Need help? How badly?

amother ↓

Sun, Aug 07 2011, 11:43 am

I am pondering whether it makes any sense to start a phone/email consultation business for teachers. Would you want someone to personally help you with things like classroom management issues, organization and planning, meeting the needs of students with difficulties, or catching up with current trends in education? I wouldn't be looking to write lessons for you or make posters or things like that - this would be a more sophisticated personal coaching to help you become a more effective teacher, though I could also help generate specific teaching ideas.

1. Would you be interested at all?
2. How much would such a service be worth to you?

↑ amother ↓

Sun, Aug 07 2011, 12:31 pm

OP here, adding two more questions:

3. Does your school already provide any mentoring/support for teachers? If yes, can you please explain what kind, whether it's enough, etc.
4. Let's say you were having a really rough year as a teacher and definitely DID want professional advice. How much would it be worth to you?

↑ amother ↓

Sun, Aug 07 2011, 1:57 pm

I just realized the poll appears on the home page but you can't see that it's in the teacher forum, I wonder if that's skewing the results... any way to get admin to change that? It's nice that it's on the front page but needs some mention in the title that it's meant for teachers specifically...

shluchamom

Sun, Aug 07 2011, 6:45 pm

I think this is more a service that would be provided to schools to offer their teachers with the school subsidizing part or all of it. Teachers are underpaid many times and as much as they would love to improve technique don't have the money to pay. I don't want to say which school but I know of a school that has retained the services of some retired teachers to be available for their newer younger teachers but I don't know the pay scale at all of that.

So don't give up yet just maybe reconfigure who you are doing your pr to and you might find a school or two that would be interested.

apple24

Mon, Aug 08 2011, 8:24 pm

I was trained by an educational consultant who has his own training/mentoring service company. He was brought in to my school and I was trained in DI and Cooperative Learning. It was a few years ago when I began teaching and has majorly impacted my career for the better. In this case the school had a grant to pay for it.

The only thing I would say is, you have to be a REALLY good teacher to do it, with a history of experience that proves it. Also, you have to have something unique that you are imparting. For example, the person that trained me was an expert in DI (differentiated Instruction) which made his services unique. (and warranted the huge amount of money that it cost to bring him in)

I think a struggling teacher would more likely turn to other teacher friends or the administration in her school for help as opposed to paying privately for such a service.

IMHO, your best bet would be to send proposols out to schools and let them pay for bringing you in. You are more likely to be successful that way.
HAtzlacha!