Teaching can often feel like a never-ending cycle of prep. And.. it's so easy to get caught-up in creating the perfect classroom. In this episode I share tips for how simplifying and standardizing procedures was a clue to discovering my super-power.

Takeaways:

• Your teacher superpower is found in your specialized skills that can be monetized.
• Identifying what you can let go of can reveal your true teaching strengths.
• Look for the activities that draw you toward mastery and improvement in your skills.
• Recognizing consistent results in your teaching can indicate a unique and valuable skill set.
• Evaluate whether your new methods significantly improve your teaching experience and effectiveness.
• Creating rinse-and-repeat systems in your classroom can free up time for your business.

P.S. If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd love for you to leave a review and share this podcast with a Teacher friend! Together, we can show Teachers what's possible.

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Companies mentioned in this episode:

• TeacherBusiness.com
• TPT

Hey teachers.

Welcome to Teacher Business Buzz, the only daily business show just for teachers.

Are you missing clues to your superpower?

Your superpower is your specialized knowledge or skill set that you could teach others and turn into a profitable online membership business.

This week we are bringing you a five part series all about making sure that you are not missing clues to your superpower.

And today is part three.

Hi, I'm Tiffany and I am the co founder of TeacherBusiness.com along with my husband Dwayne.

I've been a K12 teacher and administrator for 25 years and the host of a top 10 charter school podcast.

Can you relate?

I was obsessed with trying to just create this perfect pinterest worthy classroom, right?

And so back then when I started on tpt, I actually became a big consumer of tpt.

I started consuming a lot of TPT products and using all of these resources in my classroom.

They were so fantastic and I just loved what teachers were creating.

It worked and it looked beautiful.

So I loved it all and I just would implement all of these different resources.

I was dedicated to becoming masterful at centers, but with that I was shopping online all the time.

I was always at home goods, trying to find the perfect thing to go with my centers and use in my classroom.

I was always buying things on TPT and printing them out and laminating them and cutting them.

Like every day when I would come home from school, I would just spend the whole evening prepping in my living room.

So I'm not sure if that resonates with any of you, but I always just had stuff on the floor.

I had my own like paper chopper at home, my own laminator, just everything.

And I was prepping.

The problem with this is that I realized that 99% of my time was spent on prepping lessons and things for my classroom.

And it felt like only 1% was spent on actually teaching the students the lessons.

So I felt like I was working way harder than any of my students.

So I just started to say, okay, I gotta do things a little bit differently or I am gonna burn myself out a little bit.

So I started asking myself these two major questions.

The first one was am I doing this for them or for me the little perfect thing at home goods or the exact turn in basket for their homework, was that for me or was that for them?

So I started using that as a qualifier for should I or shouldn't I do something.

And then the second thing was, is it necessary in order for them to learn?

Was the perfect turn in basket necessary for them to learn?

No, it actually had nothing to do with them learning.

Whereas there were other things that I should be spending my time because it was really necessary in order for them to learn maybe that phonics skill or to really understand a math concept.

So I started using these two guiding questions.

And as a result of this, I just made some other changes.

So I took the idea of finding the perfect heart shaped little counters for the Valentine's Day center and I just said, you know what?

I'm only just going to use my red and yellow counters that I have in my classroom that are my easy go to.

Because if you get something that's super cute and super specialized, that's the thing that's going to get lost.

You're not going to have enough pieces when you go to do the activity.

You have to download and print and cut and laminate, like all the things.

And I just had to cut that out and say, okay, I'm going to let that go and replace it with just the counters because that's not going to impact the learning things like the thematic pails and the little buckets.

Like if you had a fishing center and you put it in a little tackle box, all those things are so cute, but they're very awkward and hard to store.

And so I found that by standardizing my system for how I was storing my centers, that, number one, they were all contained in the same type of container.

I use these standard, like oversized manila envelopes and I use the same system for all of my centers.

And then number two, it was way less bulky, so I could just really stack them behind one another in a milk crate and access them all really easily.

So these were some of the changes that I started to make.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I want you to see how these led to results that have now impacted my business.

