The Decision to Leave Teaching

Well, it's official.  Shelly and I are leaving the teaching profession.  The decision has been in the works for a number of years.  We've been informally planning for this day since we decided to follow Dave Ramsey's plan and pay off our debt.  Paying off that debt is what ultimately gave us the freedom to leave.

We also fostered other sources of income, most based on our running adventures.  The popularity of Barefoot Running University has allowed us to leverage several contracted jobs, the most prominent being Merrell (the outdoor adventure company.)  I helped them develop some educational materials and they are sponsoring our family to travel around the US to educate others on good running form.  It will make for a memorable adventure, and we'll document it here. 

We were faced with the decision many teachers face on a regular basis.  The future does not look bright at the national, state, or local level.  Funds are being cut.  Pay is decreasing.  Benefits are decreasing.  Long-held staples like tenure and pensions are slowly disappearing.  Online education is gaining a foothold, which will likely cause a dramatic decrease in available teaching jobs.  Class sizes are going up.  Standardized testing in the name of "accountability" is destroying teacher autonomy.  Every teacher faces the decision to stay or go. 

Two factors weighed heavily on our decision.  First, we could no longer justify putting all our eggs in one basket.  The newly-volatile future of public education is NOT something we wanted to rely on.  Second, we realized teachers have some VERY marketable talents that are valuable to a wide range of industries.  Stepping out of the profession would give us several tangibles including:

• More autonomy- we can fully utilize our strengths as teachers to teach using proven methods.  In short, we can produce maximum effect with minimal work.  We aren't bogged down my top-down curriculum and politics.
• Better pay- We're no longer at the mercy of a fickle state legislature.  The market will determine our pay, and our ability as teachers gives us a sizable advantage over possible competitors.
• Long-term security- This used to be a benefit of public education.  It was a reason to become a teacher.  Today, the future of our entire pension plan is in question.  Handling our retirement plan ourselves provides or long-term certainty.

There are other benefits, too, but these are the primary reasons we made this decision.  

Will we eventually go back?  Maybe. Honestly, it depends on where we settle down and the state of the local economy.  There's a lot of uncertainty in public education on a national level.  Teaching as we know it may be disappearing.  We may get involved in education on a different level as I believe there will be a lot of opportunities in the near future.  We'll see.

Until that time, Shelly and I are going to enjoy our new lives as nomadic running bums.  ;-)

What Great Businesses Can Teach Us About Teaching

Generally, I hate comparing schools to businesses.  Why?  The comparison usually involves students playing the role of products and teachers, administrators, support staff, etc. playing the role of manufacturers.  The business analogy usually involves finances and is used to show the inherent inefficiency of schools.

This analogy is stupid for an obvious reason- as schools, we have no control over the raw materials needed to manufacture our "goods".  It would be akin to going to a junkyard to collect part to make 150 exact replicas of the same car.  It's simply not possible.  I view this analogy as a ploy by uninformed politicians with skewed anti-public school agendas.

Here's a better business analogy- students are our customers. The product we're trying to sell is the knowledge we're teaching. 

This model accurately reflects what we do as teachers.  If we are successful in "selling" the knowledge, our students benefit.  This model will allow us to utilize some lessons from the business world that will actually result in a positive outcome.  Furthermore, this success can easily be measured with the proper assessment.

Now that we have a workable analogy, let's look at how businesses sell.  Good businesses sell a lot of products, so we should examine good businesses.  How do they do this? 

One method is great advertising.  Some companies spend a tremendous amount of money to capture buyers.  Think of Coca Cola.  They spend billions of dollars per year on advertising.  In the teaching world, this could be analogous to window dressings like fancy bulletin boards, snazzy computer software, colorful textbooks, and other such gimmicks.  These items, while expensive, do result in some degree of success.  Humans like new, shiny stuff. 

The problem, aside from expense, is the novelty effect.  We get bored of shiny new toys.  We need a steady stream of new, expensive toys to hold our interest.  In an era of strained budgets, this approach is stupid because it is not sustainable.  School cannot and should not have to fork out huge sums of money to capture kids' interest.

Some businesses find success by offering awesome products.  A good example would be Apple.  Their products develop a huge following.  In the classroom, this would be analogous to great lesson plans that engage each and every student simply on the merit of the lesson itself.  This is great and should be the ultimate goal of each and every lesson we teach.  However, this also requires a ton of long, hard work.  It may take 20-30 hours of development to create a single awesome lesson. 

This kind of workload is not possible, so we have to develop a process to slowly craft great lessons year after year.  The idea is to slowly turn each and every lesson into an iPhone.  Unfortunately, this model has several problems. 

First, it doesn't help kids today.  Not all of our lessons will be perfectly crafted masterpieces.  Some will; some will not. 

Second, ever-changing curriculum and an ever-changing student population will slow the ability to craft perfect lessons.  The solution is to always assess what works and repeat it; assess what does not work and eliminate it.  It is also useful to perpetually experiment with new methods, including methods abandoned in the past.  Learn what works for you and what works for a very wide range of students.

