Educators are
millionaires, but they have to refine their expertise to the point of becoming valuable and not just priceless. Your work as a
schoolteacher is priceless, but unfortunately, in the world in which we
operate, priceless Gems/portraits/artifacts etc are always caged somewhere for the purpose of admiration. Do not be
deceived as a schoolteacher when you get so-called priceless award online,
offline and by our employers who see us as priceless staff but are not willing
to pay a pricey salary.
At the end of
each school session, most schoolteachers seek greener pastures, while others
retire to a very different career, majority because of the inadequate pay and
others for professional exposure and development. Strictly speaking, moving
from one school to another is an unreasonable goal if you do not have a target
for doing it. You should have a target and mindset set for moving and for every
new school session and school term, you must give all it takes to profile, document
and publish your accomplishment during or before the next school term or
session. The simple reason is that your career as an educator is more than just
your passion and profession, teaching is your source of livelihood (welfare and
financial development) and many schoolteachers gamble unconsciously at this reality.
Being well paid is not the issue, but as long as you do not own a piece the school
(as shareholder), then your career there, is not secure.
Documenting and
publishing your success stories and activities is the 21st century way of
appraising a schoolteacher irrespective of your decades of undocumented professional
service. It is very easy for schoolteachers to document their career, because
majority of what happens in the classroom are demonstrative, and these are
visual activities that can be profiled and documented.
A publishable
experience is far better than plaques and certificates; if you can make money
by presenting your certificates and experience, then you can make more money by
owning valuable professional activities that you can use as a rate of exchange.
STEP 1: SET THE TARGET PROJECTS
Before the
beginning of a new session or term, you should have a personal creative target
for yourself, which will inspire learning, teaching or both. For me, in my
school, I have decided to introduce Augmented Reality (A.R) in my classroom
this academic session and that will be part of my profiling for this year; you
might decide to teach your students story development in creative writing or
classroom design or a life skill like bead making for a start.
Embedding a life
skill in your creative classroom target actually helps you introduce vocational
skill and activities systematically in to the curriculum.
STEP 2: PUT YOUR MOBILE GADGETS TO WORK
I believe 99% of
Smartphone and laptops today have a camera (video and still images); and you
might ask, how can I be teaching and recording at the same time? The answer is
a selfie stick with a tripod stand and remote control for you Smartphone, the
remote control on the selfie stick is actually powered by Bluetooth, so you can
take snapshots and record videos from a distance without having to carry you
phone around the classroom. The priceless feature about a selfie stick is that
most of them cost a fortune of about $5 or less; yes five dollars.
There are video editing
apps for android, iOS and windows phone can allow you cutout unnecessary clip
from your videos or use moviemaker by free downloading on your windows laptop http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/movie-maker.
A text reader that
can covert you written documents or your HPlease go over an fill the educators job satisfaction survey.OW TO activities to an audio file; there
are apps online to convert any file to any format (mp3, wav etc). Checkout the
link below http://www.fromtexttospeech.com,
just copy and paste the typed text in the box, convert to major languages of
your choice, and download the audio version of your handbook. It is that simple.
Automatically
your target project for the academic session now has a photo book, DIY video,
audio book and article, all to your credit.
STEP 3: PUBLISHING YOUR PROFILE
Publish your
resources, materials about your projects as a schoolteacher on relevant forums
and websites. You do not want to create a great video lesson and post it where
it will not be of benefit to your audience. Definitely, get a personal blog or
website that will become your archive resort, for videos (YouTube, Vimeo, Vine
etc), for photos (Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter etc). Make sure you get
published in every major forum online and offline that houses those of your educational
area or academic interests, LinkedIn, Connecting classrooms, Microsoft in
education, Teach.org, Edmodo, Edutopia, Edujetage etc.
A published educator
is far valuable than an unpublished one, though their services might be
priceless, yet the one who is published has more market value than the other
does. All teachers attended the same college of education, at different places and
at different point in time, but what makes the difference is the modern touch,
you add to your field and expertise.
Your might not
need to say much about yourself professional on your next job interview,
because you already have dozens of your professional activities online. Which
you will agree with me, speaks louder than any ten-paged resume, you plan on
submitting to your next employer. Remember you are not just a schoolteacher;
you are an authority or an author of knowledge.
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