What if teachers were treated like startup founders?

(shout out to @MindShiftKQED for their article What if teachers were treated like pro athletes?)

Like the business world, there are small business owner-types, startup founder-types, and corporate-types in the teacher world. I’m going to focus on the teachers who parallel startup founders here: the innovators and change-makers, not the ones who strictly go by the book and teach the same curriculum year after year (the traditional corporate-types). So let’s examine some key traits that are routinely assigned to startup founders and see if they apply to these changemaker teachers.

This list is from GA’s @kevsandlin Personality Traits of Every Successful Startup Founder:

Vision

Teachers often see the trajectory of youth well into the future. It is part of their job to convince students, their parents and other adults that a particular kid has potential. They can often imagine a world very different from reality for each particular student.

Communication

If the only way to get better is by practicing something repeatedly, I think teachers have this one nailed. They often teach the same types of classes but get to learn from their communication style and adjust. They’re also constantly getting feedback from “non-friendly third parties” who aren’t afraid to tell them what they think (read students).

Persistence

Were you ever that kid in class saying “do we have to”, “what’s the point”, “this is dumb”? Can you imagine that happening in a classroom…every day? If showing up day after day to pitch the idea of knowledge and education in the face of young naysayers isn’t persistence, I don’t know what is.

Energy

Not sure if you read my last post about What the Spouses of Teachers Know, but this trait again is basically the definition of teaching. Teachers rise early, go to bed late and work weekends. They have to have an enormous amount of energy to be able to handle 25 different kids every 45 minutes in a 7 hour day, and THEN go home to do several more hours of work in between their other life responsibilities.

Focus

Between lesson planning, grading papers, writing recommendation letters, making tests, navigating personalities, administrative chores, and parent conversations, a teacher better have intense focus just to get through the day.

Patience

Have you ever been annoyed at a large group of teenagers shouting and horsing around in the subway? I rest my case.

Grit

Yup, teachers definitely get s**t done.

Tech Skills

Ok so this is the only one that might not apply to all, but I would venture to guess that most of the changemaker teachers out there are at least trying out new technologies. Some studies note that 85% of teachers are using technology in the classroom.

So are teachers like startup founders?

I think so. And yet, the resources and benefits afforded to teachers are few and far between when compared with startup founders. (Startup benefits much appreciated though!). Startup founders get special incubators and accelerators to test their ideas in a safe space, they get coworking spaces to connect with others from all walks of life, they get the allowance of failure, they have networks of folks wanting to be mentors, they have a pool of funding mechanisms, they’re expected to bend the rules and try new things.

Startup founders also have a work framework available to them that is generally accepted but open to deviation. They find and speak to pain points, obsess over customer feedback and validation, and engage in continuous testing (not of the standardized test variety) and iteration. They also have potentially big payoffs, big losses, and know that they could change the way the world works.

So what if teachers were treated like startup founders?

If you liked what you’ve read, be sure to hit recommend below to pass it on to your followers. As always, consider following The Synapse for more authentic voices in Education!