It's about the story that you share - remote teaching opportunities featuring Erin Lewis
Updated: Oct 26, 2022
This is a jam-packed episode full of tips for teacher candidates as you navigate through the remote teaching journey. Hello, edumagians, and welcome back to another episode of the edumagic podcast. Welcome to episode 64. This has been a long-awaited episode. All of you have voted for this topic, and it's all about virtual teaching opportunities this summer, and how to help you guys navigate the job search in the fall.
I have an amazing guest on her name is Erin Lewis she's from Clarion University. You may remember her from, the EduMagic podcast episodes 10 and 11 (Job fair like a boss Part 1 Featuring Erin Lewis 10 and Job Fair Like a Boss Part 2 - with Erin Lewis 11) These episodes are all about the job fair search and we'll be talking about that later in the episode, but how to prep for an online job fair. Today we are discussing how to search for remote positions in the summer as teacher candidates, we'll be talking about how to navigate the virtual job search for fall teaching. Let's just get this party started Erin, welcome to the show.
Share a little bit about your current role in education before we get started today?
I am currently a certified teacher, but I'm not teaching in the traditional sense. I currently serve as a NACE certified career coach at Clarion University and I work with education majors. I also specialize in working with our online students and online career services.
We know that many teacher candidates use the summertime to either take classes, go further in their coursework. They also work at summer camps, whether their day camps are residential, but we know with COVID-19 that this summer is looking very different for them. How do they even find out about where to look? What do they do?
So that's one of the things I'm hearing from a lot of the students that I work with too, like, "Oh no, what do I do now?" I think the big thing to think about is it doesn't matter what you do.
It matters at the end, the story you tell
I'm going to kind of come back to that comment. As you think about navigating this process and, and how do I transition from a summer camp? That's going to give me experience with students in some similar classroom-related experience. Don't think in terms of it has to be the same, think in terms of what transferable skills am I going to gain and how am I going to be able to talk about this someday? Because the ultimate thing to think about is everyone's going to see summer 2020 and know about, Oh, COVID.
So as you think about searching for positions for the summer, and maybe you're thinking about some remote positions because you do want to work with children in some way, the usual job search sites are still helpful. It's just, we changed the wording that we use. So maybe instead of summer camp counselor, maybe we are searching for remote camp counselor positions because some summer camps, some YMCAs, some of these programs are taking the programs that are in person and trying to transition them to online.
Those of us who are teachers know it's not the same, but it can be done equitably and it can be done well. You as a young professional, who has experience in technology and is really comfortable with it, you are exactly what they're looking for. So using the term remote position, remote teacher, remote counselor, remote tutor, all of these things, some of these companies that do in-person work are transitioning to online because they want income as well. They need people, they can rely on to provide that service. So use the word remote when you search for things like Google, LinkedIn jobs, monster, all of those things. But the other thing to think about that's kind of lost art is actually networking with friends and family to see if they know of anybody who is hiring online positions and online tutors in particular. Ask if they're looking for, summer reading programs and summer library programs, a lot of these things are moving online. So ask around, see, who knows what. You never know what can come about from that and nd it can be a really beneficial tool.
The other thing that, I've just been learning about in the last couple of weeks is online child care. And, and that sounds kind of weird, right? As a mom, who's working from home with three school-aged kids. I was intrigued by this when I saw it on the news. So basically these individuals are providing online childcare through zoom or Skype or FaceTime. They are doing arts and crafts with kids, reading, games. The same things that you would do with somebody face to face, but you're doing it virtually as more and more parents are still working from home. And as online schooling is letting out for summer now, it's like, what do I do with the kids? That's a great story to tell like I normally babysit in the summer, or I normally work at a childcare center, or I normally work at my local YMCA and those programs don't exist. So I did a little research and I found this online childcare opportunity. Oh, well, it's not the same. I did build skills. I did gain, the experience of doing this.
I think as we think about the situation we're in now and moving forward, we're not going to go back. We can only move forward. And so you're only going to build your skillsets. I love all that. I love it's, it's not about what you do specifically. It's about the story that you tell, and that is absolute.
Once we found maybe a position at YMCA or a day camp, that's transitioning to virtual learning, what is the best practice when it comes to interviewing in the online space?
My best piece of advice when it comes to online interviewing is to practice, practice, practice, and practice some more, a lot of you and probably exactly there was no such thing as too much interview practice.
If you can become confident with things like zoom or Skype or Google Hangouts, FaceTime interviews, those that confidence will show.
I will say that typically it's great to practice with somebody who knows about interviewing answers and how to respond to questions and all of that good stuff, but it's also really beneficial to practice with the friend using the technology, just to get comfortable with the technology.
Are you looking at the camera when you talk to the person or are you looking at their picture on your screen? Always look at the camera. That's how you make eye contact in an interview.
You know, if your lighting isn't right, you sometimes look like you are a criminal from one of those interview interrogation, but we're trying to hide your face. So you want to make sure that your lighting is really good, that the lighting is in front of you,