Being Coachable When You Have No Idea What You're Doing #EdTech

In my last post, I wrote about feeling like an imposter and how that is something many people feel at one point or another in their career journey. Leaving the classroom after over 20 years was scary. I finally felt like I knew what I was doing and I had crushed most of those imposter feelings. Then I decided to leave the classroom and start all over again.

Now I'm a rookie and those feelings are back.

The good news is that I've been a rookie before. If I take the same approach I did as a teacher and surround myself with amazing people who are willing to mentor me, ask lots of questions, and be willing to learn, I should be in a good spot.

Since I started my corporate life, I've gone from Curriculum Manager, to Community Manager, to Senior Manager of Advocate and Champions Program, and some new duties this past month will likely lead to another title change. I have been surrounded by amazing mentors who have been helping me grow along the way without it ever really feeling like I was being taught or mentored. I'm invited into meetings to see how things work, I have been given parts of projects to manage, and the next thing I know, I'm managing entire projects.

Looking back at it now, I can see the scaffolding.

As a teacher, this is something I did with students all the time. You don't just hand a student something completely new and complicated and tell them to figure it out. You give them some support, see what they can do, and slowly pull back as they become more comfortable.

It turns out that is exactly what people have been doing with me.

The key to this growth has been being coachable.

One of my managers said I am one of the most coachable people he has worked with. I thought that was funny because it was said as if being coachable is an option.

Apparently, it is.

Maybe that is the teacher mentality in me. There are things I do not know and I want to know them. I have to figure out how to learn them and go from there. That just seems normal to me.

As a teacher, things didn't work all the time. Lessons bombed. Students didn't understand something that I thought was perfectly clear. A new tool came along that I needed to figure out. I would ask questions, get feedback, make some changes, and try again.

That's the job.

I didn't realize until entering the business world that being willing to do those things is actually a valuable professional skill.

I've also started to realize that being coachable means you have to be willing to admit that you don't know things.

That is tough when imposter syndrome is hanging around.

Imposter syndrome tells you to hide the things you don't know because someone might figure out you don't belong.

Being coachable requires you to admit you don't know something because that is the only way you are going to learn it.

I'm trying really hard to listen to the second one.

The business world is interesting in that upward mobility is an expectation for many people. Teaching is different. Once you have your classroom, you are pretty much set. Unless you want to become an administrator or move into another position, you can be a teacher for the next 30 years. You can get better and better at what you do without your title ever changing.

That was one of the biggest adjustments for me.

I was so happy to start as a Curriculum Manager. I'm good at building curriculum. I had been doing some version of that for years, so it felt comfortable.

Then there was a chance to manage the community. I've spent years being part of different education and edtech communities, so it made sense to take that experience and leverage it into building out a community.

Every step along the way, there was someone offering little nuggets of advice and opportunities for growth.

Sit in on this meeting.

Take this part of the project.

What do you think about this?

Can you handle this?

As a textbook people pleaser, my answer was usually yes.

Then I would do everything I could to make sure it was done to the very best of my abilities.

The important part, though, was what happened next. Someone would give me another little nugget of feedback. I would take that feedback and use it on the next project. Then the next project would be a little bigger. I would get more feedback and use that on the project after that.

It was basically the same cycle over and over again.

Opportunity. Try. Feedback. Learn. Bigger opportunity. Repeat.

I get asked pretty often about how a person can make the transition out of the classroom and into the business world. The more I think about it, the more I believe being coachable is key.

Teachers who are thinking about leaving the classroom can get caught up thinking about all of the things they don't know.

I don't know business.

I don't know marketing.

I don't know sales.

I don't understand how corporate teams work.

I don't know what half of these acronyms mean.

I didn't either.

I still don't know plenty of them.

But I think teachers sometimes overlook one of the most valuable skills they bring with them when they leave the classroom.

We know how to learn.

Teachers are constantly learning, adjusting, trying new things, failing, getting feedback, and trying again. We do it so often that we might not even think of it as a skill.

It is.

