Five ideas for Innovative Educators On The Job Hunt

Readers of this blog know that the spiraling economy has recently made its way to my neck of the woods at the Department of Education where threats of layoffs are looming, Departments are being “strategically re-aligned”, and grants like Reading First are in jeopardy of losing funding.

So, what’s an innovative educator to do? Something innovative of course! Innovative educators aren’t your regular run-o-da-mill types. We are a cut above and a step ahead of the rest. Here are five ideas for innovative educators who are on the hunt.

Brand Yourself
Whether or not you realize it, you are a brand. Any brand marketer can tell you the importance of establishing your identity. You should quickly and easily be able to convey what hiring [your name here] means. What does someone get when they hire you? What do you stand for? What is your identity?

Read: Three Steps to Building Your Brand

Build It and They Will Come

Dream with a potential employer. Study their school/department/etc. and share what you think you could build together. Give your new employer a vision of what they could have or grow with someone like you. Tell them your excitement about building a project, program, deliverable that hiring you brings. Will you help a school start a broadcast news center with community involvement? Can you help the school with a green campaign where students can grow their own food? Do you envision creating an online community for the school? Share your enthusiasm and bring your new employer onboard to the dream you can help accomplish.

Google: Your perspective employer and figure out what you can help them build

Control Your Digital footprint
As most of us know today, we all have a digital footprint. There is a good chance you will be Googled by a prospective employer. What will they find? Many educators have passive digital footprints. They haven’t taken control of their online selves. Innovative educators have an active digital footprint. They are not only keenly aware of what employers will find if they Google their name, but they know how to get their name, ideas, published articles and more to the top of Google. Google “November” and you’ll see innovative educator Alan November. Google Educating Innovatively and you’ll see me. How cool is it to say to a prospective employer, “If you want to know more about me, just Google educating innovatively?” or, "For more information Google November."

What do you want your prospective employer to find when s/he searches you? What key words do you want associated with your name? Think about it and start making your digital footprint active.

Read: Ideas for Making a Purposeful and Professional Digital Footprint. Footprints in the Digital Age, and Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency

Educate Abroad

Have you been a little jealous of that teacher down the hall who talks about their experiences teaching abroad? Do you regret not taking advantage of life in another country earlier in your career? Now could be your perfect opportunity to pursue this opportunity. Give the U.S. economy a little time to get back on its feet and experience a whole new world. It will definitely make you a better educator, and bring you closer to understanding this global world we all live in.

If you don’t have children, this is a no brainer, but even if you do, don’t rule this out as an option. Taking your child out of the country for a year or two would be an extremely rewarding and eye-opening educational experience.

Follow: Jeff Utecht’s Blog about the journey of a educator and his learning experiences around the globe.

Visit: The International Educator www.tieonline.com or www.search-associates.com if you want to teach as a certified teacher overseas or www.teachabroad.com if you want to teach English abroad.

You Gotta Have a Gimmick
We can learn a lot from Gypsy Rose Lee’s stripper friend’s explanation about the secret to a successful career. What’s your gimmick? What’s that special thing that you come with? What will an employer receive if they choose you?

Are you a wiz with the Smartboard? Are you a track and field champion? Do you have a special relationship with a company that will adopt the school? Did you create a documentary that won an award at the TriBeCa Film Festival? Do you have a coveted certification? Can you bring programs into the school that will help the students? Do you have a famous sister, father, husband? Did you, have you, could you win a grant that would come along with you?

Don’t underestimate the power of the gimmick. These are the things that stick in the minds of employers and differentiate you from the rest.

Watch: You Gotta Have A Gimmick - from "Gypsy"

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Note: I am resurfacing this post which I initially ran a few months ago in response to several of those who I know reaching out to me for ideas recently. As I think of more ideas, I'll be sure to post them here, and, if any other innovative educators have ideas, please comment here and share.

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Remembering Daren

In my work I am often inspired by friends, news, students, events, emails, blog comments, teachers, Facebook updates, family, tweats, etc. Today, in the midst of news about the random gun shooting in Binghamton, NY , it was an email about Daren that inspired me. I wanted to ensure that schools were picturing in their minds students who, like Daren, have arbitrarily fallen victim to a disability. Below is the email I received last week from a colleague who requested that we (the newly appointed Technology Innovation Managers) remember Daren in our work.

It’s Friday night and I am sitting up with my 25-year-old nephew Daren who is navigating his Apple –iBook with a head mouse and voice commands as he looks across his bed to a 47” TV/Monitor. His careful screen navigation amazes me. A gentile tilt of his head, a strategic voice command, and he travels the world from his bed. Technology!

