How do you outsource if you're a teacher?

[dusty]

Good day,

I purchased the book the other day and have been going through it diligently and have found myself stuck/hungup on the fact that as a public school teacher I can't outsource what I do because the kids come at 8am and they leave at 3pm. My pay is based on me being there the whole time. So unless I can pick up an alternative viable income stream I have to stay. Has anyone else come across an issue similar to this? I can easily apply the idea of increasing my productivity while at school but there are no bonuses for doing so other than personal satisfaction due to the constraints of public education. It could be that I'm not yet seeing things clearly but would love to hear what any of you might think.

sincerely,

Dusty

[read]

Dusty,

I'm in the same boat, although I have it a little easier, because I'm an adjunct college teacher (with a more flexible schedule). I've come to the conclusion that teaching qualifies as a service-based industry -- something that Tim says to stay away from, if you want to fully liberate.

I don't think that means we're out of the game, though! I've thought a lot about this, and I decided that finding a muse would free me to take on fewer classes (since I'm an adjunct, I can do this) and would therefore help lighten my overall workload (right now, I take on way too many classes at once). That doesn't help you, but what about this? With muse income, we could take the summers off completely (something I've never done because of money) and could do one 2-month mini-retirement a year. In addition, during the school-year, we can eliminate a lot of the paper busywork that we have to do. In your case, that might mean that you only work from 8am-3pm -- and no longer. It's not a 4-hour week, but it's shorter than most.

I decided that I won't stop teaching. Teaching is, for me, a sort of calling, and the students matter to me. That doesn't mean that the book is useless, though. We can adapt it to our needs. For me, that means finding a muse to help me take summers off -- and to help me reduce the number of classes I teach to 1 or 2 writing classes, rather than 5 or 6. For me, this is a world of difference.

[Brian Sheridan]

I also teach college and thought the same thing as your two.

[Talon]

Send me an email and I will find an old email that I have with the link to UoP. You can tezch via internet grade etc without leaving home.
Ask David Fraser for the link to apply on line ofr teaching at UoP
Requirements are a bit harsh-I was not eligable having just finished my graduate degree with them, however sign up under what ever classes you feel you can teach etc. Again I am missing the actual link but the guy below should be able to point you in the right direction.:cool:
David.Fraser@phoenix.edu

[Gerto]

I'm not sure what exactly you do, but as far as I know a teacher has to do more than just the 8am - 3pm part.
-Preparing lessons: Something that you could outsource; At least in Belgium, teachers spend at least an hour a day on that as far as I know.

Maybe you could even outsource correcting tests, but I guess there would be both practical and ethical problems with that! Be creative ;)

Good luck

[Van]

I too have a "service" business. But I think that the point is not how do I make what I do fit, but rather how do I change what I do to work within the idea of outsourcing. It is going from being an employ or self employed to managing others to do what I once did.

I teach as well, but from my service business. And teaching for me is my "out."

What I am doing is selling information, which I already have.

I looked at what I know, and who wants to know it. I then created products based on that market, and then sell to that market.

Google Fred Gleek. He offers tons of "very good" free information on information products.

[dusty]

Thanks to all for the responses. I feel there is a great need for information based products in the teaching industry and rather than look to scale down my efforts I can see I need to redirect them in the time away from school and develop my muse. I'm going to focus on obesity/exercise due to the fact that 60% of all kids are obese and many of the adults teaching them are overweight/obese as well. The mortality rate for teachers is very high after retirement and I believe it has to do with their activity leading up to it. Teachers celebrate alot through eating. Elementary teachers have the potential for 20+ fat laden calorie busting kid birthday parties a year plus someone is always bringing donuts for the staff lounge. I would love to hear from any of you on this. Thanks in advance.

Dusty

[Webzu]

Thanks to all for the responses. I feel there is a great need for information based products in the teaching industry and rather than look to scale down my efforts I can see I need to redirect them in the time away from school and develop my muse. I'm going to focus on obesity/exercise due to the fact that 60% of all kids are obese and many of the adults teaching them are overweight/obese as well. The mortality rate for teachers is very high after retirement and I believe it has to do with their activity leading up to it. Teachers celebrate alot through eating. Elementary teachers have the potential for 20+ fat laden calorie busting kid birthday parties a year plus someone is always bringing donuts for the staff lounge. I would love to hear from any of you on this. Thanks in advance.

