Becoming a Teacherpreneur

Jarrod Robinson, Andy Earle

• Publisher: ConnectedPE Pty Ltd
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781649703958
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Digitales Marketing

Teachers are the most fundamental people in society, yet they are underappreciated and underpaid. If we don't start compensating educators fairly, we're going to lose a generation of talented teachers. Thankfully, Jarrod Robinson has an answer: to make big money as a teacher, you have to think like a Teacherpreneur. You have to use the skills, knowledge, and lesson plans you've developed in the classroom to build digital income streams that pay out on a regular basis.

No matter what your individual strengths are as a teacher, you can chase your passion and supplement your income. Thousands of teachers around the world are doing it. In this book, you'll learn the exact techniques Jarrod has used to create automatic monthly revenue for other teachers just like you. You'll also see:

• The story of Angry Birds, the most popular gaming app ever developed
• The psychological marketing tactics of the San Diego Zoo
• How the Rolling Stones inspired a generation of students to learn multiplication
• How an unknown rapper convinced the internet they were losers for not knowing his name
• What dung beetles can teach us about education
• And much more...

This book is not a rallying cry against the system, it's a shot of hope for teachers like you. The most important lesson underscored throughout these pages is that everything you need to achieve global success is already at your disposal. You don't need to master a new skill set to double, triple, or quintuple your income, you just need to think like a Teacherpreneur.

 

 

 

CHAPTER 1
REMOVING CARDBOARD HATS

 

It's hard being a teacher today. Teachers are overworked, underappreciated, and overwhelmed. It’s a highly skilled round-the-clock job that pays more like something a college student might do for the summer. Many talented people are leaving the profession because they can make more money, have more freedom, and feel more appreciated in other careers—and that’s a huge loss to our schools and our kids. 

Thankfully, I’ve found a way for teachers to do what they love and still provide a good life for themselves and their families. I’ve learned how to get paid handsomely as a teacher, without resorting to cheesy get-rich-quick schemes. I’ve discovered a way to take control of your time and career and I’ve taught these techniques to other teachers all over the world—with great success. In the pages that follow, I’ll teach you too. But first, I want to tell you the most interesting scientific fact I know…

There is only one other animal on the planet, besides man, that can navigate by following the Milky Way. This particular creature is an insect famous for rolling around in it’s own feces. At first glance, the Dung Beetle doesn’t look like it has much going on underneath its ‘shell,’ but when researchers started to probe this dull bug they uncovered a host of impressive hidden abilities. It turns out the approach these researchers used is the exact same approach the best teachers take to uncover hidden abilities in struggling students.

It started with a simple observation: dung beetles navigate perfectly, even on cloudy, moonless nights. Researchers started to wonder how they were doing it. Were these bugs tapping into the earth’s magnetic field to keep themselves on course? Did they use sound waves to track their flight path? Could they be aware of some mysterious new energy that defied modern science?

A team at the Johannesburg Planetarium had a theory. They wondered if the bugs might be using aspects of the night sky to find their way around, as seafaring merchants and explorers did for millennia. So the scientists set up a state-of-the-art dung-rolling racetrack in their dark dome theater and displayed a beautiful night sky with all the stars, planets, and moons removed. Only the Milky Way was visible. Even under this minimal night sky the beetles rolled their balls of dung across the table in perfectly straight lines.

The results suggested dung beetles are able to navigate at night by orienting themselves to the Milky Way. But this theory had never been put forth and the researchers wanted to do more testing before rushing off to publish their findings. They ran a second experiment in which they fashioned little cardboard hats for the dung beetles. The hats prevented the beetles from seeing the Milky Way and, sure enough, as a result, they wandered around aimlessly on the table.

The discovery of the navigation powers of the dung beetle has many parallels with teaching. Here are the three big ones:

1. Teachers like to tell you boring stuff in interesting ways.
2. People sometimes look down on teachers, but we’re actually awesome.
3. It’s a teacher’s job to help students discover hidden abilities. 

As teachers, we aim to help our students take off their cardboard hats and navigate through life.

Anne Sullivan taught Helen Keller to read and write even though the young girl could not hear, see, or speak. Instead of giving up on Keller, Sullivan saw her potential and helped her to reach it. For example, Anne spelled the word “water” on one of Helen’s hands while pouring water on the other to teach her the relationship between the word and the object.

Anne figured out a unique way to take off Helen’s cardboard hat. Through their partnership and friendship Helen and Anne became well-known for their lessons, revolutionizing education methods and collaborating with some of the most notable people of their day.

Another great teacher and exemplar of this creed is Father Greg Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Industries, a Los Angeles bakery that provides former gang members a fresh start in the world. Before he was a non-profit entrepreneur, and before he was a priest, Greg was a teacher. In his pivotal book, Tattoos on the Heart, he tells the story of his first day on the job, walking down the long hallway of Loyola High School in Downtown Los Angeles to teach his very first class.