Maybe the way through imposter syndrome isn't convincing yourself that you already know what you're doing. Maybe it's being comfortable admitting that you don't know what you're doing yet and finding people who are willing to help you figure it out.

That's what I did when I was a rookie teacher.

I asked questions. I watched people who were better than me. I tried things. I screwed things up. I listened to feedback. Then I tried again.

More than 20 years later, I'm a rookie again.

It turns out, I already know how to be one.

The Imposter Syndrome is Real #EdTech

"Pretty soon, everyone is going to see that I do not belong here."

Whether it was as a student, an athlete, a teacher, and now in the business world, some version of that sentence has always run through my head.

The feeling that you do not belong can hang over everything you do. Every meeting and every presentation feels like a performance where you are just waiting for someone in the audience to start booing because they have finally figured out that you have no idea what the heck you are doing.

It can be exhausting.

Despite accolades, top marks on evaluations, positive feedback from managers, and plenty of evidence that I might actually know what I'm doing, there is still this lingering feeling that it is all a show and someone is eventually going to figure me out.

I share all of this because I know there is someone else out there who feels the same way. Maybe you need to hear that those feelings are mostly a bunch of BS.

Take a moment and think about all of the people in your life who seem like they have their crap together.

Now think about how many of them are probably figuring things out as they go.

Are there people out there who actually have it all together? Possibly, but I've never met one.

I think most of us are doing our best with what we know today and hoping that is good enough until we know a little more tomorrow. Maybe we're not really "faking it until we make it." Maybe we're just learning as we go and hoping nobody notices how much learning is actually happening.

Teaching is a perfect example of this.

Those first five years are basically spent treading water. Everyone knows the new teacher is going to struggle in a bunch of different ways. You are surrounded by veteran teachers who seem like they have it all together, and you assume they were probably like that on their first day in the classroom.

They weren't.

They struggled too.

The good ones help and mentor you when they can. If it is done right, you might not even realize they are helping you grow. They share a lesson. They give you a suggestion. They tell you how they handled a student. They stop by after a particularly terrible day and remind you that tomorrow is another one.

Then, somewhere around year five, something changes.

You realize you can actually do this.

You look back at some of those lessons from your first few years and realize they were terrible. Just absolutely terrible.

But they were the best you could do at the time because you were trying not to drown in the Education Ocean.

Eventually, you learned how to swim.

After more than 20 years in the classroom, I was pretty comfortable in that ocean. I knew what I was doing. I knew what I didn't know. More importantly, I had enough experience to know that I could probably figure out the things I didn't know.

Then I left the classroom and jumped into an entirely different ocean.

I'm a rookie again.

Of course I feel like an imposter sometimes.

I'm new at this.

Maybe that is the part of imposter syndrome I need to get more comfortable with. Feeling like I don't know what I'm doing doesn't necessarily mean I don't belong. Sometimes it just means I'm doing something I've never done before.

Maybe I'm not an imposter.

Maybe I'm just a beginner again.

I also think there is a healthy amount of imposter syndrome that can be good for us. A little bit of self-doubt keeps you honest. It makes you ask questions. It pushes you to learn. It reminds you that there are people in the room who know things you don't, and maybe you should listen to them.

The problem is when you feel like a fraud but refuse to do anything to level up your learning.

After a while, that isn't imposter syndrome.

That's a decision.

So, I'm trying to get comfortable being a rookie again.

I don't need to know everything right now. I do need to keep learning. I need to ask questions. I need to surround myself with people who know more than I do and be willing to listen when they offer advice.

I did that when I was a new teacher, and eventually I learned how to swim.

Hopefully, I can do it again.

I think the key is being coachable and that will be the topic of my next post. 

Where have all the tweeters gone? #EdTech #EdChat

This Summer, I've had the opportunity to spend some time with friends that were part of the OG education social media movement. We all have been friends for a number of years, but more passing ships in the night as we all got busy with family and careers. 

