Executive Summary
Curriculum alone cannot reach every community: Bitcoin spreads one person at a time, and that takes educators.
This article explains how My First Bitcoin’s Educator Training Program has grown from a six-hour live course into a three-stage path: get equipped, teach real classes with a mentor, and earn certification.
You will learn which four fears most often stop good Bitcoiners from teaching, and how each stage removes them. You will also see what the application looks like and what it costs (nothing).
The takeaway: if you are motivated to teach, you will not have to do it alone, and the door is open now.
The Educator Training Program in Slides
Click through the slides for a quick look at the program, from the three stages to how to apply.
Why Educators, Not Just Curriculum
My First Bitcoin started by building open-source Bitcoin education, and that work keeps improving with every release. But a curriculum cannot reach billions of people by itself. Someone still has to stand in front of a class, explain the problems with money and help students reach their own conclusions.
In many places, especially across Africa, people rarely learn about Bitcoin from a website or a video. They learn from other people. The communities growing there are deeply peer to peer. That is why the Educator Training Program exists: to prepare more people, in more places, to teach effectively. It sits at the heart of the education flywheel and of the mission of empowering those that empower others.
Knowing Bitcoin and teaching Bitcoin are two different skills. Many Bitcoiners are self-taught and eager to share what they have learned, but they have never had to keep a room of beginners engaged, adapt to different learning levels or handle tough questions in real time. Teaching online adds its own challenge: keeping people engaged through a two or three hour session on a screen is hard.
Good teaching also means adapting to local context. What makes sense in one country can be meaningless in another, and educators increasingly teach communities far from home. The program helps educators adapt to the realities of the students in front of them.
The Four Fears That Stop Good Bitcoiners from Teaching
Since the Education Network began, new and returning educators have run into the same four reservations again and again:
- Freezing up in front of a class, whether in person or online.
- Not wanting to do it alone, and not knowing whether students are really following.
- Having the curriculum but no class: how to find students, promote a cohort, handle registrations, quizzes, feedback forms and certificates.
- Wondering why anyone would trust them to teach Bitcoin.
The first version of the program, launched last year, was self-paced video. It made sense at the time, but it revealed a major gap: you could not ask questions, share your challenges or learn from other educators.
Since March, the program has run live and interactive, and from October it grows into three stages, each designed to remove one or more of these fears.
Three Stages: Get Equipped, Go Teach, Earn the Name
Stage One: Get Equipped
Six hours of live online sessions, split into three two-hour sessions on the Monday, Wednesday and Friday of a single week.
Cohorts are kept small (about 12 to 15 people) so everyone has space to share ideas and fears. When you apply, you choose the time slot that works for your time zone, so it can fit around a regular job.
Participants work through the curriculum and educator guides, the educator toolkit of activities and resources, and a practical checklist for running a first or next cohort.
Activities matter more than many new educators expect: when students do the work, the teacher no longer has to perform alone, and the whole room contributes.
Stage one graduates will also be among the first to use the education platform My First Bitcoin is building for educators and students.
Stage Two: Go Teach
Graduates are expected to teach real classes within three months, with a mentor at their side.
The mentor joins the sessions, steps in if something in the content is missed, and gives honest feedback afterwards based on the same rubric used for certification.
You can run your own cohort, or take one of the many guest teaching opportunities that communities in the Education Network regularly offer.
This is already happening: in a single cohort in Malawi, guest educators from Uganda, Mexico and Australia have taught different sessions.
For now, the program lead mentors every class personally, which is exactly why stage three matters.
Stage Three: Earn the Name
When you feel ready, you complete an evaluation in front of a panel of three judges: impartial Bitcoin educators from outside the organisation, who change with each evaluation and score against a strict, shared rubric.
If you pass, you become a Bitcoin Certified Educator, and My First Bitcoin puts its name behind you.
Certified educators can mentor others and run program sessions themselves, including in languages beyond English such as Spanish and Portuguese, which participants already ask for.
If you are not ready yet, you keep your mentor, keep teaching and try again later.
The certificate is not the real proof of work. The proof of work is you, teaching well. Certification simply makes it visible to others.
Join
More than 90 educators have completed stage one this year, and the current cohort brings together 12 people from eight countries. The Education Network now spans more than 40 countries, so new educators join a real community of peers.
The program is free: applying, getting equipped and teaching cost nothing. What it asks for is commitment.
The application screens only for motivation: what you have done with the My First Bitcoin materials, whether you want to teach in a community, and whether you can be in front of students within three months.
A springboard only works if you jump.
Learn more and apply at etp.myfirstbitcoin.org, or write with questions to [email protected].