Dusty

I think that's a fantastic muse! The obesity/weight-loss/fitness field is tough and competitive but by narrowing your focus to teachers you've found a great niche! And one that can be tested via PPC as per Tim's book. Remember to test it before you develop the materials book/ebook/CD etc. You can develop a CD for exercises teachers can do while in the classroom, like the exercises the airlines have in their magazines for people to do while they sit in flight. Keep us posted on your progress.

[Marcie]

Love it! I am reminded of the school featured in "Supersize Me" - I have some other links about it at work, but I found this general summary:

http://www.feingold.org/Bluebook/page-09-wisconsin.pdf

I know there is a related packet somewhere you can download that outlnes how to make your school system healthier, I will look for it. Maybe you could do something like that? The major benefit in a case like this is that it (the healthy diet) also (in that case) eliminated behavioral problems and increased performance in the students (not to mention the health benefits!)

~Marcie

[Talon]

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[Marcie]

Here is the info I promised, sorry it took so long!

Ugh edited because the link to the video is not working :(

Here is the actual case study:

http://www.greenearthinstitute.org/nutrition/Documents/ACACaseStudyFinalVersion.doc

HTH!

[laleblanc]

I just finished the book and I agree with you about some professions being difficult to negotiate remote work. I am a pharmacist and BY LAW, I must be on site to supervise my staff and fill prescriptions. The pharmacy cannot even be open if I'm not there! Then of course there is all the patient privacy issues so I don't think I could remotely access the computers if I was overseas! I guess the solution would be to come up with a way I could do something remotely that would benefit the company which is not dealing with actual prescription processing or patient interaction. WHEW, tall order!

I will say that my brain has been churning the past two days as I read the book trying to come up with ways to experience these mini-retirements. One other clog in the wheel is that I have 5 small children that I just can't up and leave. I do like the idea of ELIMINATION and I know that our whole family can benefit from this idea.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated! (BTW-I am experiencing a semi-mini retirement/vacation that I recently negotiated with my company. We had a severe shortage of pharmacists in Oregon, so I got licensed and arranged to leave my position for 6 weeks, travel to Oregon (never been anywhere near there!), and work for 4 weeks. Even though I am going to be working 40 hours during each of these weeks, my family is with me and we will be seeing all sorts of new places during this time. So I guess I could keep 'freelancing' like this with my company and travel to cool places in America I've never been. I'm considering 2 weeks in Colorado in December when the kids get out of school. I could work and we could ski when I'm off...HUMM, maybe I'm on to something!)

Maybe you could do something like this during your summer off from teaching (my husband is a teacher, that's why he's with me with the kids). You could also do mini vacations during school holidays. Plan something exotic that really gives you a chance to get away from it all. During this time you could be working on your muse and developing a secondary income to replace your teaching income then you could travel anywhere and teach anywhere you want! I know a lot of foreign military bases that Americans are stationed at have schools for the American children. These are located all over the world. I don't know what you have to do to be able to teach at one of these locations (do you have to be enlisted?) but it might be worth looking into. Some big corporations that have overseas offices (divisions?) also have schools for their employees that are working there so that might also be an option. I've also heard about cruise ships that travel around the world hire teachers for the trip. So who know?

Just some ramblings to think about!
Good luck with your own brainstorm,
Lori LeBlanc

[final_id]

I don't consider electronic teaching to be "teaching." The call of the classroom is about knowing each individual student, gearing your presentation and your grading to his or her personal needs, paying attention. Sure, the scalability and duplicability of producing instructional DVDs is certainly a possible choice for a Muse for people with teaching skills, but that's only AFTER you've managed to reduce the stress of your workplace by 80/20-ifying and thereby downsizing yourself remotely etc.

Teachers can't do it. Nor can publicists. I was a publicist. If you don't answer your phone and email messages habitually, you simply fail at your job. If you're lucky, for example, to receive an incoming call from the New York Times reporter asking for information about what you publicize, then you respond immediately, because if you don't, then you miss his deadline and you don't get your publicity.

There are "outsourcing" things that a publicist could do. Being more careful with the arrangement and presentation of information ahead of time, creating downloadable documents that you present as available at an FTP site, for example, rather than waiting for a call to come in and then responding ad-hoc to each individual question. This ruins the "relationship" portion of the publicity game -- no reporter gives good-will to a publicist merely because he remembers the name of the person who sloughed off his phone call and then sent an anonymous email that directed him to an FTP site!

