This week, Elana sits down with Lily Jones, a curriculum developer, education writer, and social media strategist. After seven “inspiring and exhausting” years as a first grade and kindergarten teacher, Lily took her passion for innovative education outside of the classroom and documented how she exactly did it. She now empowers thousands of educators to do the same on her website and her community of educators, EducatorForever.com.

In this talk, Lily reveals the many ways to be a teacher inside AND outside of the classroom by sharing tips on how to navigate being a full-time teacher and a “Teacherpreneur” (a teacher entrepreneur) and gives EdTech brands some helpful tips for appreciating teachers year-round.

Episode Skeleton (use this to jump to the parts you want to listen to):

• 2:30: Lily’s journey through education
• 7:36: Lily speaks about careers outside of education.
• 8:25: “Just because you’re leaving the classroom doesn’t mean you can’t make an impact.” (Lily)
• 13:38: Teachers are not used to charging what they are worth. 
• 14:30: “It’s not about the money, it is about a precedent.” (Elana)
• 14:45: “It’s also about realizing your value as an educator.” (Lily)
• 14:57: The value of being a connected teacher.
• 17:08: What should brands do for teacher appreciation week?
• 17:20: “Teacher appreciation is not about teachers taking out their wallets and buying things.”
• 18:14: You can’t just group “the teacher audience” into a lump sum audience.  
• 20:28: LISTEN to your teacher audience when they respond to you. Get to know them.
• 21:33: Brands should think about what they genuinely appreciate from teachers.
• 21:55: Teacher appreciation is all year long.
• 23:40: Teachers don’t feel listened to. 
• 24:44: “Elevating the profession.” 
• 26:45: Importance of the voice. Who are you and who are you talking to?
• 28:28: “Every day I come to social media, how can I make somebody’s day?” (Elana)
• 32:02: What reading is currently refueling Lily?

Elana:

Welcome everyone to this week’s episode of All Things Marketing and Education. Today I’m really excited to be talking with Lily Jones. She is a curriculum developer and education writer and a social media strategist and most importantly, I also have the pleasure of working with Lily at Leoni Consulting Group. Lily leads many of our social media management accounts for all of our education brands. She’s also the founder of Educatorforever.com, where she empowers teachers to use their skills and passions beyond the classroom.

Lily spent seven “inspiring and exhausting,” in her words, years as a kindergarten and first grade teacher. She then took her passion for teaching and learning and spent the last years working as a curriculum designer and instructional coach and social media consultant. With lots of education brands, such as Education.com, where Lily and I actually got to work together again Teaching Channel, where Lily and I got to work together again, BabyCenter, and lots more brands. Lily is also a fellow Cow Bear. Go Bears.

Lily:

Go Bears.

Elana:

And she holds a master’s in elementary education from UC Berkley. And last but not least, Lily is really, honestly, one of the most inspiring and dedicated mothers I’ve experienced.

Lily:

Ah, that’s so nice.

Elana:

You just glow. It brings you joy. Beyond your love for learning is your love for kids and those hand-in-hand. She has two adorable children, Matilda and Milo, and she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband Kevin. So welcome, Lily. We’re so excited to have you on.

Lily:

Thank you. That was a very sweet introduction. I am very thrilled to be here with you.

Elana:

Yay. Well, why don’t you tell our audience just a little bit more about you, potentially anything I missed. Maybe bring us on the journey of Lily and maybe add in what you currently do at Leoni Consulting Group? What we call informally LCG.

Lily:

Yeah, sounds good. I’m like where do I start? I’ll start when I became a teacher, I guess, which I was very excited to do at that point. I was like all right. I remember walking into my first classroom. I was a first grade teacher. Just so excited. I spent the whole summer setting up my library and being so, so into it. And then the kids came and I immediately got so exhausted. It was like being hit by a truck. I was just like what is this and major imposter syndrome of like “I’m the one teaching them how to read?” I don’t know if I can handle all of this. But I figured it out. I kept going. The kids really were and are what drives me and it was so exciting being around all these little kids all the time.

