Episode 62: 2023 In Review

The end of a year and the beginning of another is the perfect time to reflect on how far you’ve come and where you want to go next. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in the classroom, are working beyond the classroom, or just started your own business, there are things you learned and grew from. So, just as I want you to reflect on your year, I wanted to share five things that made a difference this year in my 2023 reflections. 

Even though Educator Forever has been around for many years, it’s still evolving and adapting every year. I made several changes and additions that have continued to make this company successful and make an impact on so many people’s lives and careers. You may not notice the difference you’re making day to day, so during your 2023 reflections, be proud of all you’ve accomplished and learned this year to motivate you going into 2024!

 

Topics Discussed:

  • My 5 Educator Forever reflections from the year and how they impacted my business

  • The importance of reflecting on how far you’ve come and looking at where you want to go next

  • Why building the right community is essential in moving beyond the classroom

Resources mentioned:

Related episodes and blog posts:

 
 
 
 

Read the transcript for this episode:

As we wrap up 2023, I thought it would be a good idea to take some time and reflect on the past year. And I encourage you to do the same.

Whether you're a classroom teacher, you know, think about what you've accomplished, personally and professionally. Or if you've started doing some contract work on your own same thing. Or if you've moved beyond the classroom, or even started your own education business, it's always a great chance to reflect on how far you've come. And where do you want to go next.

And I think if we don't really build in time, to think about what we've accomplished, we can miss this key piece of really feeling proud, and having clarity about what we want to change for the future.

So as I sat down to think about the past year, I wanted to think about five things that happened for Educator Forever this year, that I can reflect on and learn from and celebrate. So I thought I would share those with you all.

The first thing that came to mind is that we started the advanced curriculum development certification program, which we fondly call ACDC as an acronym. We have been running the curriculum development foundations program for about two years now. And they've had many hundreds of teachers go through the program and go on and work in curriculum design.

And we saw a need for people who wanted to even uplevel their skills even more. And so people who had been through the curriculum development foundations program, you know, were getting work in curriculum, but also, you know, had more to learn as we all do. And so really developing the advanced program, was such a joy.

And we really in that program focus on unit planning, knowing that unit plans take time. And there is a lot to learn around unit planning, we also dive into editing, and giving peer feedback and writing assessments and all sorts of other types of curriculum beyond lesson plans.

In creating this program, we've run two rounds of the program this year, it's been really interesting seeing people you know, kind of in the middle, or you know, a little more advanced in their career journeys.

People who have tried working in Curriculum Design who have some skills already, you know, it's really rewarding working with these students to develop their skills even more. And it's really awesome seeing all of the amazing units and materials that they've come up with.

Personally, I've learned a lot too, about developing a three month program. All of our other programs, well, I guess our business accelerator is also ongoing. But really, the curriculum development foundations program is a five week program.

So going for from five weeks to an advanced program, which is three months long, was a lot of planning on my part of really developing the program and testing the program and seeing what works.

And we are always learning and adjusting. You know, we've done two rounds, we've made revisions between both rounds, and we're going to make some more revisions before we launch the next round in 2024.

My second thing that I was proud of, for Educator fForever in 2023 is our agency. We have our educator for our agency, where we take on large scale curriculum projects with educational publishers, and nonprofits and edtech companies. And we just had a really cool assortment of projects this year.

We got to bring on teachers and curriculum developers to help with those projects, which is always rewarding, seeing teachers be able to use their skills and being able to hire teachers is just personally something I feel really proud of actually creating career pathways and jobs for teachers.

And these projects that we did this year, you know, felt really aligned with our values as a company, you know, really creating hands on engaging lessons focused on inquiry, and really just exciting lessons and great companies and organizations to partner with.

The next thing that we did at Educator Forever this year that was interesting to reflect on, is that we decided to merge our beyond the classroom course, which is the course that started it all many years ago with the educator forever network, which is our membership community. And I'll tell you some reasons why I decided to do this.

We had been running this beyond the classroom course for gosh, four or five years now and have had 1000s of people go through the course and find work beyond the classroom. But with the course, they got four weeks of live calls. And there were various iterations actually with and without those calls.

But we found that, you know, it's a journey moving beyond the classroom. And sure, for some people, it's like, alright, four weeks have the information, here I go.

But for most of us, so we need a community to really keep us accountable, and really provide support as we venture out beyond the classroom. So that's why it felt important to me to really lead with our educator forever network to lead with that membership community, and to include access to the content in the beyond the classroom course through that community.

And it's been a really rewarding journey, putting community first and really saying, hey, yeah, sure, you can do this on your own. But it's so much better and easier and more rewarding to do it in a community.

And along with that comes my fourth reflection, which is that we really expanded the educator forever network. Last year in 2022, it was really just weekly calls, or even bi weekly at one point. And we would get together and some of it will be skills focus, like let's talk about resumes, let's talk about job sites, others will be more community sharing.

But we decided if we were going to lead with community, we needed to expand those community offerings. And so we really did. We have our amazing team members, April and Yvonne leading co working sessions every week, often multiple times a week where a network members come together. And they really get things done through accountability and through tackling work together during these sessions.

April has been leading educator wellness circles which have become beloved in our network community, where educators get to nurture their whole selves. Because I think as we move beyond the classroom, we often recreate the crazy unsustainable pace of being a classroom teacher. And that's not what we want. We want you to really create a nurturing next chapter of your career and intentionally carve out time for you.

So these educator wellness circles is a great way to prioritize that from the very beginning. Our team member Allison has been leading creativity workshops, teaching people about Canva, and really letting them let their graphic design skills develop and support them along the way.

And we have lots of regular workshops where we get together, we would have social hours, and really truly our educator forever network is the best community. Like I want to hang out with all of these people all the time. And it's not just hanging out, right.

Like it's also getting jobs, and building more sustainable lives, and stepping into our confidence as educators and building education businesses, all of that is so powerful, especially when doing it in a community.

My last reflection and celebration for 2023 is that is the first year that I've had employees in my business. I've always had amazing contractors, and many of them have been with me for many years. But this year, I went full legit employees, and really leveled up my business.

And I have to say that it's been super rewarding, having people on my team in this capacity. And it's also honestly been kind of terrifying. Like, oh my gosh, I have three employees now. But I think that the whole process has taught me so much. And having a team just like in the network having a community is so powerful.

And really having all these educators that we get to come together and collaborate and create something truly supportive for other educators is such a joy.

So I hope you enjoyed hearing my five reflections on 2023. I would love for you to just think about five things that you are proud of, or that you learned from this year. And it really takes some time to reflect on all that you've done this year, before going into what you want to do next year. Happy new year everyone.

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