I'm kind of happy I'm not a publicist any more. Johnny-on-the-spot is fun for a while, and it was rewarding to be "proud" of being able to respond when the NYT calls. "Yessir, I know exactly what you want! I have it right here and ZAP it's already in your email inbox!" But it's not for me for a lot of reasons. And it can't be for anyone who wants to get out of the rat race grind and live, instead, off a Muse. Can't be.

Nor can teaching. You might consider teaching to be that thing which you LOOK FORWARD TO, as a use of your time to fill the void once you HAVE created independence. Schools always want qualified people, and think how nice it would be, to only ever interact with the kids, and not have to hassle with the state curriculum guidelines, or the persnickety headmaster, because you're A VOLUNTEER so they have to BE THANKFUL that you're there at all! :)

[shortcutter]

Good day,

I purchased the book the other day and have been going through it diligently and have found myself stuck/hungup on the fact that as a public school teacher I can't outsource what I do because the kids come at 8am and they leave at 3pm. My pay is based on me being there the whole time. So unless I can pick up an alternative viable income stream I have to stay. Has anyone else come across an issue similar to this? I can easily apply the idea of increasing my productivity while at school but there are no bonuses for doing so other than personal satisfaction due to the constraints of public education. It could be that I'm not yet seeing things clearly but would love to hear what any of you might think.

sincerely,

Dusty

Try building a muse based on your interest and knowledge... If you teach maths, you could make an ebook or video tutorial on how to master maths for kids or something similar. Think about building a plan B that will slowly become your plan A. So once plan B becomes profitable and can sustain your lifestyle, dump plan A and promote plan B to plan A and start building a new plan B, plan C, etc...

I hope it makes sense,

Shortcutter

[travelhead]

Your idea of seling an information based product is interesting. Of course, you would have to do a lot of research into your market.

Specifically,

Adwords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) - Gives you an idea of search volume / competition on Adwords.

If you wanted to create an ebook, you could sell it on clickbank.com (http://www.clickbank.com) and have affiliates from around the globe promote it for you.

You might also consider getting to your TEFL certification so you can teach overseas. You could take a year sabatical from your current job.. I know there are many teaching jobs in Japan that pay alright - and the pay is not as good , but also many jobs in Thailand.

[VitaminD]

I don't consider electronic teaching to be "teaching."

Uh, isn't the point of books to teach someone without ever meeting them? I wrote an information eBook, and I consider it a solid resource. It may not substitute for my presence, but it's way cheaper than personal teaching, too!

[final_id]

Uh, isn't the point of books to teach someone without ever meeting them? I wrote an information eBook, and I consider it a solid resource. It may not substitute for my presence, but it's way cheaper than personal teaching, too!


Oh yes, you're definitely right about that. I didn't mean to say that an eBook was a wrong thing to do at all! In fact, another point in my post says pretty clearly, something along the lines of, the idea that people who are good at teaching will probably be able to make good instructional videos and eBooks! So we agree on that much. :)

But I did mean to say that "teaching can't be outsourced" in one very specific way. I meant that people who are "called to the classroom" (as in, they want to influence young minds positively by means of schooling) probably have an interest in doing something that is not out-source-able. If the thing they like doing, and VALUE doing, is the one-to-one interaction with the kids in person, then how are they going to get someone else to do that for them? For me, and for many many other professional educators, the idea of "outsourcing" education is offensive because it reduces one-to-one time between a talented teacher and a needy student. In many circumstances, larger educational institutions are doing a type of automation of education -- probably a good business decision by the major institutions! -- by recording professors' lectures and then boradcasting them either in classrooms, or by internet and other media. Some subjects, and some contexts, are quite appropriate for this sort of arrangement -- for example, if you sign up for an online degree as an adult, then you'd probably EXPECT there to be videos of lectures rather than one-to-one interaction. But if you're the parent of a twelve-year-old who has a learning disability like dyslexia, and you really value the interaction that one talented teacher is offering your kid, to the point that you're developing some hope that your kid might read at an average rate after all ... and then the school cuts that teacher out of the curriculum, buys a video package from an outsourcer, and just sticks that kid plus a hundred others in a movie theater where they play the video? The kid isn't being TAUGHT any more, just lectured at.

The "teacher" who is called to give one-to-one will know exactly what I'm talking about. To choose to record a video for financial gain, rather than to interact one-to-one with the kid in person, is perhaps a more profitable choice. But it also means you're no longer "teaching" in that refined, interpersonal sense to which I was originally referring.