The hallway seemed to go on forever and Greg’s head was swimming with premonitions about his first teaching experience. He had no idea he was about to receive a piece of advice that he would follow for the rest of his life. Donna Wanland’s door was open as he walked past and Greg knew she was a veteran teacher sure to be filled with sage wisdom. Donna was reading a book at her desk when he walked in. Her advice was straight to the point: “Know all their names by tomorrow. And it’s more important that they know you, than they know what you know.”

Donna’s advice rings true across all levels of education, management, and business. When we educate anyone, the most important thing is to establish a connection. We must understand our students before we can help them grow into their best selves. We need to demonstrate that we value the student as a person, they can’t feel like they are merely ‘work’ to us. It has to matter. 

In a viral video from 2017, fifth grade teacher Barry White Jr. demonstrated a personalized handshake with every student in his class—plus a few outside of his tutelage. In the segment from ABC News, kids line up along a wall as Mr. White Jr., dressed in a crisp black suit, dishes out handshakes, salutes, foot taps, and high fives in a series of intricate patterns. White’s energy brings their spirits up, readying them for the day ahead. Those students feel valued and cared for. That’s what it takes to be exceptional at this. But we certainly don’t pay the Barry Whites of the world as if their work really matters. 

Teachers wear a lot of different hats. We are a listening ear for students in crisis, a resource for those looking to enhance their lives, and an advocate for those who need to be spoken up for.

Not everyone is cut out to be a teacher. We all know some ‘teachers’ who lazily hand out packets, sit behind their desks, and phone it in. And, of course, there’s the ones who play movies every day. In my opinion, real teachers go above and beyond the bare minimum and sincerely invest in the wellbeing of their kids. Those are the teachers we desperately need more of. Those are the teachers who make a difference in the lives of their students. 

If that sounds like you, I want to help you earn what you’re worth as a teacher so you can live the life you want while doing what you love. The world needs more of you.

In a report from Business Insider, it was found that teachers in the United States spend roughly $500 of their own money on school related expenses each year. That’s a troubling number when many of those teachers can expect to earn a salary of less than $40,000. For many teachers today it is a regular struggle to afford rent, food, and a comfortable way of life. Salaries for educators actually dropped by 4.5% over the past decade.

This is no way to treat the people who are shaping the minds of the next generation. Teachers today are stressed, underpaid, and uncertain about the future. As an Australian teacher myself, I know the experience of being underpaid and underappreciated is a worldwide issue. Teachers around the globe find themselves paying for their own materials while public schools face budget cuts and private tuition is on the rise. 

In the 2019 PDK Poll of Public Schools, 71% of Americans reported believing teachers deserve to be paid more. The study also found 62% of teachers have considered leaving their jobs, with 55% saying they are ready to go on strike for higher wages. This frustration permeates all of our lives. As educators, we’re expected to give our all for a system that doesn’t see us as being worth the expense. Everyone wants change but no satisfactory solution has been proposed.

I’m not going to fix the broken education system but I have something that can help. I was able to find a set of proven tactics any teacher can use to supplement their income. This is not about getting a second job and stretching yourself thinner (even though many teachers do have a second job on top of their full-time career in order to make ends meet). I’m talking about another way. 

I took off my cardboard hat, and now I’m shooting for the stars. 

I became a Teacherpreneur. How I got there is an adventure in self-belief and chasing dreams. But my story also holds some useful how-to lessons for teachers everywhere.

My Teacherpreneur journey started with the sputtering screeches of dial-up during my senior year of high school…

CHAPTER 2
THE BIRTH OF A TEACHERPRENEUR

Today, I’m known as the PE Geek. My company works with teachers to leverage their strengths. Through the monetization techniques you’ll read about in this book, the project has become my full-time job and we employ a small team of people to manage everything now. But I didn’t start out knowing this was what I wanted to do. My journey to becoming a Teacherpreneur began in earnest during my senior year of high school.

I was always interested in technology, spending hours in front of video games and screens. I kept up with the latest new consoles and arcade machines. But as soon as I experienced the Internet—even in the old dial-up days—I knew it was different. I was immediately hooked and wanted to learn everything about how it worked.

As part of a promotion, my family was given some free server space by our internet service provider (it was about 20 megabits). My parents didn’t want it, so I decided to build a website. Back then, the internet was brand new and there were no ‘rules’ yet. People were experimenting with radically different styles of webpages. It was a brand new frontier and anyone could join. I learned to code HTML and built a website, and I did my high school senior project about teaching 18-year-olds to build websites of their own.

During this time, a teacher pulled me aside and said the sentence tha...