So I did that. I taught at my first school in Pacifica for two years which was a big public school so really big. There were five first grade classes. And kind of traditional but it was a good place to get my feet wet. Try things out. And then I moved to a school in Oakland where it was much more project-based learning and integrated, hands-on kind of activities and things like that where I felt like I could really grow as an educator and do things that really excited me and thinking about OK, how do we build in like map and the rain forest and how do we create all these things with kids and who can we bring in from the community? Just had a really awesome experience there.

But still felt like oh my gosh, how do I keep doing this long-term? It’s so exhausting. I remember like every break there’s a whole world out here. I have friends I haven’t seen in three months. Oh there’s books that came out, music that came out, movies that came out but I had no idea because I was just so focused on teaching. So that went on and then when I was pregnant with my daughter Matilda, I was like I just don’t know if can continue in the classroom the way that I was. I definitely was full force in there when she was born.

So at that point, I decided to leave the classroom. And that’s when I started working with Teaching Channel part-time from home and basically at that point, tried anything that I could flexibility in education while having a baby at home. So I worked frantically during her nap or when my husband Kevin was home. He didn’t work Thursday and Friday at that point so he would watch her and I would just do all my stuff then. Really the priority changed of trying to spend time with her and also wanting to still be involved in education like supporting teachers and supporting kids.

So truly, I was like is it flexible? Is it to do with education? I will do it. Sign me up so that led me to some of the things that you mentioned like Teaching Channel and then Education.com. I came in kind of from the education curriculum, education consulting side and then in each circumstance found myself in social media. So I found myself as that’s really the way where I could connect more directly with parents and with teachers and even administrators and things like that. But finding that community, almost like a school again but through social media and through this flexible way.

So yeah, that’s how I kind of transitioned then into both coming here to LCG and being able to do social media for so many amazing brands and connect with teachers and educators and parents and all sorts of folks that way. And also how I started Educatorforever was just all my teacher friends being like what is it that you do? How did you find that work? What is out there? And just feeling like every weekend having a coffee chat with somebody at a local café and being like all right, I’m going to turn this into a hub of information so that if teachers feel like they need a break from the classroom or something to do on the side while they’re still teaching to just invigorate them and feed a different part of them, they can have options and they can make different career pathways for themselves within education.

Elana:

Yeah, I would say that when I talk to educators this inspires me but also makes me sad at the same time too. The number one question I get from educators is how can I work outside of education? What are the jobs available? How do I navigate this transition or how do I even know if this is a transition that I would like? And you’re a rare combination of a person that was an educator for so long and then you talked about your journey of moving into ed tech and then in that pathway with lots of different types of brands. And when you talked about brand, there was a lot of -- the B to C brands to the parent side with BabyCenter but then there’s also just the real in the trenches types of brands like Teaching Channel and Education.com on that other side too with the parent side and some teacher side but you have all of this experience. But reflecting back, do you have any advice for educators that are thinking about making this transition or maybe just some advice on how they dip their toes in the waters to figure out if this is right? Maybe if we throw in some education terminology, a scaffolding approach if you will?

Lily:

Yeah, that’s well done, well done. Yeah, it is sad, right. It is sad and structurally I believe the education system has so much that needs to change, right. But I also believe that teachers are the ones who should be empowered to change it. And that I know when I left the classroom I felt so much guilt of oh my gosh, my identity is being a teacher. I have all these students who are counting me and fellow teachers who are counting on me and it felt so heavy. But I think what I’ve really seen is that teachers can go on and do amazing things in education. I had other friends who left education and became real estate agents or you know, became something totally different and went to law school.

All these things. But the ones who stayed in education are really trying to change those systems to support other teachers, to support kids and that just because you’re leaving the classroom, doesn’t mean you can’t make an impact. You really can expand the impact by then reaching tons of classrooms, tons of teachers and I actually have come to believe that I think that’s how we recruit more amazing new teachers into the profession. One way is to tell them they don’t necessarily have to be a classroom teacher forever. They can go on and do all sorts of different things and create different career pathways or they can be a classroom forever. That’s fine too but it doesn’t have to be one size fits all.

