted, not just where it happened. Echo the 24/25 closing cadence without copying it verbatim.)

Generated: 2026-05-18 afternoon. v1 prose draft removed in favor of bullets. Sentence starters added per Reuben’s request.

Source: prep/2026-05-18-gps-bullets.md