by Barbara on November 11, 2009
I stumbled across a blogger who commented (with seeming surprise) that the founder of Google “seemed like a regular guy.” In my experience, many highly successful people come across this way if you meet them in private. People with confidence in themselves seem to leap over the vast middle in most arenas – bad haircuts, awkward table manners, and all. They get to the top (whether that’s CEO of Google or just president of the local parks commission) by ignoring most of the rules people “in the middle” use to make sure their neighbors don’t advance before they do.
A friend of mine, an accomplished playwright with a graduate degree, shared (with concern) that her boss demanded she “take a grammar class.” Why? She wrote successful grant proposals; he wrote proposals that were not funded. So, he focused on a couple of typos he was able to find in her work.
As the late Richard Carlson, author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, noted – you can hire a proofreader to clean up the style for a good writer who can’t spell. What you cannot do is fix boring ideas or the inability to recognize an interesting story or relevant topic.
Maybe people are just wary to admit to themselves that their efforts to become something other than “regular guys” have been a waste of their time.
by Barbara on June 14, 2009
People are talking about the Equity Project’s high teacher compensation. By paying $125K salaries plus bonuses, the Project aims to bring “talent” to schools where underprivileged children learn.
The most popular arguments for and against this tactic cover some well-tread territory:
From: “If we value our kids, teachers should get paid well for the important work they do” to “Teachers shouldn’t be into it for the money” to “Let the market set salaries.”
These positions miss something – a fundamental shift in the way people work today: the boundaries between kinds of work are breaking down. Thanks to the internet, the social entrepreneurship movement, increased pressure for “corporate social responsibility”, and bigger student loan burdens – to name just a few factors – more and more “talented” people are rejecting the silos of the past. Innovators can work in nonprofits. Do-gooders can work in corporations. Artists can be businesspeople. Ordinary professionals can be entrepreneurs. Self-employed people in home offices can work with large companies around the globe.
Increasingly, at least some of the kinds of the people who make great teachers – smart, resourceful, good communicators, and so on – will realize that making a contribution as an educator does not require being the employee of a school at all. As more and more of them do, schools will have to compete as workplaces against every other work option that offers the same intrinsic rewards.
