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The holidays can be really stressful for job seekers, especially for those who are between gigs right now (I won’t call it “unemployed”). It’s stressful because you’re with your family and everybody asks, “So how’s your job search going?” or “Where are you in your job search?”
Family and friends also tend to give a lot of really horrible, unsolicited advice on how to look for a job:
- “Well, you should walk right in and knock on doors.”
- “Are you sending out 100 applications a day?”
These are bad job search techniques, and yet these people likely haven’t looked for work in a while or are super old school. And while they’re trying to be well-intentioned, all they’re doing is stressing you out.
Set Boundaries With Your Family During The Holidays
So, as someone who’s been coaching people through this for many years, my advice is to be prepared to set your boundaries. When somebody asks about your job search, you can say…
“I love that you’re thinking of me. I promise you, my job search is under control. I’m taking a well-deserved day off today to celebrate with family and just want to talk about other things. But I promise you, I’m working with a career coach and all is good.
By setting boundaries, you’re shutting them down. You’re letting them know you appreciate their kind thoughts, but you’re not going there today.
It’s important for you to set boundaries with family, friends, and anyone else in your life who is bound to ask about your job search. People have to understand that they are overstepping and being inappropriate.
They always say people treat you the way you let them. So be prepared. Have that answer, rehearse it, practice it in the mirror. Make sure you’ve got a smile on your face so you don’t look angry or defensiveâbut shut the questions down.
If they ask you again, or they start to give you advice, or they don’t listen to you, say, “You know, I really don’t feel like talking about this right now. I’m just trying to enjoy my day.” And if they still keep talking about it, turn on your heel and walk away. We’ve got to learn to stand up for ourselves.
Good luck with your holiday job search! Go get ’em!
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It’ s been over the month because the last overview. In this issue you’ ll find information concerning the workforce and job lookup. Summer is notoriously sluggish for people looking with regard to jobs. Like a job look for strategist, summer time lull is normally familiar and predictable. Inside this week’ s concern, you’ ll find posts that address a few of the very hot […]
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I have had moments in my schooling that shine brightlyâplaying a card game in Mr. Ritter’s 8th grade social studies class with the true purpose being to show just how difficult it was to survive the Holocaust as well as having an opportunity to create our own country using the same economic, social, and political characteristics that define authentic nation states. I also remember Ms. Ziemba’s 9th grade English class where she would routinely pause our reading of fiction to allow us to predict what would happen next as well as my foreign language classes with Mrs. Kaneâ”Madame”âand Mr. Tellis where we would act out every day conversational scenarios using tone, props, and facial expressions.
While the content we were covering differed in each class, there was one commonalityâan emphasis on student engagement. Today, I try to pay forward the appreciation that I feel for my teachers, for making learning engaging, by mentoring new teachers on how best to engage their students through similar learner-centered practices. Educators are so much more than content specialists; they help shape the whole person. Educators facilitate the growth of student self-awareness, they flame the sparks of curiosity, and they can make connections between learning theory and real-world application.
Involving students in class is not just a feel-good practice; student engagement results in better student attention with attention leading to higher rates of student achievement. Here are eight considerations to keep in mind to not only make student engagement possible in a distracted and complex world but that also will, hopefully, bring you joy as an educator when you see your students light up like a sports stadium.
Plan Lessons Around The Learning Objective And Not The Engagement Strategy
As a teaching coach, I often see well-meaning teachers planning a lesson around a fun student activity. I love that these teachers are keeping student interest front and center, but we canât forget that time with our students is limited, and we need to ensure that students are meeting certain content and skill-based standards. Instead, step one should be to develop your lesson objective and then consider how you will assess student learning outcomes in this lesson. After this, choose a student activity/task that will help students practice the learning outcome. Many students are driven by personal success; they will appreciate completing tasks and engaging in activities that they know will help them reach a defined goal.
Tip: Connect that learning goal to real-world relevance through articles, podcasts, videos, etc. Let students know how/where they might use this learning. How does this learning help explain the world around us?
Plan Activities That Are Cognitively Rigorous
How does the saying go? Idle hands are the devilâs workshop. So are idle minds. Bored students are the kiss of death when it comes to classroom management. If we do not engage students productively and consistently throughout a lesson, they will find ways through which to amuse themselves even if inappropriate.
