Karina Linch is an education and product executive whose BrainPOP products have impacted learning outcomes for millions of students. Before joining BrainPOP, Karina was a NYC public school teacher and lead Teaching Fellow in Brooklyn and the Bronx.
In this “Transitioning Teacher” interview, Karina & I discuss how she created authentic learning experiences for her students, what motivated her to become one of BrainPOP’s first employees, and what teachers (or prospective product managers) can do to stand out to employers in this crowded job market.
You studied film and television, and your earliest jobs were in media. What ultimately drew you to education?
I studied documentary filmmaking in school and was really passionate about creating meaningful media and getting people to tell their stories. When September 11th happened, it shook me like it shook every other New Yorker. I wanted to serve, so I applied to be a NYC Teaching Fellow that October.
When I started teaching in the Bronx, I put a TV studio into my school and set up a documentary film club. I wanted to help kids tell the amazing stories they had inside them and enable them to document their families and experiences. I’ve also always been committed to media literacy — getting kids to take a critical eye to the media they were consuming.
As I transitioned from a technology teacher to a 5th grade classroom teacher, it remained important to me that students could create media and have ownership and autonomy over what they create. In every school I was in, I would write grants to get my kids 1:1 laptops.
As a student, some of my favorite experiences involved creating media, like recording videos for Student TV or writing articles for the newspaper.
You were producing an authentic artifact that has real world value! That’s why teachers hold publishing parties to share student writing. Kids are capable of producing meaningful work that can shape the world around them.
What was your favorite and least favorite part of teaching?
My favorite part was bringing the real world into the classroom and getting kids out into the real world. For me, that meant taking kids to film festivals, helping them travel to poetry slam competitions, or going to book signings. We visited the MET to see the opera, went to Ellis Island and the Tenement Museum, and even went camping in the woods for a few days! My students are grown up now, and the most rewarding thing is seeing them become teachers and successful, kind human beings.
My least favorite part of teaching was never having enough hours in the day. It wasn’t just the lesson planning and prep; I worked the Spring Break academies and Saturday school, tutored kids and ran after school clubs, wrote grants… there was so much additional work beyond the school day. I don’t think I slept as a teacher! That’s why I believe that one of the most noble things we can do in product development is save teachers time. Saving teachers time enables them to be more effective and they can accomplish even more.
How did you approach your decision to leave the classroom? What kinds of jobs did you look for, and how did you narrow the list down?
I would still be in the classroom if it wasn’t for BrainPOP’s founder, Dr. Avraham Kadar. He is an immunologist and pediatrician who founded the company with a mission to empower kids to shape the world around them and within them.
I was an early adopter using BrainPOP in my classroom because it was the best tool to quickly build my students’ background knowledge and introduce new vocabulary.
Dr. Kadar asked me how many students I had. And when I told him 32, he said, “How would you like to have millions of students?” That has always stuck with me — the sense of obligation and responsibility to millions of children and the teachers who serve them. It’s an incredible honor and a very big responsibility.
I love that way of framing it, especially because I talk to so many teachers who worry about losing their impact when they leave the classroom! When you did start at BrainPOP, what was your first role?
I initially came on board to create a new product for K-3 students called BrainPOP Jr. BrainPOP already had an excellent foundation, but I knew younger students needed multiple means to express themselves. I wanted to go beyond a multiple-choice quiz to enable kids to draw, write, and talk. After all, there are so many ways kids can show what they know!
I was also passionate about media viewing strategies; I wanted a viewing format for our K-3 movies that chunked information with built-in pause points and questions. Teachers had all sorts of great strategies when reading picture books aloud with their class, but then they would put on a video and play it straight through without employing best practices. That would drive me nuts! I knew that if we built active viewing practices into BrainPOP Jr., teachers would be able to build meaningful student engagement.
I also embarked on a learning tour that first year, visiting dozens of classrooms around the United States — I already knew NYC Public Schools, but I hadn’t sat in elementary classrooms in Georgia, for instance. I didn’t know that I was engaging in “user research” at the time; I just observed students, took lots of notes, and asked teachers lots of questions to validate or invalidate my assumptions. It was wild to see how many different types of classrooms and technology setups there were around the country — I wanted to build our products to be extremely flexible and meet teachers where they were.
What came most naturally to you in your role, and what took a bit more time?
Learning design and pedagogy were already ingrained from classroom teaching experience, grad school, and ongoing studies. However, I didn’t know software product development on day one. I had to bring in experts in their craft as I built out a department — knowledgeable product managers, product designers, project managers, user researchers, learning designers — as well as do my own professional development. I took courses and workshops on product leadership from people like Casey Winters, Christina Wodtke, Melissa Perry, and Marty Kagan. There are phenomenal opportunities to learn product management and find mentors nowadays.
Did you know you were doing Product Management, or had you heard of the term when you joined BrainPOP?
I didn’t have the title “Product Manager” when I first joined the company. I just knew I loved strategy, identifying problem spaces, and prototyping to learn. I had a prior background in media production (we make a lot of movies at BrainPOP) and I’m happiest when I’m building and launching new stuff. As a teacher, there’s also a lot of overlap with project management too.
How did your responsibilities change over time at BrainPOP, and how did the product evolve?
We were tiny when I joined — there were only 5 or 6 of us. I grew the BrainPOP Jr. team first and then my role expanded to lead our flagship product.
Since that time, we’ve launched a gaming platform to give students a space to try out their ideas, fail safely, and try again. We partnered with dozens of universities and organizations who had built phenomenal games that weren’t getting in front of students. With our platform, students could learn about the Supreme Court in BrainPOP and then play an iCivics game in which they argued a case. We even built out our own games and “playful assessments” like Sortify & Time Zone X where students could categorize, manipulate, and explore.
Given my background, you won’t be surprised that I was eager to build out a suite of creative tools to help productize what I hacked together in my own classroom. Our creativity tools enable students to develop concept maps as they build background knowledge on our platform, or create their own BrainPOP movies to become the explainers themselves! We also partnered with coding organizations like Scratch and Vidcode so that kids could create a museum or code their own game. It’s been incredibly rewarding to launch additional products and expand in new directions.
Recently, we announced a new product, BrainPOP Science, that uses real world phenomena to inspire scientific thinking. Students collect evidence, explore 3D worlds, conduct simulations and work with real data. They are actively engaged in doing science while mastering NGSS standards. We’re super excited to pilot BrainPOP Science this fall.
What advice do you have for teachers who hope to transition into Product Management?
- Be product champions while you’re still in the classroom! Many products have certifications or accreditation opportunities you can take advantage of; for instance, BrainPOP has a certified educator program for teachers who are deeply committed to excellence and student engagement.
- Show that you’re continually learning. Attend professional development sessions outside of what’s mandated, engage with product communities like Women in Product, and demonstrate curiosity.
- Build an online presence and develop your voice. LinkedIn is also a great place to start. Our recruiting tools are usually connected to LinkedIn, so it’s important to have a presence there. Decide what you’re proud of and create a portfolio, write blog posts on Medium, create a podcast, or make a Twitter account and share educational resources — it’s a great place to build your learning community and develop a voice. It’s low stakes, so you can practice writing each day.