Elana:

Yeah, and I think that people don’t understand that, who aren’t in the field of education, that educators generally have more than one job. And I’m not talking just being an educator and then they’re also a tutor in school. Within the school system, they’ve got lots of duties and they take on additional things like yard duty and things to increase their income but beyond that, they’ve got multiple jobs just to support themselves and that might be during the school year but it certainly is during the summer.

I remember, almost 20 years ago, Edutopia was doing their first series of webinars and we had Vickie Davis on. Remember Vickie Davis, cool cat teacher? We’ll throw her website and her resources in the show notes, but she used the term “Teacherpreneur” and some people were like “well, why do teachers have to be anything else?” No, teachers don’t need to be entrepreneurs and also do the toughest job in the world. And I understand that but then there’s also your side too. It’s like this is a great way to dip your toe in the water, get some extra income rather than -- you know, at the time educators were working at Blockbuster Video on the side. Would you rather infuse your love of learning into things that are making you money in a passive way sometimes too? So I was a little torn but your journey brought me back to that webinar back in the day when it was almost 20 years ago now and now it’s quite blown up.

Lily:

I know. Totally. Yeah. The term “Teacherpreneur” still to me is a little -- I don’t know. It’s somehow unsettling. I’ve learned to embrace it a little bit I also understand the hesitation around it. And I also understand people who are like oh teachers shouldn’t have to work these extra jobs. Like yeah, of course, absolutely. One hundred percent. I obviously would want to pay teachers so, so much more but it’s also like teachers being like martyrs. Being in this system and waiting for it to change when it’s at such a snail’s pace. Like, how about we try to make changes from other directions and then therefore hopefully create a better system for teachers and students.

Elana:

Yeah. So talk to me about if you were going to redo it and say you were in the classroom but you were trying to dip your toe in the water while being in the classroom because your situation were you were having Matilda and you were leaving regardless, but if you’re an educator now listening to this, are there a couple of things they can do just to see if this world is right for them or maybe just bring in some different income streams?

Lily:

Yeah, totally. And I actually did kind of experiment while I was in the classroom with things that I happened into. I think we’ve talked about how I did National Novel Writing Month with my first graders and then after doing that, I built up a relationship with the folks at National Novel Writing Month and they reached out to me like “hey, you remember those lessons you wrote? Can we pay you to create a curriculum around those so we can then share with so many other teachers?” And I was like “that is the easiest yes ever, of course.” And also “is a thing that gets done? Can I write up these things that I’ve done and then share them with other people?”

Elana:

Yeah. And I would say from the educator brand perspective, I work with educator brands and make sure that when they approach educators for opportunities, they’re always paying them. So if you are an educator and a brand reaches out to you and says “hey, can you review this product?” or “hey can you review this book or can you do this or that?” or “write a blog post,” all of those things and they’re not offering to pay you for your time, that means they don’t value you. And I hate to say it and they maybe don’t even realize they’re saying that. I teach a lot of education brands and an educator’s time is worth a lot of money. And we need to make sure that we’re valuing them and we’re not bothering them or bogging them down in their already really challenging day. And educators themselves, they’re so selfless they’re like this is a great opportunity, I’ll just do it and then they end up doing all these things for free.

Lily:

Yes. Yes. And that’s so in the culture of you want to help. Right. You got into teaching because you want to help, you want to serve and I think that’s so expected of educators all the time. Whether it’s an extra pdf for their school or whether it’s a brand asking them or whether it’s a coffee chat with a colleague. All those things, right, that we’re not used to charging what we’re worth or even seeing our skills I think as something that is valuable in that way or transferrable.

Elana:

As an educator, you need to have a media kit or prices or anything fancy to start with. What you can do is if a brand does approach you for a certain thing, ask them what they are willing to pay you and hold on to that and then just go ahead and ask your network, like, is this generally what people get paid for? Reach out to me, reach out to Lily. We’ll tell you. We really want to make sure that -- and it’s not about the money on all of this and we know this but it is about setting a precedent, an important precedent.

