E11. (Part 5 of 5) Cultivating Community: The Secret Teacher Superpower I Almost Overlooked
Show Notes: Episode 11 – Are You Missing Clues to Your Superpower? (Part 5)
Hey teachers! Welcome back to Teacher Business Buzz, the only daily business show just for teachers. This week, we’ve been exploring how to recognize the clues to your superpower—your specialized knowledge or skill set that you can teach others and turn into a profitable business idea. If you haven’t caught all five parts of this series, be sure to check them out!
Episode Highlights:
• Meet Your Host: Tiffiny Webster, co-founder of TeacherBusiness.com, with 25 years of experience as a K12 teacher and administrator, and former K-8 principal who rebuilt a program from the ground up, shares her journey of discovering her superpower.
• Building a Community: Tiffiny recounts her experience creating a successful hybrid educational program with strong parent-teacher-student relationships. This unique dynamic showed her the value of building community and supporting parents as educational partners.
3 Clues to Discover Your Superpower:
1. Who You Can Bring Together:
• Identify the group you naturally gather and support. Whether it’s your math department, art teachers, or educators with a shared interest, the group you rally can point to your superpower.
• Example: Tiffiny found she could build connections between teachers and parents, creating a supportive educational community.
2. Gravitation Toward Mastery:
• Notice what you’re constantly refining and improving. What do you practice repeatedly, creating methods and systems to perfect?
• Example: Tiffiny honed her leadership and community-building skills, which became a core part of her superpower.
3. Getting Results:
• Pay attention to where you see results for yourself or others. Successful outcomes are strong indicators of your specialized skill set.
• Example: Tiffiny’s ability to cultivate a thriving school community showed her that this was a valuable part of her superpower.
Bonus Clue:
• Creating a Self-Sustaining Community:
• If the group you gather starts to form relationships, support each other, and collaborate without your constant prompting, you’ve built something truly powerful. This shows you’ve created a community that enhances the lives of its members.
Recap:
• Identify Who You Can Bring Together: Look for the group you connect with and support.
• Mastery Matters: What do you naturally practice and perfect?
• Results Speak Volumes: Observe the outcomes of your efforts for yourself and others.
• Bonus: A thriving community that supports itself is a major clue that community-building is part of your superpower.
Stay Connected:
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• Share with Friends: Know a teacher who could benefit from discovering their superpower? Share Teacher Business Buzz with them to help inspire more educators.
Thanks for joining us for this series! I hope it’s helped you ensure you’re not missing any clues to your superpower. We’re excited to see how you use your specialized knowledge to make a greater impact. See you in the next episode!
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Transcript
Hey, teachers.
Tiffany Webster:Welcome to Teacher Business Buzz, the only daily biz show just for teachers.
Tiffany Webster:This week, we're talking about missing the clues to your superpower, AKA your specialized knowledge or skillset that you have as a teacher that you could teach other people and turn into a profitable business idea.
Tiffany Webster:So we've been coming to you all week with ways that you might be missing clues to your superpower.
Tiffany Webster:So if you have not watched all five parts of this series, definitely go back and check those out.
Tiffany Webster:Today I'm sharing stories with you about how I discovered my teacher superpower along the way and then put all those skills together to start my online business.
Tiffany Webster:If we haven't met before, I'm Tiffany Webster and I'm the co founder of Teacher Business.com along with my husband, Dwayne.
Tiffany Webster:I've been K12 teacher administrator for 25 years.
Tiffany Webster: years, which started back in: Tiffany Webster:And when I took over as the principal of that program, it was going through a major shift at the time.
Tiffany Webster:And I was tasked with kind of rebuilding that program.
Tiffany Webster:One of the things that we really found that worked well for that program is we had this really interesting model.
Tiffany Webster:It was a hybrid model, and it was four days on campus with one day at home.
Tiffany Webster:And the cool thing about that is that our parents became really involved, like educational partners with us.
Tiffany Webster:Right.
Tiffany Webster:Because we were in charge of instruction four days a week.
Tiffany Webster:They were in charge of instruction one day a week.
Tiffany Webster:So it really shifted the dynamic of the parent teacher partnership.
