Are you a first time adjunct professor looking for ways to teach outside of the traditional classroom setting? If so, then you’re in luck! With the advancements in technology over the past few years, it has become easier than ever to start teaching online without having to go through a school. In this blog post, we will explore some of these opportunities and discuss how you can use them to start your own side hustle or business as an educator. We’ll also look at bad habits that could be holding you back from being highly creative when it comes to teaching and show you how they can be broken with just a little bit of effort. So if you’re ready to take your career as an adjunct professor up a listen up!
If you are considering becoming an adjunct professor, I have lots of resources for you in my Mastering Online Teaching Business Academy. The Academy is designed for people like you who want to start teaching online, whether it’s for a college or university or you want to design, create, and sell your own courses in an online marketplace such as Udemy, or on your own website such as Thinkific!
There’s some great resources to help you learn how to put together your CV (a must for working in higher ed), how to find and apply for jobs, and the interview process! I’ve also got a great resource to help you learn how to put together your first online course, if your university doesn’t already have a course curriculum made for you.
TRANSCRIPT:
What I wish I knew before I got my first adjunct teaching position as an IT instructor. So in this video, what I wanted to do is just share with you. One of the major things that I really wish I knew and understood before I took my first position as an adjunct instructor. I think that teaching at colleges, universities, community colleges is a wonderful way to break into teaching. And I am very thankful to have had the opportunity that somebody gave me that opportunity. And as I move forward in my career in higher education, was able to give so many people their first chance at teaching at the university level, college level, vocational school level, etc. And so what I wanted to do, though, is just share with you to sort of reflect back a little bit on my own career and share with you what I just kind of wish I knew. And there’s one big day, there’s a lot of things that I wish that I knew. But there’s I guess one big thing. So I guess first let’s go back a little bit.
So I always knew I was going to be a teacher, I’ve always enjoyed teaching, I love working with people and helping them achieve their goals. I first my first teaching gig was in 2000, I actually became a certified flight instructor, and you taught adults how to fly. I also taught Junior Junior Achievement, and I taught you know, second graders about, you know, finance, economics, that kind of stuff. And that was those are really sort of my first gigs in teaching. actually think flight instructing came a little bit later in 2002. And then I also started teaching online in 2013, I started working with educators, for teachers who were bringing technology into the classroom.
And so, you know, obviously using technology to teach online, that was a fantastic thing to be able to do and bring all these things together. And then I started my PhD in 2010. And I completed that in 2014, with a goal that I wanted to keep progressing in my career in education, what I really wanted to do was I really wanted to start my own school, I wanted to start a school that would help people advance their technology careers earn a very good income, and to be able to change their lives. And you know, I’ve always been very passionate about helping people really just change their financial situation. And oftentimes, you know, having a larger income or higher income really does help level up their financial situation. There’s other things that obviously go into people’s finances. But that is just one way that I, I know that I can help people. And so I actually had tried starting my own school back in like, 2006 2007 timeframe.
And I realized how much work that goes into starting a school. And I really realized that I could at that time with my skill set and the things that that I knew how to do, I could have a bigger impact by working within the school systems. So working within existing schools, I, you know, started working with schools that were struggling, that were struggling financially, that were struggling with outcomes, that kind of thing. And so I was able to, you know, just have have a bigger impact by working in existing schools. But what I really, really, really wish that I knew prior to going into teaching was I wish I had a little bit more business acumen. And I haven’t now and, you know, I’ve, I’ve learned a lot over the last, you know, 15 or so years, but I, you know, I really wish that I had sort of this, you know, way of approaching teaching as sort of a business and it’s really hard for people to put the words you know, teaching and education in business in the same sentence is a really hard thing to do. But, you know, with with the proliferation of online education, it’s so easy now to start a business or start a side hustle or start teaching online without the confines of, you know, a school.
And so what my point here is that teaching in a school and university, college, Community College, vocational school is great, I get I’m very thankful that I’ve had so many wonderful opportunities, I’m thankful that you know that they that the system is there to help people start and grow their careers. But I also know now that there’s additional ways that you can teach people and you don’t have to do it just in school. And with the advancements in technology over email over the last five years of you know, hosted learning management systems and video based technologies and now with the pandemic, online education is is is is really advancing, I know that there’s still a lot of struggles with it.
There’s still a lot of things that need to be figured out. But you know, there’s there’s a lot of opportunities now for people like you who you might be working in a technology field, you’re perfectly fine in your career. But you want to start teaching and you want to start giving back. And so so usually the natural, you know sort of step is to look at a community college school nearby to try to find a nighttime teaching gate or teaching online. And with my point with this is that there’s other ways that you can do it.
This is not, there’s not just one way. And so what I would like to do with the remainder of this series that I’m running is showing you a little bit more of like the business side of it, of how you can start up your own courses, you can write your own courses, you can put them on your own website, you can put them on online learning marketplaces, there’s a lot of different ways that you can market them.
So literally learning more about the business side of your teaching side hustle. And so I really hope that you enjoy the remaining part of the series. I’m really very excited about it. But and last thing is, again, if you if you’ve watched the previous videos, you’ve heard me talk about my tech teacher toolkit, you can go to bit.li slash tech teacher toolkit, and you can download that it is a listing of all the different technology tools that I’ve used over the years. Some I’m using now some of you have used in the future. And just that will get you actually on my email list as well. So you can hear more about what I’m going to be doing was sharing, just you know how to put together a course how to take all the information that you have here in your brain and put it together into a course that people will like that they will buy and that they will have a transformation from whatever whatever it may be. So thank you and I will see you in the next episode. Again looking really forward to the next part of the series.
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