Lily:

Yes. And I think it’s also about realizing your value as an educator. I think that so often we think like oh we’re just teachers and for me, I was around teachers all the time. All my friends were teachers, my colleagues were teachers. We’re all teachers so we don’t sometimes realize that our skills really can be such a valuable asset to other people.

Elana:

Yeah, and on the show, one of the themes that have already naturally been occurring is the value of being a connected educator because when you are connected and not isolated, you start realizing your worth. You start realizing that what I’m doing is actually pretty cool and innovative and I haven’t heard anyone else or I’ve collaborated with this other educator and we created this awesome thing. So when you are siloed, you have this self-fulfilling prophecy potentially that you are just this and you’re never just an educator.

Lily:

No, totally. I know. It still is crazy to me that I hardly ever saw inside of anybody’s classroom as a teacher. I remember I got like two days out of the school year that I could go and look at other people in the district’s classrooms. And that was so fascinating. It was like “oh, what do they have on the wall? How do they do that thing? And then when I transitioned out, I worked at Teaching Channel, which was all about making videos of teachers all over the country. So it went from never seeing anybody’s classroom to seeing so many different classrooms and it was so, so, so valuable, just being able to everyone is doing amazing things and how awesome would that be if I could take what this person was doing and learn from them and they can take what I was doing and learn from me and just having that kind of open door with other educators and feeling like we can share and help each other out is so valuable.

Elana:

Yeah, makes sense. I think let’s switch gears a little bit.

Lily:

Yeah, let’s do it.

Elana:

Instead of talking to the educators, we’re still going to talk to you educators so don’t go away but we also want to talk to the EdTech brands and Lily recently wrote one of our most popular blog posts about what EdTech brands should not do for Teacher Appreciation Week. And being a former educator and a lifelong educator, what do you think EdTech companies should do more or less in general? What bugs you the most? Maybe if I am an education brand marketer and I don’t have a ton of experience in K-12 and I just need a refresher, what are those things I should avoid, and maybe what are the things they should lean into a little more?

Lily:

Yeah. Good question. I think my big tip for the teacher appreciation one was just don’t offer a tiny discount on your product to educators during Teacher Appreciation Week. Teacher Appreciation Week is not about educators taking out their wallets and buying things. It’s really about giving away resources so instead of a 15% percent discount maybe give away a free trial for a month, no strings attached, give away some amazing resources to them. Give away something that really helps them or just honestly heartfelt show your appreciation. That matters too and it’s about feeling valued, not necessarily about just getting things.

I think, in general, just really listening to teachers and hearing what they have to say and going from that and this is something that I think we all do, thinking we know what other people are going through but really listening to teachers before you talk to them and realizing that teachers are not a monolith, right. There are some people who are teachers who want to be teachers forever who have been teaching for 50 years and that’s amazing and fantastic and they don’t feel burnt out. There are other teachers who feel super burned out their first year of teaching and feel like they can’t go on. And those are two different audiences. And that’s fine but if you start out like “hey, burnt out teachers,” you’re going to isolate the people who are like I’m not a burnt out teacher. I love teaching and if you start off being like “hey teachers, we know you’re so invigorated by being around children,” you’re going to isolate the teachers who are like I’m feeling so burnt out. I love my children but I’m not invigorated.

So I almost feel hesitant to lump all teachers together sometimes but really think about what teachers are you talking to? What experience as a teacher are you talking to and then actually talk to teachers who are going through that experience to find out how you can help?

Elana:

Yeah, that’s so important. It’s kind of complex too. And we work with brands to really look at what is your primary audience, your secondary audience, and all of your additional audiences that you want to talk to without isolating them to your point but it’s really hard to do but at the same time, the marketing messages I see that stereotype educators or just make light in an overly simplistic fashion. It bothers me. We need to be overly sensitive and caring and empathetic to especially now with what educators are going through. So if you do a funny thing where it’s like hey teachers, have a rough day, haha. No, it’s really hard and so you kind of have to navigate that but the way you do that is to listen to educators as much as possible. And not just educators, your audience. Get to know them. That was a theme I read in your blog post a lot is geez, please listen.