Tiffany Webster:One of the ways that we were able to really make this program successful was the community.
Tiffany Webster:We had to create a really strong community in order for this type of program to work.
Tiffany Webster:And so we were able to really work together so that teachers were communicating with parents, were able to communicate back to teachers based on the work that they were doing at home.
Tiffany Webster:And when parents have a bigger voice in the program because they are also one of the instructors, it does create a different dynamic.
Tiffany Webster:And we had to learn how to navigate that and to really help parents find the emotional support that they needed when working with their kids at home because they aren't trained like teachers have been trained.
Tiffany Webster:And for a lot of them, this was new.
Tiffany Webster:And if you've ever been a parent and you've tried to work with your kids at home, it's a totally different dynamic.
Tiffany Webster:Right.
Tiffany Webster:When you are trying to teach them something versus when you're just trying to be the parent, that's a total shift.
Tiffany Webster:And so our parents needed to have some of that emotional Support.
Tiffany Webster:And then they also needed some instructional support as well.
Tiffany Webster:And so they needed clear directions from the teachers about what it was that they needed to do.
Tiffany Webster:And they needed some clear instruction from me about just best practices and instructional strategies that they could apply at home.
Tiffany Webster:So this really became a team effort to build a community where our teachers, our parents, and our students were all thriving together.
Tiffany Webster:And that really came down to communication being really clear about what to do, how to do it, and where to go when they needed support.
Tiffany Webster:And through that, we were able to create some amazing relationships.
Tiffany Webster:And these are even relationships that are lifelong relationships and people that I am still in touch with today, parents that I have formed special bonds with because our community was just so special during this time.
Tiffany Webster:And we really created this great synergy between teachers and parents all working together for students.
Tiffany Webster:So I share this with you because it was through the experience of building that community that I realized that I enjoyed working with homeschool parents.
Tiffany Webster:I had never done that before, and I never knew that my teaching was going to take me in that direction.
Tiffany Webster:Previously, I'd been at a traditional brick and mortar school for most of my career.
Tiffany Webster:Then I made the transition over to the charter school as a classroom teacher.
Tiffany Webster:And I had done that for a while.
Tiffany Webster:And then when I stepped into the role of the principal, it was really the first time that I was working with parents, and certainly the very first time I was working with parents who were also instructing their kids at home.
Tiffany Webster:So, big shift there.
Tiffany Webster:But I found that I really enjoyed it.
Tiffany Webster:And I also found that I had this knack for creating community, cultivating this community where I could bring people together.
Tiffany Webster:And so the result of that knack is that community has now become an essential component of our business.
Tiffany Webster:Not only is it essential for our business, but it's also part of the business model that we teach you.
Tiffany Webster:So when you have a teacher superpower that you've uncovered that you want to turn in to a business, one of the ways that we will help you do that is to also include a community component to your business.
Tiffany Webster:And it's really important, because when people come to a membership, they're not just coming for your specialized knowledge, they're not just coming for your resources.
Tiffany Webster:In fact, the number one reason why people stay in a membership, community or in a membership is for the community.
Tiffany Webster:That's what becomes important.
Tiffany Webster:It's the relationships that they develop, it's the networking, it's the collaboration that happens that is really special.
Tiffany Webster:So even though people originally come for the content, people stay for the community.
Tiffany Webster:That's just how powerful it is.
Tiffany Webster:So in figuring out that I had this knack for cultivating communities, I realized that this is part of my superpower that I'm an expert in cultivating and facilitating communities.
Tiffany Webster:Number one, I would have never known that had I not had that experience as an administrator.
Tiffany Webster:But number two, I might have overlooked it as not being a special asset of mine, because sometimes we can just overlook these things that we don't realize are clues to our superpowers.
Tiffany Webster:And I'm so glad that I realized that this was something that I was really good at.
Tiffany Webster:This is part of my specialized knowledge and my specialized skillset, because adding this element to my business today is invaluable.
Tiffany Webster:All right, so what I want to do today is help you uncover your superpowers that you're not missing any clues, and you are probably already experiencing success in the classroom that is part of your superpower and that you could teach other people and turn into an online business teaching other people.