All of us had a few moments were we looked at the education landscape and longed, to a degree, where we could jump on twitter during a conference and see all of the learning around us. We could use one of dozens of hashtags to share something or learning something. Twitter, and blogs, were where educators could be found. Today, that doesn't seem to be true. 

Blogs as we knew them are few and far between and Twitter chats died and X is now a hellscape. Many of tried to make Threads or Mastodon or BlueSky happen, but it was a successful as making "fetch" a thing. I often wonder if I am just an old guy longing for the past and ignoring all of the places where educators are excelling and sharing their stories. 

I've seen the Instagram videos and TikToks and Youtube shorts where people are showcasing their brands or giving 30 -60 second tips and tricks, but the discourse seems to be gone. Twitter was a place to push thinking and challenge accepted norms. You could use it to share your long form thoughts from your blog and people could engage with that content. Is this sort of connection simply lost? 

My last post was entitles Evolutions and maybe the edtech space has just evolved into something that I simply can't recognize and maybe that is what is supposed to happen. 

Andy Bernard from "The Office" has a wonderful quote from the series finale, "I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you've actually left them."

I worry about the lack of a space for teachers to share their ideas with others and get feedback from people with totally different lived experiences. I know that all of those interactions I had made me a better teacher and, now, it feels like everyone went back into their silos. The lack of connections will have a negative impact on our students and l wish I knew what the answer was to this solution. Maybe it is time to start over and bring back MySpace. 

The Nerdy Teacher - Evolutions #edtech

I picked up playing Pokemon later in life. I was a little too old when it game out, but I found it through teaching as kids traded cards and played the games. One of the key concepts of Pokemon is the ability to evolve over time. Some Pokemon take special circumstances to evolve, but almost all Pokemon can evolve in the right situation. The Pokemon will look a little different, but it is still connected to its previous form and, now, it has new skills. I feel like I have evolved and TheNerdyTeacher has evolved with me. 

This page has been pretty barren the past few months. I have been struggling with what to do with this site. I left the classroom in October 2024 to join SchoolAI as a Curriculum Manager. Since then, I have moved into Community Manager and now the Senior Manager of Champions and Advocate Program. That lives in the department of field marketing and as far away as I could have imagined from my ELA and Social Studies Certification over 20 years ago. 

I've spent a good amount of time reflecting on what this all means for me as an educator, am I still one, and what to do with a site that has shared all the tips and tricks in the world of edtech as I have discovered them. Ultimately, I realized that that the main reason I started this over 15 years ago was all about connections. I wanted to connect with a world that felt distant. I wanted to connect because I felt like an island in my school when it came to exploring technology. I needed some place to share my ideas and see if it resonates with anyone out there. 

I'm still in the same spot, but the island looks so much different than it did in 2010. 

Over the past year and a half, I've been very lucky to have had amazing managers who have worked hard to help me level up my skills and mentor me in all of the things I did not fully understand as a classroom teacher or consultant. I have learned so much and have grown in my confidence to make decisions based on the data in front of me. I am able to connect with my friends who have been in edtech much longer and share stories and learn from them. The Growth Mindset is important in all aspects of life and I get to live it every day. With that in mind, here is the growth I hope to bring to The Nerdy Teacher. 

First and foremost, The Nerdy Teacher has been my place to share the things that are going on in my world with a particular nerdy pov. As the site grew in popularity, I had to focus on broader, larger ideas without being specific to what was going on in my school or classroom. I can still do that and explore what it is going on in the broader world of edtech from behind the scenes. If you are looking for hot tea on SchoolAI, you will not find it here. If you want to know about how teachers are interacting with edtech, edtech trends from the other side of the aisle, and all things edtech and nerdy, you've come to the right spot. 

I will share my love of PBL, MakerEd, my advocacy for Accessibility and Inclusion, and my next book (It's coming together!) because I will always share what I am passionate about. I still am open to side consulting and would love to chat with about that if you are interested. 

What's next? 

Follow along and find out. I promise it will be more regular because my therapist says I need a better way to process my thoughts than burying them deep to deal with later. LOL. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

Nick