Lily:

Yeah, totally. The beauty of social media, right, is you have interaction with educators, with people responding to the things you point out. So I also would say for EdTech brands, if you do a promotion for teachers or whatever it is, a campaign for teachers and they’re writing into you on social media, commenting, whatever with feedback to listen to them. Sometimes you might not get it right but then it’s important to listen if you didn’t and if you of how did this go over with teachers and get their real reactions to what you did so you can be a better listener and a better collaborator with them.

Elana:

And giving and appreciating for the sake of those things. Right.

Lily:

Mm-hm. Yes.

Elana:

As a marketer, I always dig deep and I look at is this 15 percent off discount usually offered? Is this just another way to spin their discount that they usually give every day? And if so, that makes me sad. Please do not use this as an opportunity at any point just to say oh let’s make our discount timely.

Lily:

Yes, definitely. Teachers, at least from my experience, teachers are not waiting for Teacher Appreciation Week to get deals. They’re burned out. It’s May. They’re tired. They really want to just feel -- you don’t feel valued as a teacher for the most part. Like we were saying before, you don’t feel like your skills are valued by society so I think leaning into what you truly appreciate about teachers and what you wish a teacher would hear on their worst day can be a good way of thinking about it.

Elana:

Yeah, and what we’re talking about isn’t just applicable for Teacher Appreciation Month which comes in May. There’s a Teacher Appreciation Day, there’s a month, there’s a week but regardless of that, we always talk about it internally and we work with all of our brands is how can you appreciate educators all year long? It’s no surprise that the number one most popular type of content for educators is how to combat burnout, even at the beginning of the school year. So how can we appreciate and support educators year-round and do it in a way just from the heart? I don’t know if you recently saw but this was the coolest thing that I saw from a brand and it didn’t come from an EdTech brand but Mazda. Did you see the Mazda thing?

Lily:

No, I didn’t see it. No.

Elana:

Mazda is offering a free oil change, with no strings attached, to anyone that is an active educator right now.

Lily:

Nice.

Elana:

They don’t even have to have a Mazda.

Lily:

Oh, amazing. That’s great.

Elana:

And that’s just great. And other educators were able to share it with their friends and say here you go. It was just this thank you. You don’t have to be like 15 percent off oil changes for educators and you have to be this or that and you don’t have to make them jump through tons of hoops too. As an early marketer, I would make educators do a lot of things, and I’m sorry, back in the day. Until I realized that it’s really hard to get anyone to do anything, especially educators and if you ask them to do something, please reward them.

Lily:

Yes, please reward them. I think the oil change thing is kind of beautiful too because it doesn’t have to be flashy. Right. It’s something that you need to get done that’s a load off and that is what teachers need. They want to feel like something is checked off their list. They don’t have an endless to do -- well, they’ll always have an endless to do list but it was a little less endless. So I think that’s really a good reminder too. It doesn’t have to be the flashiest thing. It can be something like a free oil change.

Elana:

Well, do you want to add anything else? Some last-minute thoughts on brands that maybe missed steps that you want to share an example on or just remind EdTech brands that are thinking about appreciating educators or even doing a campaign? What issues you would consider?

Lily:

I think again just really listening. I think one thing that contributes to burn out is that teachers don’t feel listened to in general. This is a total generalization so I’m somewhat hesitating but in general, my experience was we go to school to become teachers and we have all this education, we have all this hands-on practice and then here come people telling us oh no, actually it should be done like this whether it’s administration or a parent or just society saying oh no, we should do it this way so really the more we can just listen to teachers and value their expertise like you would value a doctors expertise or like you would value a lawyers expertise or whatever it is, they are experts in their field and having that really come across throughout everything you do.

Elana:

Elevating the profession. I like it.

Lily:

Mm-hm.