My nephew is a victim of random gun violence in Philadelphia. He was shot four times- twice in the neck and twice in the chest. It was the shots in the neck that impacted his spinal cord and has currently left him a quadriplegic. Since the shooting, he has taught himself to breathe on his own, and has learned a sophisticated technology system that combines the use of a gravity mouse attached to a head set and a range of voice commands. I visit him one weekend a month to give my brother and sister-in-law a break from Daren’s care giving….I left work today to drive down to Phila to spend with weekend with Daren.

And so, as I sit in amazement at the power of technology, I am thinking about all of you. I realize how challenging the near future may seem. You are all in a transition-in new roles, working in new conditions… and yet, when I think about Daren and the power of technology, I feel very fortunate to work with a group of educators who have the insights and passions to bring technology to the lives of children and teachers. I am honored to work with you as you envision the many possibilities for our schools.

I understand the shift in structure proves challenging and I am trying to find a way to resolve these confusions as best I can… For me, however, I can see past these initial challenges to see the power in the work you all will be doing in our schools…and I am both grateful and excited about the opportunity to work with all of you. I know in my heart that you will soon be on your way to craft wonderful learning experiences for our students and their teachers. I believe that these grants will make a difference in their lives. And as I watch my nephew Daren and his technology skills tonight, I am thinking of all of you.

My heart smiles knowing that you each bring your passions to this work. Your care is evident in our meetings. My heart smiles knowing that each of you bring your insights and understandings to the tasks in front of your. And my heart smiles, as I know there are thousands of kids in our schools that will benefit from your hard work.

I know it may seem strange, even premature, but I want to thank you. Thank you for taking this time to make a difference in the lives of children... thank you for helping to schools improve. Thank you for your patience and understanding… and thank you for working to navigate these uncharted waters.

Tonight as my heart goes out to innocent victims in Binghamton, NY who to me remain nameless, Daren is not. Today, the author of the above email and I collaborated with others (thanks Leslie!) to craft a unique option for schools that would expand the possibilities for students with disabilities. As I did, the work of innovative educators in New York City and beyond seemed all that more meaningful. Personally, I hope this work will live up to the expectation Daren’s uncle laid out when he wrote, “I know in my heart that you will soon be on your way to craft wonderful learning experiences for our students and their teachers.”

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You’ve Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care? - Me? NO!

Yesterday was a bit of a frustrating day at work for me. We are under a huge crunch time to get out 15 grants in under a month and I was literally in meetings (relevant ones) ALL DAY LONG. These were those type of meetings from which you really can't excuse yourself because they were multiple, fast, and furious. At the same time, there were three very important people with whom I needed to connect and each of them called into a phone I couldn't answer. During one particular conference call, I got disconnected and I thought the caller was calling me back, but instead, it was a call, to which I had to say to the caller, I'm sorry, but can you please email me? As I said that, and looked on my phone with seven voicemail messages, I found myself thinking, "You’ve Got Voice Mail, but Do You Care?" As I look at my phone again and see another crop of voice mails, I realize, the answer is, "NO!"

As the New York Times reports today, "In an age of instant information gratification, the burden of having to dial in to a mailbox, enter a passcode and sit through “um’s” and “ah’s” from unwanted callers can seem too much to bear." Agreed! Indeed! One caller and I literally exchanged a half dozen calls and meaningless voicemails (he never explained what his question was) back and fourth. We never connected, and I still don't know what he wanted. The three others whose calls I returned weren't available when I called and we missed an important deadline. I found myself frustrated that while all these callers left me a voicemail, what I really wanted was an email or text me. As Charlie Park, a web developer quoted in the Times said, “You never send an e-mail that says, ‘Hey, e-mail me back!’ You’re always sending information.” Yes! So true. Had they just sent me the information they wanted, I may have been able to steal a couple minutes during a lull in a meeting, or between meetings, or, certainly, rather than all the phone tagging I did, I could have been just typing answers back to questions they had that would have enabled us all to move forward.

Many, though are still stuck in the past when people like me had secretaries who were anxiously awaiting the opportunity to greet them with a pleasant hello, listen intently to their every word, scribe it down, and hurridly deliver it to me. Many of those secretaries today are obsolete as technologies such as email and text can do the same thing for free. The New York Times piece raises a similar question, "Is voice mail on its way to becoming obsolete?" For me, it is very close to extinction.

There are a number of services that have cropped up to assist with the issue, resulting from those who haven't moved forward with new technologies. These services provide voice to text transcription services, but they are expensive! Fortunately, as the Times reported, "Google, plans to introduce a competing free service, Google Voice, in a matter of weeks. The service will ring each phone a person uses at once — cell, home, office — and centralize all the messages received. Most important for the voice-mail-averse, Google Voice will also transcribe voice mails at no cost." Pier Fawkes, a trend tracker, shared in the article that “Voice mail feels like it was a technology that was created to fill a gap — until something better came along, and now it has.” "Text is the future of voice mail,” Mr. Fawkes said.

I really hope my colleagues read this article this morning, in either case, it's back to the game of phone tag. I wonder what it was they needed to know...

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