Write learning objectives where students are consistently asked to stretch and expand their thinking. Then, plan activities, aligned to the learning objective, that will require students to assess, evaluate, synthesize, and create information. Plan activities that move beyond students recalling and reproducing information and place emphasis on student strategic thinking. One lesson planning tool that I always recommend teachers have by their side is the Hess Cognitive Rigor Matrix for writing/speaking and/or math/science as it combines both the cognitive rigor models of Bloomâs Taxonomy and Webbâs Depth of Knowledge (DOK) construct.
Vary The Learning Modalities In Your Teaching Practice
How many of you remember the 1980s movie Ferris Buellerâs Day Off? In that movie, Ferrisâ teacher drones on and on while students sleep, doodle, blow bubble gum bubbles, and even drool. Funny, yes. However, itâs sad to say but some teachers in 2022 still turn their students into hostages during never-ending lectures. Even I, as a teaching coach, sometimes get bored when observing teachers talk incessantly but at least I have the option of leaving and visiting another teacherâs class. Students do not have this option.
Alternate how you teach. Whole class instruction has its merits/roleâparticularly when introducing a topic and conducting a BRIEF mini-lecture on that topicâbut release students to practice learning both independently AND in small peer groups, during each lesson, before regrouping as a whole class during the lesson summary.
Student Activities And Assessment Can Be One In The Same
Assessment is not just formal paper and pencil tests. While tests are an important indicator of how much students have learned AFTER instruction, teachers can use cold calling, polling (i.e., Kahoot games), and choral response DURING learning to determine if students are learning material or if they must pivot their instruction for better student understanding. These informal assessment strategies can both be fun and produce assessment data.
Also, we educators can do a better job in assessing our students through more authentic assessments such as project-based learning, case studies, and scenarios as well as through student portfolio assessment. So many careers these days require collaboration. So, why then are we still often assessing in isolation?
Involve Students In Self- And Peer Assessment
Above, I mention portfolio assessment as both a great student engagement and assessment strategy. There also are additional less-involved ways through which to engage students in analyzing their academic growth and achievement daily. For example, students can self- and then peer assess essays using a performance rubric. Students can critique their and peer contributions to group work. Students can also shout out positive peer contributions during lesson summary activities. These strategies not only engage students but foster social-emotional competency as well.
Engage Students Through Personalization
I was lucky to be able to enroll in Ms. Firestoneâs ELA/visual and performing arts âhouseâ in a high school that was otherwise dominated by achievement in sports. However, while it is wonderful when districts do provide students with opportunities to learn through cross-disciplinary and theme-based learning approaches, all teachers can engage students through personalization of the learning experience.
Conduct a survey/inventory of student interests. How do you build these interests into your lesson plans? Consider the cultural backgrounds of your students. How might you bring in learning materials and/or teach content through situations with which your students already may have community knowledge? Also, students who are below academic proficiency may become frustrated and disengage while students who are above proficiency may also check out if not provided with an appropriate level of challenge. How do you use common diagnostic assessment at the beginning, middle, and end of the year to determine how many instructional groups you have in your class? What scaffolds and/or extensions might you provide your students so that they do not become frustrated or bored?
Know Which Engagement Strategy To Use When
If a typical lesson is 45 to 50 minutes, and we are following a gradual release model, this means that we have approximately five minutes for an introductory activity, 10 minutes for a mini-lecture (I and we do), 20 to 25 minutes for student practice (you do), and five to 10 minutes for summation of the lesson. Therefore, our engagement activities need to be concise during a lessonâs introduction, the mini-lecture, and the summation of a lesson and can be extended/deeper process when students are practicing their learning. In other words, donât try to do an inside-outside circle activity during the mini-lecture when a quick turn and talk is more appropriate. Save the inside-outside circle activity for student practice time.
Also, have a ready bank of four to five student discussion strategies that you can swap in and out during student practice time each lesson. However, a word of caution. Donât push back against collaborative learning if you fear the loss of classroom control. It is not the discussion strategy that is faulty but how well the teacher implements it and sets classroom expectations. Students may still need the teacher to instruct them on how to engage in a discussion as well as both discussion stems and guiding questions.