Tiffany Webster:So let me help you uncover some of the clues to your superpower.
Tiffany Webster:So number one is look for who you can bring together.
Tiffany Webster:Who do you gather together?
Tiffany Webster:Are you really good at gathering the whole math department together?
Tiffany Webster:Are you good at bringing all the world language teachers together?
Tiffany Webster:Or are you the one that kind of rallies the art teachers together?
Tiffany Webster:Who do you bring together?
Tiffany Webster:The group that you bring together is a good indicator of your superpower, where you have influence, where you have expertise, where you have interest.
Tiffany Webster:And once you can gather those people together, that's really a great clue that this might be something that you're really good at.
Tiffany Webster:When you bring people together, it also means that you're able to meet people where they are and give them the next steps, right?
Tiffany Webster:So let's say that you are a art teacher and you get together with other art teachers in the district and you exchange lesson plans, or you say, hey, I'm really great at watercolor, but I need a little help in charcoal drawing.
Tiffany Webster:I don't know, I'm an artist.
Tiffany Webster:You can tell.
Tiffany Webster:But those are the kind of things that you can do where you can say, okay, here's where I'm great.
Tiffany Webster:Here's where I need some support, and someone else might be able to meet you where you're at, or maybe they need help, and you're able to meet them where they are at and provide them some support.
Tiffany Webster:So bringing people together is really important.
Tiffany Webster:And the bottom line to it all is that communities come together because they want support, they want to feel hope, and they Want to feel encouragement.
Tiffany Webster:So if you are someone who can rally people together and provide support and hope and encouragement, that's a really great clue that this is a special skill of yours.
Tiffany Webster:And gravitating towards mastery is another clue.
Tiffany Webster:What is it that you keep getting better at that you can't help but get better at?
Tiffany Webster:Because you keep practicing it over and over, and you keep trying to refine your process, come up with a method, come up with a system, do it better, do it faster, make it easier.
Tiffany Webster:That's a good clue that whatever that thing is that you're trying to master is becoming part of your teacher superpower skill set.
Tiffany Webster:And then number three, you can get results for yourself or for someone else.
Tiffany Webster:So in my case, when I saw that I was able to cultivate a community that was really powerful and really meaningful, that was a clue to me that this was something special.
Tiffany Webster:And so when you're able to do that, pay attention to the results that you're able to get, because that is going to give you a clue about how that might be part of your superpower.
Tiffany Webster:And then here's the bonus, especially when it comes to something like gathering people together.
Tiffany Webster:If, in addition to you being the person that gathers people together, if, then they start to feel relationships and they start to meet up on their own or they're supporting each other, or they're giving each other calls, or they're hopping on a zoom call to work out something without you prompting them, That's a really great bonus that you have not only created like a gathering, but you really are creating a community that is making people's lives better or different by knowing each other and by being part of that community.
Tiffany Webster:So pay attention for that bonus as well.
Tiffany Webster:All right, let's recap Today.
Tiffany Webster:Here are the clues that you should be looking for.
Tiffany Webster:Number one, who you can bring together.
Tiffany Webster:Number two, what you gravitate towards mastering.
Tiffany Webster:Number three, the results that you can get for yourself or others.
Tiffany Webster:And then the bonus is if you're able to gather people together in a community that then starts supporting one another, that is a really good indicator that these are part of your superpower.
Tiffany Webster:All right, I hope you found that beneficial.
Tiffany Webster:As always.
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Tiffany Webster:We have free and valuable content for you every day, Monday through Friday.
Tiffany Webster:And if you happen to know another teacher friend that you think would benefit from teacher business buzz, we would love for you to tell that friend about the show so that we can help show them what is possible.
Tiffany Webster:We are dedicated to helping teachers take their superpower and turn it into a profitable online membership business.
Tiffany Webster:All right, thanks so much for tuning into this series.
Tiffany Webster:I hope you really made sure that you are not missing out on clues to your superpower, and I can't wait to see what's in store for you.
Tiffany Webster:All right, thanks so much for tuning in, and we will see you on the next one.