This solution is a noble goal, and many will expect teachers to always have perfect lessons.  However, expecting constant perfection is simply foolish and ignores the logistical difficulty of this endeavor.  We should work towards this goal, but realize we will never fully accomplish it.

Okay, so these two methods, heavy advertising and creating great products, are two of the most popular models used by businesses.  Is there another solution?  You bet.  Best of all, it is perfectly suited for the classroom. 

Smart companies realize advertising and product development are expensive in both funding and time.  Despite these limitations, they thrive.  How?  They take advantage of an obvious but under-utilized element of human psychology... they don't try to build a customer base, they build an audience. 

A customer base has to be wooed with fancy advertising or exceptionally good products.  They have to be persuaded to buy products.  An audience, if properly nurtured, will buy anything.  Best of all, it takes neither advertising dollars nor expensive research and development.  The audience is hungry for anything and everything the company produces.

If we think of our students as our audience, our perspective changes immediately.  If we begin fostering this relationship with each and every one of our students, they will willingly devour anything we feed them.  There are other educational theories that attempt to teach this very concept, but they come off as cheesy, unnecessarily complicated, or fail to explain the direct benefits.  "Capturing Kids' Hearts" comes to mind.  The company sells seminars that basically teach teachers how to be human.  It's like the bottled water of education... making money off of something that should be freely available.  

How is this accomplished?  As it turns out, it's pretty simple... just follow these steps:

1. Generate excitement.  Excitement leads to intrinsic motivation.  If you're not doing something exciting, you shouldn't be doing it.  At the very least, pretend you're doing something exciting.
2. Inspire.  We love people that inspire us.  Nothing builds a loyal audience faster than inspiration.  The key- it doesn't really matter what you are inspiring kids to do, just inspire them to do something.
3.Occasionally engage each and every students in conversation, and really listen to what they say.  I accomplish this by asking kids if there's anything new going on in the world.  The conversation can go pretty much anywhere, and it is important to allow this freedom.
4. Make eye contact.  Use Bill Clinton's technique... make eye contact when talking with someone.  When you move on, reestablish eye contact for a brief second.  It dramatically increases that person's sense of importance.
5. Talk about interesting stuff completely unrelated to the class.  Everyone loves to learn about interesting stuff.  Engaging kids here will dramatically increase the likelihood that they will listen to you when presenting a lesson.
6. Be honest.  This is more difficult that it seems, but gives you immediate credibility.  Many teachers consciously or unconsciously give off a vibe of superiority which usually manifests itself as "I am an all-knowing expert; you are inferior".  Check your ego at the door and let kids see your flaws.

There are many more subtle techniques that can be used to create a loyal audence; I will attempt to list more in a future post.  Which reminds me...

7. Always leave your audience hungry for more. :-)

Are Teachers Becoming Obsolete?

I've commented about this phenomenon before, but new information has rekindled my interest.  Technology could kill the teaching profession.  Specifically, online learning could kill teaching. 

An interesting transition is taking place.  Online learning has been around since I began teaching 12 years ago.  In the beginning, it was horrible.  Students did not especially like it AND their performance was poor. 

Over time, students seem to have warmed to the idea.  They no longer bitterly complain about the limitations of learning from a computer screen.  More importantly, their performance is improving. 

The improvement may be the result of changes in the actual online instruction, or it may represent a changing in the abilities of students.  Regardless of the reason, the improvement is significant because it legitimizes the practice.

The only piece of the puzzle remaining is standardized testing.  The moment data arises that shows students score better on standardized tests when taught using online instruction, the proponents of online instruction will have all the ammunition they need to spread it far and wide.

Of course, any teacher that values their job will object.  After all, there is little dispute that online education comes with a huge trade-off... the personal connection between teacher and student is lost.  Personally I think this is important.  I think most people would agree... except for those that determine school funding.

In the age of accountability and dwindling budgets, it will be impossible to argue against the widespread implementation of online instruction.  It is much cheaper and, once the data is produced, more effective when measured with standardized testing.

How will this affect teachers?  It makes us mostly obsolete.  In an online environment, one teacher can manage hundreds or thousands of students from a remote location.  The students can be supervised by virtually anyone for minimum wage.

Teachers will face massive layoffs.  New teachers will go unemployed.  Those that have extensive technology knowledge will be hired as the remote teachers.  The remainder will clamor for the "supervisory" positions and accept dramatic wage and benefit cuts. 

Unions will implode as membership drops and apathy continues.  Anti-labor laws will continue to be passed with fervor.  This destruction of teacher associations will further erode teacher pay and benefits.

So what is a teacher to do?  There are ultimately two options: Put your head down and ignore everything going on in the periphery, or develop a good backup plan.  Start networking.  Consider jobs that compliment online education like tutoring or materials development.  We're skilled professionals with valuable abilities... always consider how you could leverage those skills outside your current gig.

Change is inevitable.  The life teachers have lived for decades- decent pay, good benefits, good retirement plan, are more or less over.  Over the last decade, we've experienced a slowly dying profession.  The proliferation of online education will only hasten the death.  My advice- prepare for the inevitable.