Teacherpreneur Life – The Beginning

Last year, 2018, was a tough year. I had fabulous students, supportive parents, a terrific administration and in all, it was a great school. It was me. Sleep escaped me. Eating properly didn’t exist. I was sick, ALL THE TIME. I don’t know exactly what happened. It might have been me overworking myself. And the commuting (40 min each way) was getting to me. In the spring of 2019, I gave my resignation and applied to a couple schools as a teacher-on-call, including the school district which I live in. Cue the crickets. Nothing. Well, that’s not exactly true. I was offered a full time position in May, but I was still sick at the time so I turned it down. I didn’t know whether I could physically teach full time. I needed a break.

Summer 2019

But the summer came and a huge car bill which cleaned out my savings and NOW I needed a job. The school district that I applied for had not called so I called in a favour. By the time the first day of school arrived, I did not have a job, but I was about to sign Teacher-on-call papers at the school district.

During the month of August, I contemplated having a side hustle. I didn’t really know what that would look like. I was following a bunch of teachers on Youtube and Instagram who had successful side hustles (they appeared to be successful). I had no money and honestly felt like I had no skills in this department. I have been teaching 21+ years and I felt like I just graduated from university.

Teacherpreneur Life Begins

So I started with Youtube. I was use to video-ing from my days as an online teacher. On September 11, 2019 I posted my first official video on “Preparing the Night Before Your Day as a Substitute Teacher”. It was very relevant to what I was now doing professionally. Cue the crickets. Nothing. No views. I posted another one and another one. 0-2 views. It was sad. Where were the teachers? I was nervous about telling my family and friends as I didn’t want them to think it was just another project I was doing. When I posted my 5th or 6th video in October, I announced it on Facebook to family and friends. The love poured. Cue the angels!

Slow and Steady

Videos were now getting 10-20 views and I had 4 subscribers. Cue the Hallelujah Chorus! My goal was to reach 10 subscribers and 100 views by the end of December, 2019. I kept creating videos, though not every week.  I was now in a grade one and two classroom, covering a maternity leave position until Christmas. The plans to create videos over Christmas didn’t happen as I was given another maternity leave position starting at the beginning of January. I was watching a lot of Youtube videos, because I wanted to figure out how to grow. At the end of December, I had 6 subscribers and 88 views. But 2020 was coming!

To be continued.