Elana:

Let’s switch gears slightly because you do have lots of hats with the educator Lily. Now we’re going to move back to the social media manager Lily which you do spend a lot of your time right now doing. You know that social media can be absolutely overwhelming to manage and you juggle social media for lots of prominent brands right now. For all of the social media managers listening or heads of marketing listening that are thinking of hiring or have maybe junior-level people coming in and trying to help them with their path on social media. What are your best pro tips to get started? I know this is very hard but if you were going to program out a week in social media, how do you begin to navigate the world of crafting posts in a consistent fashion and engaging? How do you navigate everything that needs to be done?

Lily:

Yeah. How long do we have? That’s a good question. I think a lot of it I learned from you. Love it. Of really just batching posts has been a game-changer for me which means doing a whole bunch of posts about one resource but then we’re sharing in different ways throughout a longer period of time. So that means that not every week you’re not sitting down or especially not every day.

I remember a really long time ago, like many years ago when I started doing social media, I would do like a day’s post and then come back the next day and do a day’s post. And then it was so draining. It was every day, taking out the things, figuring out what I was going to do so really thinking about a week, two weeks at a time but every time you’re programming a post, recycling it, thinking about doing it again in a different way so that you’re cutting down the amount of work you have to do programming every single day.

And then I think another thing I’ve learned is the importance of the voice. Especially if you’re doing different brands, being clear on who am I talking to and how am I talking about it as this brand because it is a skill and something that’s hard to get at first. It’s not your voice. It’s not like a totally detached robot voice. It is a voice that belongs to this brand and what words do they use? Do they use exclamation marks? Do they use emojis? How do they respond to people or interact with people? So I feel like once I get clear on that, everything becomes a lot easier because it’s almost like stepping into a role. I’m playing this role right now and I’m in this voice. Then I think of engagement.

To me, I think it’s most successful where it doesn’t seem like an extra task. Where it seems really like a conversation of checking in. Like I programmed this post, how are people reacting to it? It’s like a science experiment. You get to get some data and interact with real people so just enjoying that and doing the listening there and again, being a human as you interact, sharing joy with people, sharing frustration, helping to elevate their voices whenever you can.

Elana:

Yeah, and the way I talk about it with you all and we all remind each other because there is so much to be done and you need to prioritize but with engagement, I always remind people what an honor it is that educators took time out of their day to respond to you. To like, to encourage you, to say this was valuable. We have education brands where we have educators in the classroom sharing how they’re using the product in the classroom and they didn’t need to do that. Think about an educator’s day, about how much time they actually have? They don’t even have time to go pee, let alone they’re on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram showing and thanking and being so grateful that this product exists and we need to treat that as a gift. And also say every day I come to social media; how can I make somebody’s day? It doesn’t need to be everyone that you engage with but if you go with that mindset, it truly changes what you said, Lily, is this a duty, or is this something that gives us both joy?

Lily:

Yeah, and it’s so fun when you get in those moments. When it’s like you have someone you can actually -- and you’re like oh did they respond? How did they like that or things like that? Or you can feel like you’re in a community. Right. If an educator posts some pictures and then you’re like oh I know that person. They posted again. Let’s see how that project is doing or let’s see what they’re doing next and kind of being able to kind of follow their journey that way is so interesting and rewarding.

Elana:

OK. Let’s give you some curveballs around education because we have been talking about the state of education and it’s challenging, yes, educators are not supported, they’re up against one of their biggest challenges and continue to do so but there are some glimmers of hope and there are some things that are truly exciting going on. I’m wondering when you look at it from your vantage point because now you’re not just in one classroom, you’ve seen it from multiple classrooms but now from a brand perspective, you get to engage with educators across the nation as well and read and learn professionally. So what do you think right now is the most exciting for you in K-12 education? It could be technology; it could not be technology too.

Lily:

Yeah, my initial thoughts are not necessarily technology but maybe related. I think really a few things. I don’t think I can pick just one. One is really the focus on equity of just supporting all students and realizing that all students don’t have the same experience in our education system so really thinking about how we can make things more equitable and really empower teachers to use what they know to do that. Another is doing more hands-on integrated project-based learning which I believe that life and learning don’t exist in these discreet subject areas and we make it so much more enjoyable and realistic when we bring these subject areas together in an authentic way.

