Print and Play Academy
The Academy is badges, sorted into pathways. Ten pathways, thirty-seven badges on the shelf today and more already on the bench, from the Safety Licence to launch day. Every badge is a document you can read right on an Atlas through the Library, with checkpoints you work at your own speed and an assessment that is showing, not telling. The rule underneath all of it: you earn each thing yourself. You print before you design, you breadboard before you solder, and you build your own Atlas before it drives a rover. Nobody does the good part for you, and the tree runs all the way up to an apron with your name on it.
After-school sessions run Monday to Friday, 3 to 6 PM, ages 9 to 17, six spots a day. Two hour minimum, and five or more sessions take 15% off automatically.
How to read it: lanes are pathways, badges climb left to right, and every arrow is earned. Follow any badge backwards and you get the road to it: printing before design, the breadboard before the iron, your own Atlas before the rover it drives. Starred badges are the capstones. Dashed badges are announced and being written. The bottom lane is the ladder: junior mentor, mentor, apprentice.
How to hang it: the tree prints as a row of numbered tiles after this page. In the print dialog pick letter paper in landscape orientation, then lay the tiles left to right in page order and the lanes line up edge to edge. Trim the inner margins if you want a seamless wall poster.
Pick a badge
Each lane is a pathway from the Academy shelf on the Library. Badges climb left to right, and every arrow is earned: printing before design, the breadboard before the iron, your own Atlas before the rover it drives. Starred badges are the capstones, dashed ones are announced and being written, and the bottom lane is the ladder it all leads to. Click a badge to read what it earns you, then open the real document: the same text you would read on the device.
How it works
Read, then bench
Read the badge before the bench, then bring it with you and work the checkpoints at your own speed. Nobody is timing you. Every badge ends with what changes for you when you pass.
Assessment is showing
When a checkpoint says get assessed, you find a staff member and show them. Not perfect, real: doing the thing, knowing why, and calling your own mistakes counts for more than a lucky first try.
Licences unlock benches
The Safety Licence is the first badge in the shop and nobody touches a tool without it. The Soldering Licence puts the iron in your hands for good. Licences are the two gold diamonds on the tree.
The passport is yours
The badges are yours and the pace is yours. The only thing that is ours is the standard, and we do not move it. That is why passing means something.
The ladder out the top
Badges lead to capstones, the starred badge in each discipline. Capstones lead to the ladder: junior mentor, then mentor, then apprentice, the volunteer rung at the top, with an apron, a hook, a nook, and real shifts that count toward volunteer hours. Every rung is earned in the shop, by name, and none of them can be bought or skipped.