I have no problems with videos and eBooks. And, as I have said twice already, I think people who are good at teaching in a traditional manner, are likely to also be good at presenting information to customers in the new Tim-Ferriss manner as well. But please don't take away the personal attention from the kid with dyslexia! The interaction in real time is absolutely mandatory for some types of teaching, and choosing not to do it, strictly for the aim of automation, is a poor choice in terms of educational gain to many students, and yet is being made quite regularly by many institutions, much to the detriment of their overall pedagogical quality.

I've heard that the average student who begins a traditional North American college degree in 2010 will have more than two thirds of his learning time automated. To someone like me, who spent more time in my professors' offices than I did in any lecture or classroom, large or small, that's a problematic sea-change in the nature of education. Those schools which are simply opting for cheaper rather than better might be more profitable, but they're also abandoning the notion of teaching their students. There's a suspicious hypocrisy behind all that.

[drjudy]

Take a look at this:
www.universalclass.com

Might be an option for some teachers to make a bit
of money as they develop their muse.

Once they develop their class outline, and have some cash flow going, they can easily convert the material into an ebook, CD, webseminar, etc.

Dr. Judy

[MyOwnSuperhero]

A time-based service oriented job like teaching can still be worked with, it just requires some creative thinking. Here are a few thoughts and ideas:

- You're in a job that gets out at 3 every day and gives you summers off, not to mention every holiday break available. You've got a good deal of extra time already to work with. Besides, what other job ever lets you call in a sub?
- Are you working within or around that 8-3 schedule? Working within it would mean grading papers and preparing lessons during the school day, using the time you're being paid for. Working around it would mean doing this work on your own time, unpaid.
- Do you work for the paycheck, or for the satisfaction of teaching? If you're there putting in time for money alone, you're screwed. That makes you a wage slave, the antithesis of the 4HWW ethic. If you do it because that's how you choose to fill your time, and you have the freedom to leave it if you wanted to, then it's a conscious decision based on what you want and where you can contribute.

[final_id]

Couldn't have said it better m'self. :)

Except for that one little line, "freedom to leave if you wanted," it's all pretty cut-and-dried. You do realize, though, that most people DON'T have that kind of freedom? I don't teach ONLY because "I love it" (though I sometimes kind of do), but also because I HAVE to. The salary sucks, but I can't get a higher-paying job. The time off is not as much as most people think it is -- and this stuff about working "on your own time" isn't really avoidable. The job description of a teacher includes performing the teaching requirements in however much time it takes to do them. If you only get half the classes' papers graded during your one free period of the day because it takes too much time to grade the rest, what do you do, just not return the papers from the students whose names begin with N-Z? Most "professional" positions are like this. Teaching is a little worse in that the employee can more easily convince himself to "accidentally" donate work he's not paid for. But what IS he paid for? Just the 7:30-to-4:00 work day (which, you will note, is already 1:30 more than 9-to-5)? Making sure the kids learn everything? Standing up in the classroom for the allotted period and being a warm body? Mentoring people he cares about? Teaching is one of those things that people go in to "for the love, not the money," and that's a DREADFUL pitfall. Because it means they can be so much more easily taken advantage of, because their dedication will trump the bad salary, unreasonable working conditions, or lack of free time.

By the way, why do people think teachers have a lot of free time? I got more official vacation days when I was in a traditional workplace. The same number (or more) of holidays were "off" (office closed on all Postal or bank holidays), my summer "break" was occupied with mandatory tasks, AND I didn't get any "personal" or "vacation" days other than those when the office (school) was closed. Teachers can't take vacations or mid-year leaves of absence, remember. If you're at an office, you can just say, "OK, I need to regroup. I'm not going to be here next week. Tote it up as vacation (or just don't pay me). See ya!" Teachers never have that option. All teacher traveling happens either in August (yargh! everything's hot and closed!) or over Christmas (maximum expense!).

In addition, teachers are "on call" for non-work related tasks which, therefore, are really part of their work. Leading overnight field trips which cut into the weekend, for example. Paying for office supplies at the stationery store rather than just going down to the stock room and taking them when you need them. Paying for room decoration. Paying for curriculum guides, teachers' texts, work-related travel. It's not a "great deal" in a lot of ways. I always wondered what people thought teachers were doing in all those supposedly "spare" hours. They're TEACHING.