So I see teachers doing that more and more and just having that be part of their repertoire of hey all right, I could do this interdisciplinary project and I know that that’s a thing that I could do. And then I think just the decrease, at least what I’ve seen, and I hope to see the decrease to emphasis on testing. I know with Covid some things have come back, which is in my view unfortunate, but it does seem like there is more momentum into knowing that testing and assessments aren’t as valuable as some may think that they are and really don’t give a good picture of what kids have learned and often can cause more harm than good.

Elana:

Awesome. So wrapping up. Thank you so much for your time, Lily. I do have a couple more questions. Not necessarily related to education so this is for everyone. We always talk about inspiration and especially as educators we talk about lifelong learners. What in particular are you doing, reading or watching that’s inspiring you? That’s refueling you?

Lily:

Yeah, good question. I’m always reading things. I have way more books than I can ever read on my bedside table. It’s a joke sometimes when I sit down I’m like which one of these many books but I did just start reading this book called, “Rejection Proof.” Have you heard of this book? It’s like Jia Jiang that I think his name is. But it’s all about this guy who decided to try and go out and get rejected as many times as he could. He had a goal of getting rejected a hundred times and really taking away that fear around trying things that are scary.

So I think about with kids, right, it’s a growth mindset of we’re taking risks and we’re learning from it but as adults, we don’t often do that as much. And it can feel even scarier as adults. I definitely felt sometimes like I was sitting in front of these kids and saying oh taking a risk feels amazing. And for me personally, it felt so scary. So this book I’m a tiny bit into it but it’s so interesting. Just this idea of like I’m going to go out with the goal of being rejected and trying something anyway and just getting used to that feeling and building that muscle and just seeing what happens there.

Elana:

That’s so interesting because people generally don’t go out with that goal but I do feel like some people can take it more and it reminds me of -- so I worked for eight years at the George Lucas Educational Foundation and George Lucas was our board member and chairman and founder. And his story inspired me because we’ll probably link to the story of Star Wars and how it got adopted but he went out to everybody and everyone thought he was absolutely crazy and most people, including myself, would be like I’m absolutely crazy. I need to stop. People are telling me I’m crazy. But he just thought they were crazy and he needed to keep going. But how do you develop that? And it is that growth mindset of keep going, potentially keep learning and improving the idea but for him, we would’ve lost one of the greatest storytellers of our time if he let everyone tell him that it wasn’t a good idea.

Lily:

Yeah, totally.

Elana:

It’s such a good feel and I feel like going out and having a project where kids have to get rejected multiple times, oh my gosh, that should be in the curriculum.

Lily:

Yeah, totally. Right. It’s like the goal of being not getting the thing. Not even -- oh I’m going to go pitch that I have this music video or something. The goal is not even getting the thing. The goal is being able to deal with the rejection and just flipping that as being focused on the skill rather than the achievement.

Elana:

Or potentially even focused on the audience, the intended audience and that’s why I like design thinking too. You take away your ego and you’re like oh the audience didn’t like it, and I’m designing it for them, not me.

Lily:

Yes, totally. I love that. I love that. Yes, I love design thinking for everything. Work and life-related.

Elana:

Well, awesome, Lily. Thank you so much for your time. Just a real last question is how can people get in touch with you via social media, websites, and if there are any specific resources you’d like to share, you can mention them here, and then we can also link to them in the show notes.

Lily:

Awesome. Yeah, sounds good. So my website for teachers is Educatorforever.com. There I do a regular webinar, class about getting started as a curriculum developer which is my favorite way to work beyond the classroom other than social media. So really just helping folks know that that’s an option if you want to do something on the side while you’re teaching or outside. And then on Twitter, I’m @EducatorLily. You can reach me there as well.

Elana:

Awesome. Thank you so much, Lily. It’s truly an honor to hear from you and I do believe your tips that are practical but also inspirational for educators but education brands. They can walk away going gosh, I get it. Thank you. So thank you very much.

Lily:

Thank you. I really appreciate spending time with you and being able to work with you too.

Elana:

All right. Take care, Lily.1

Lily:

All right. Bye.