And these were the clues that let me know what my teacher superpower was so that I could eventually recognize that and turn my superpower into a business.

So when I was doing all of this, what I really realized is that I had a knack for simplifying and standardizing and systematizing.

And that knack has led me to create simple rinse and repeat systems that I now use in every aspect of my business.

And so my real superpower now is that I can coach teachers on how to create rinse and repeat systems in your own classroom so that you can free up some more time and energy to focus on what matters in your classroom, but also free up some more time and energy to work on your business.

And when you're really consuming all of your energy with things like finding the perfect turn in basket at home goods or downloading that principle one more time just to get that one piece, you're not allowing yourself the bandwidth, the time and energy that you need to focus on the important things.

And to me, those important things are maximizing your relationship with your students so you can really be tuned in as a teacher.

And then number two, coming home with enough energy and excitement left so that you can focus on your business.

So I want to help you to recognize some of the clues that might be leading to your superpower so that you can see how just some of these little things that you might be doing naturally as a teacher get overlooked when you're looking for a teacher superpower.

But those really are the clues to what your superpower is and how you might use that to start a business.

So we're going to go over three ways that you might be seeing some success in your classroom that's actually clues to your superpower.

So number one is the ability to let go when you are doing something new.

When you're learning something new and you're getting better at a skill, you have to let go of the old ways of doing something.

Let's say that you really want to learn how to create digital quizzes on Google, right?

So that you don't have to grade so many things.

Maybe they're self grading quizzes on Google.

In order for you to become good at that, you're going to have to let go of some of the old ways that you used to do it.

Some of those paper pencil quiz methods that we're working so well, right?

But sometimes that is easier said than done.

So if you have found that you have the ability to let go of something in order to get a better result or a better system, that's a good clue.

That new thing that you're doing was important to you, and so that could be part of your superpower.

So don't overlook your ability to let go of something in order to do something else better.

When you're willing to let go of X to do more of Y to get Z results, that thing is important to you and that could be part of your teacher superpower.

All right, Number two is look for the things that gravitate you towards mastery.

And by this, once you start getting a taste of it, you just want to do more and more of it.

In keeping with that Google quiz example, you find yourself then making Google quizzes for math and making Google quizzes for science.

Or maybe you want to make a Google quiz for your parents survey.

When you start doing things over and over again and you're practicing and you're honing your skills and you're trying to get better and faster and create a method and a system for what it is that you're creating, that's a good clue that this might be something pretty special that you have.

And this could be your two, your teacher superpower and maybe even something that you turn into a profitable business idea.

Number three is look for what where you're getting results, right?

If you were using all paper pencil quizzes and now you've transitioned successfully into self graded Google quizzes, that's amazing, right?

And if you keep getting those results over and over again, that's a clue that you now have a skill set that is a specialized skill set.

And if you can give those results to another teacher, even better.

Either creating quizzes for them to help give them the results or teaching them the skills to do the same, that's a good indicator that might be a teacher superpower that you could turn in to a business.

All right, and here is the bonus.

If it makes your life better or different.

And I am guessing if you went from hand grading paper Pencil quizzes for 30 students and then you went to a Google self grading version, your life probably got real better and real different real quick.

So those are the things that we are looking for.

We are looking for the things that you have learned to do that makes that impact.

If it makes your life better.

A difference that is the cherry on top.

All right, so let's recap today some of the clues to finding your superpower.

You want to look for something that you are able to let go of to upgrade to something better.

Look for that.

And you want to look for the things that help you gravitate towards mastery.

You want to look for things that are giving you results and maybe you're getting results for other people and then the bonuses.

Did it make your life better or different or someone else's life better or different as a result.

All good clues that these could be part of your teacher superpower, that specialized knowledge or skillset that you could teach other people and that you can turn into a profitable online membership business.

All right, as always, we would love for you to subscribe to the Buzz.

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All right.

We will be back tomorrow with another part in our series about making sure that you don't miss those clues about your teacher superpowers.

All right, Join us tomorrow.

See you then.