13 | The Adventures of a Teaching Artist with Amy Roadman
Inspiring others to create beautiful works of art is at the core of what Amy Roadman does every single day as an art teacher!
Amy is a visual arts teacher with 20+ years of experience teaching classes, workshops, camps, and private lessons to all ages. She currently teaches primarily through Outschool and her local museum's residency program as a teaching artist. She believes art and creativity can be taught, you don’t have to start out with innate talent, but have a desire to create and practice, and that there's no age limit to when you can get started! Her goal is to help others realize that they don’t have to put a ton of pressure on themselves to be "good at art", just show up and enjoy the process.
We chat all about...
teaching on Outschool
her experience as a resident teaching artist
the importance of inspiring creativity in artists of all ages
the challenges of virtual teaching
her idea for a course to help other teachers looking to start teaching on Outschool
I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did!
Connect with Amy
Instagram: @amy.roadman.art
Outschool Profile
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Episode Transcript:
Intro: Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market, Scale, Grow. A podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams. Okay, so before we jump into the episode, I am super excited to share a brand new freebie with you. It's my targeting ideas for Facebook ads. If you've dabbled in Facebook ads or you've done them and you've tried them, and you're just looking for some fresh inspiration for your audiences, this freebie is for you. I share my top Facebook ad targeting groups for you so that you can have inspiration and find those people that are perfect for what you have to offer. From warm audiences to cool lookalike audiences, to cold interest-based audiences. I cover all three in this freebie. Head to marketscalegrow.com/audiences to grab your copy today.
Jenzaia: Hey, hey, hello. Welcome back to Market Scale Grow. I am so excited that you are here joining me again. This week I have a very exciting interview. Amy was introduced to me through a friend, and I had such a great chat with her. As you will learn, she is the knower-of-all-things Outschool, which I had only a little bit heard of before. So I was so happy to have an expert come and tell me all about her journey and experience on this new, I think it's kind of new, this new platform, at least new to me.
Jenzaia: So, Amy is a visual arts teacher with more than 20 years of experience, teaching classes, workshops, camps, and private lessons to all ages. She is currently teaching primarily through Outschool and her local museum's residency program as a teaching artist, which is another thing that was super cool that we talked about. I am going to be looking for one of these teaching artists to come into my classroom when I go back to school in September after my mat leave. So I was really excited to learn about that, as well. Anyway, Amy believes art and creativity can be taught. You don't have to start out with innate talent, but you have to have a desire to create and practice. There is no age limit to when one can get started. Her goal is to help others realize that they don't have to put a ton of pressure on themselves to be good at art. You just need to show up and enjoy the process. I loved every minute of this chat and I cannot wait. I hope that it inspires you and that you enjoy it as much as I did. So let's dive in.
Jenzaia: Hi, Amy. Welcome to Market Scale Grow. How are you today?
Amy: I'm great. Thanks for having me.
Jenzaia: I am so excited to have this conversation. Why don't you start by telling the listeners where you're from and whether or not you're teaching now?
Amy: I am from Southwestern, Pennsylvania about an hour outside of Pittsburgh, which really means the middle of nowhere. We live in the country and I love it there though because it's just a lot of inspiration. It's pretty. I'm not a city person. So, that's where I'm from. I had taught in a public school, in a private school, in after-school programs, and in summer camps. I actually left my ten-year teaching job so that I could be a teaching artist for our local museum. So what that means is I still went into schools, but I had hosted teaching artists before and it was so much fun team teaching with them. There was a lot less administrative work that goes along with it. So I decided it was time to just shift and do something like that. That didn't last very long because the pandemic shut down schools a month and a half into that job. So things have changed a lot since then because I thought I was going to be doing that. Then whenever schools were not open for artists to be able to visit anymore, I had to change my job. So I applied to teach on Outschool, and I now teach out of my studio garage as an Outschool virtual teacher. The residencies are starting to pick back up. We did some virtually, and in May, I get to go back to the one that I left last March to finish it off. So I'm excited because I love that teacher and being able to work with her. So I still teach, just in a lot of different ways.
Jenzaia: Awesome. That's unfortunate about how the pandemic kind of cut you off right as we were getting started.
Amy: Yeah, but I knew that we would be able to try to kind of change things or do something different. The person in charge of that at the museum was really great about trying to figure out ways to still keep us working. We made videos, we turned a virtual art camp into a thing once a month on Saturdays that the kids are loving. So we were still able to be teaching artists, it took a little bit of adjustment and figuring out how to do it in this way.
Jenzaia: Can you talk a little bit more about Outschool and exactly what that is? I've heard a little bit about it, but I'm still unsure.
Amy: Yeah. Outschool was something I had come across in the summer of 2019, and it looked really interesting to me. It's a place where anybody can teach. You don't have to be a certified teacher. A lot of people are. But anybody that has a special interest or can teach a subject that they love... So for instance, my son took a class from a pilot and loved it. My daughter took a baking class. So I teach art classes, and I teach from 3 to 15 or so, 15 years old, live, and I do some flex classes where you do recordings and you interact just in the classroom with messages and videos, but you don't actually see those students live. So I do those up to 18 years old. It is just a really great way to make your own schedule. I schedule classes when I want to teach them. They have a lot of different types of classes. So a one-time class meets one time. You see those kids once and hope they re-enroll with some other class that you offer. They have multi-day classes where you can set it up as a camp where like over the summer I'll be offering classes that are one to five days, or Monday through Friday, one to five days long. The other multi-day classes meet once a week for four weeks or six weeks or however long you want to do it. So those are nice because you see the students regularly and get to know them. Then my favorite is ongoing classes, which is like a subscription type of thing where they enroll. They can show up as many times as they want. They can drop out whenever it's convenient for them. If they are going on a vacation, they drop out and then come back. So there's a lot of different options on that platform.
