You’ve probably been a schoolteacher if you’re a woman over 55.
I was born in 1950 when women had three career choices. You could be a school teacher, a secretary or a nurse. I chose to be a teacher since I knew even then that I wouldn’t be one forever.
Since attending university in the late 60s and early 70s, I’ve wanted to have my own business. I taught elementary school for 8 years from 1972 to 1980. Little did I know then that teaching would give me the skills I’d continue to use as a business owner.
In the summer of 1978 I taught how to use computers in the classroom as a course to other teachers BEFORE you needed credentials to teach it. Nancy Murray a Superintendent in the Windsor Separate School Board took a risk on me. I had 40 elementary school teachers in my class that summer. That was the beginning of my self employment journey. I’d started.
Being a teacher is one of the best things you can do.
Many of us have been teachers and most don’t know that teaching prepares you to become an entrepreneur who starts and runs your own business.
Here are some of the many skills that teaching gave us.
- being “teachable”. Learning what you need to know through professional development.
- short term and long term planning. (Do teachers still create “day plans” and “weekly plans”?)
- running a large group. When I started in 1972 I had 42 students in my first year. Did that ever prepare me!
- risk taking
- persistence
- patience
- goal setting. You set goals for yourself each year, for the class and especially if you taught special education as I did, you set goals for each individual student as well.
- speaking to a group. You know how to speak to a group and if you had the courage, you also spoke to groups of your peers.
- educating!!!
- how people learn. As a teacher it was in the curriculum at teachers’ college.
- how to research offline and online
- “reading, writing and of course arithmetic”
- creativity. You had to make do with what you had and therefore if you didn’t have something you used your creativity to make what you needed from what you had.
- listening to and knowing the individual needs of your students/ clients
- … and of course …being your own boss (I guess that’s why I liked Special Education so much.)
I could go on and on.
Do you see how as a teacher you have the skills needed as a business owner? What you don’t know yet is how to start a business but you know how to learn, don’t you? Well that’s all you need.
I and most entrepreneurs didn’t take courses on how to start a business. They and I learned what we needed as we went along using trial and error. Sure we made mistakes. Didn’t your students when they were learning? We read books, took classes, attended conferences and hired coaches.
Take a risk and start your own business. Ask for help when you need it. And keep learning. That’s what keeps us young!
As the Nike slogan says just do it .
What else would you add to this list?
Originally posted October 23, 2012