Let Students Own The Learning
Provide students with SOME choice when it comes to how they will learn content/skills and how they will demonstrate mastery. Allow students who like to move/dance an opportunity to demonstrate their learning through a role play. Perhaps students who like to draw might demonstrate learning through the creation of a poster. Still, others may want to write and/or produce a podcast. Our students are digital natives. Donât fight technology; embrace it. Regardless, make sure students are being evaluated similarly/on meeting the learning objective and not on other extraneous skills used to produce their product.
If you would like additional ideas on how to impact student lives without sacrificing your own, and have a life teaching, check out my quick hack teaching courses, including on student engagement, here. You can also reach me on LinkedIn.
As a sales trainer and observer, I have watched many sales presentations.
Inexperienced sales professionals often tell customers everything they know about their product as if they were being examined at school. The problem is customers donât want to hear everything. They lose interest. Then they buy from a different vendor.
They key is to focus on the customer, not on the product.
Sell The Hole, Not The Drill
Unless youâre selling a luxury product, such as a Rolex watch or a Ferrari, customers do not really want your product. They want what the product can do for them. This is why we say customers buy the hole, not the drill. So how do we apply this to making sales presentations?
The âHookâ
Unless you have been recommended, or you use advertising, you need to attract your customerâs attention. You do that with a âhook.â Mention what your customers usually want, then offer to tell them how they can get it.
Why do most people buy broadband packages? They want to call relatives in remote locations, consume entertainment through streaming services, or work from home.
Ask your customer something like this: âMr. Jones, how much does it cost you to call your daughter in Alaska How about if we could cut that down to only twenty-five dollars a month?â
Suppose youâre selling speech analytics to a bank. Start by asking the contact center manager: âDo you worry about compliance?â Then ask: âWhat percentage of calls do you monitor in an average month?â Follow that up with: âAnd how many non-compliant calls do you think you miss?â
Find Out What They Want
Now you have your customer’s attention. You need to find out what they really want. Look for your customerâs top three requirements. Prepare your questions in advance. You should be able to identify her needs with three or four open questions.
For the broadband scenario, you can ask: âHow many people live in your house other than yourself?â Follow that with: âWhat do they like doing with the internet?â Your final question will be: âSuppose you had the best internet connection in the world. What would you use it for?â
For the speech analytics scenario, you can ask the contact center manager: âHow many contact center agents are there?â âWhat kind of calls do they handle?â âHow do you monitor compliance now?â and âWhat would you investigate if you could listen to every single call that is handled?â
In both cases, your questions will reveal the current situation, the desired future situation, and the size of the solution required.
Now itâs time to tell the customer what you have to offer.
Keyhole Surgery
Surgeons often killed their patients in the past. They made massive incisions into their bodies. The shock and trauma they produced were often deadlier than the problem they were trying to solve.
Inexperienced sales professionals kill just as many deals by telling their customers more than they need to know about their products.
Before starting your presentation, restate their top three needs and confirm your understanding.
Tell the customer âThis is how you can <
If they have doubts, itâs better to get them out into the open where you can talk about them.
Questions show interest and engagement. If a customer isnât asking questions, he is probably not interested. This works slightly differently in Asia, where you may find that the questions come later, and from a third party.
Move on to the second need and repeat the procedure. Instead of asking if the customer has any questions, ask what their thoughts are at this stage. Once more, give the customer time to think and respond.
Use the same procedure to talk about the third need. Once you have shown them how your product meets their needs, you can ask them: âHave I met your needs with our product?â Give your customer time to think and react.
The close and objection handling stage are beyond the scope of this article.
Monitoring The âPatientâ
When talking to customers, donât forget to watch them carefully. Donât just listen to the words that they say; listen to and watch how they feel.
How closely are they paying attention? Is the customer listening or looking at his phone?
How would you describe the expression on the customerâs face? Does she seem interested? Does she seem friendly?
Is the customer asking questions? In most parts of the world, an unengaged customer who does not ask questions is not a good sign.
If you are dealing with a âpoker-facedâ customer, look at how closely she is paying attention to you. Is she taking notes? If she is going to ask you detailed questions later through a third party, she will need to listen very carefully to do so.
Wrap-Up
Do you present your products or services to customers? Do you present your ideas to your colleagues? Either way, I hope this article will give you some food for thought. Tell me what you think. How do you present your product/service/ideas?
Further reading…
Learn how to improve your persuasive skills by writing: Why Writing Is The Foundation Of Persuasion
Learn how to build business cases: âWhatâs In It For Me?â The 3-Stage Guide To Answering This Question