How Good Teachers are like Entrepreneurs

It is rather surprising how often I am asked if I intend to teach for the rest of my professional life. Indeed, I have engaged in funny conversations along the lines of:

“Are you going to teach forever?”
“Forever?! I hope not! That’s an awfully long time!”
“Then what will you do after teaching?”

The alarming reference to “forever” aside — ‘forever’ is a very long time to do anything — I cannot help but wonder why people seem to have an assumption that once a teacher, always a teacher. I, for one, know of individuals who have successfully enriched their post-teaching careers with the skills that they acquired through teaching.

So how did teaching prepare them for a non-teaching job?

Here’s a possible answer: a good teacher has to work like an entrepreneur.

(Caveat: I am selecting the pronoun, ‘she’, for convenience. I’m in no way suggesting that good teachers are necessarily female.)

Good teachers are great collaborators.

Aside from the fact that teachers work in teams to design curriculum and craft lessons, there are many other situations in which teachers have to collaborate to achieve a shared purpose. A good teacher understands that learning cannot occur in a vacuum, so she works with partners to create a holistic environment for her students to thrive in. Whether they find themselves working with external parties, the other teachers working with the students they are responsible for, or the co-workers in their department, teachers have plenty of opportunities to work with different folks, diverse opinions, and varied interests. And they make it work.

Good teachers are independent multi-taskers.

Teachers have multiple duties — from classroom management, the delivery of lessons, to planning large events — and the mosaic of responsibilities would look quite different from teacher to teacher, so a good teacher has to be self-driven and independent. No one is going to tell you how to manage these disparate duties. No one else is accountable for them but you. No one can tell you how best to juggle them — you have to figure out what works best for you.

In a given day, a teacher may find the following on her to-do list: plan an event, run lessons for 5 different classes with different learning profiles, manage an after-school club, deal with a disciplinary issue, and mentor students for a competition. It’s multi-task and survive, or fixate on one task at a time and drown.

Good teachers build communities.

I’ve said before that a good teacher knows how to work with partners, and building communities is related to that. From banding with like-minded professionals who share their insights and strategies, to engaging parents who communicate with and support each other, and building the bond amongst members of a sporting team — good community building skills is required all-around.

A good teacher gives voice to the members of their ‘tribe’ and helps them to construct a positive shared experience. A good teacher listens to and understands where her audience or partners are coming from, and connects with them at an individual level. A good teacher engages in dialogue with her community, and gets them to be invested in a common goal. A good teacher manages different expectations and harmonizes them (as far as she can).

Good teachers know how to engage different audiences and think strategically.

Every student has different learning abilities and a good teacher knows how to pitch a lesson/concept at different levels to meet the student where he is. In edu-speak, that’s called differentiated instruction. In business-speak, it’s engagement with different audiences.

A good teacher also knows how to support each students’ learning by scaffolding the process. She knows how to strategize a game plan for her student to achieve results. She knows how to scaffold his learning, so he has the means to succeed. Some excellent content marketing strategies I’ve come across (hello, Canva and your wonderful social media strategy!) share insightful information and suggestions to help customers learn to use their product then use their product better. Isn’t that the same principle?

Good teachers know how to deal with tough customers.

Have you experienced a Parent-Teacher Meeting? ‘Nuf said.

Good teachers develop a consistent brand.

Every teacher will be faced with questions about what she stands for, what her strengths and weaknesses are, in what areas does she have opportunities to grow, how can she consistently communicate her principles and expectations through all her little actions and decisions…

A good teacher figures out:

• her unique value proposition (what can she give as an educator?)
• what her brand message is (what are the ends of education and what are the essential lessons every student must learn?)
• how to conduct herself to consistently communicate that message to her audiences (from the language she uses to the approaches she chooses).

Good teachers are proven problem-solvers.

A day in the life of a teacher is like a huge problem-solving game with challenges sometimes coming out of left field. All problems — from a student falling sick or getting injured, to dealing with disciplinary cases or organisational challenges — have to be dealt with swiftly and thoroughly, whether independently or in collaboration with other stakeholders. Sometimes it feels like one of those crazy levels in tower defense games where the problems keep coming. But hey, a good teacher knows how to strategically nib problems in the bud and keep them from escalating.

The list of transferable traits go on, and perhaps I’ll write a Part 2 someday. But there you have it. Teachers aren’t only effective in the classroom or when armed with a red pen. Indeed, if they can establish rapport with teenagers — who are, arguably, a really tough crowd — who can’t they engage with?