Jenzaia: That's really cool. As a mom, I'm really interested now. I didn't even consider my kid, my oldest is two, so I didn't even consider, he might be in the age range of things that could be offered.
Amy: Yeah. Three-year-olds, everybody's so used to the screen now. I usually don't teach below six years old, but those kids know how to mute and unmute and interact and just function everything. So a lot of the younger kids, the parents will sit with them. Outschool's policy is that only the child is on camera. So the parent will sit off to the side, and I know that there are parents that sit and they'll draw along with their children with me, too. But it's a great way for them to spend some quality time together too, but they're learning something and it's been a really fun experience.
Jenzaia: Awesome. I'm definitely going to check it out. What is the price range for these classes? Ballpark?
Amy: Teachers set their own prices, but Outschool gives you a recommended range. So it's really $10-$15 per hour, generally that teachers are charging. So if you sign up for a multi-day class, you would pay for the entire thing at once. If it's six weeks, times $10 for an hour-long class, you're paying $60. But if you want to just try that teacher out, that's why the one-time class or the ongoing is great because you're only charged that one class per week.
Jenzaia: That's super reasonable, too.
Amy: Yeah. Especially with all of the really cool subjects that students can try out. There's a lot of digital things, there are escape rooms, there's a lot of academics, there are music teachers, I mean, there's just everything. They can do private lessons as well. I don't do private lessons, but the private tutoring I'd say the average is more like a dollar a minute, but it's competitive to what a private lesson in-person would be and then you're getting one-on-one instruction.
Jenzaia: So cool. I'm so excited to go look at this now. What are some of the major milestones that, if you look back, you're like, that was a big turning point in your journey?
Amy: Oh man, I've taught in so many different ways that one of the things that I loved is being able to teach students of all ages. I've taught preschoolers in person. I taught private lessons to an 80-year-old. There was all this experience in between, and one of the things that I realized is that no matter what the age, people are craving that creativity. So there are ways to offer it, and there are just so many different things that you can do to cater to different people's wants and needs and just their outlet of being creative. So being in a school, I loved my students. I love that the art teacher kind of got to really dictate what we wanted to do. You know, we follow standards, we still have a curriculum, but I was writing my curriculum from scratch. I didn't have a textbook I had to follow, but there were just a lot of restrictions with things. So being able to teach out on my own now, I'm teaching exactly what I want. I teach to the age groups that I enjoy teaching to the most. So I think just really figuring out what it was I wanted to do and be able to teach and what I thought offered the most versatility to everybody based on what I had seen people wanting and being creative in their life.
Jenzaia: So cool. When you go back to, you said it was like a residency program, right? When you go back to that, are you going to continue doing the Outschool as well?
Amy: Yes. I actually have already started making my summer and fall schedule. I have scheduled Outschool in as Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are my Outschool days. Then leaving Monday and Wednesday, or Monday and Friday, excuse me, open for the residencies, which is what I'm also doing in May. I'll be attending school. I do get to go in person. The principal was gracious enough to allow me to do that and everybody's masked up and I'm fully vaccinated now, so we're all good. But, I will be going to her school and actually seeing people in person for the first time in a very long time to be able to finish that residency. So what's nice about that is I'm team teaching with her. Even though she has students in person, she still has virtual students. So I'll be interacting with the students in her classroom, but we still have to be accessible to a screen and teaching to the students through the screen, which I now have a lot of experience with. So I think that'll make it a lot easier for me to transition into that type of residency, but there are two of us. So it's nice to have another adult to bounce ideas back and forth. We both have our own style of drawing and painting and teaching and we can kind of collaborate together and make the most of that.
Jenzaia: Nice. Oh, that sounds like so much fun. I would love to have someone like that come into my classroom that helped me with my art.
Amy: You know what, everybody thinks it's just the art teachers that can do this, but I have done residencies with other teachers. So last January, I was in an independent school that is close to my house that I taught with the science teacher and the first grade ELA teacher. So we focused on a certain author and we created this collaborative painting with the first graders that all focused on the way that the author and illustrator created their books. That was really cool because those first graders had such an imagination and they dictated what the painting was going to look like. Then we worked in small groups on it. It was really neat. And the science teacher, we were able to go outside and find natural materials and then come back and create art with it that all had to do with the curriculum that she was focused on at that time of year. We worked with different age groups. It was just really cool to see that art could tie into those subjects and really enhance what they were learning already in those rooms.
Jenzaia: I've heard a lot of theories about how using art with the other subjects can enhance and make it a more real experience. It's just really, really cool to hear you talking about how you've actually done it and the ways that you could do it. My brain does not function, I'm a math person like through and through, so my brain does not function in that creative, pull it in and use art, to facilitate other subjects. So I'm loving this and my mind is like exploding right now. So awesome.
Amy: Every evaluation that I had with my principal, even though I taught K-12 in the district I was in because it was a very small district. My main supervisor was the middle school principal. So whenever he'd evaluate me, he was coming into usually a sixth-grade classroom. One of the things we always talked about was cross-curricular content, and how was I able to incorporate that math or language arts and different things into my classroom as well. One of the teaching artists that came to our school, she didn't just come into my room, she worked with the sixth-grade teacher across the hall that taught ELA, and she was able to come for two of the three classes. The timeframe didn't work for her to be working with one of the classes. That teacher was able to see the progress of the two classes that were with Ms. Rita compared to the other one, and they were high above the other one. Even though it may seem to some teachers that that visiting teacher that's coming in is kind of taking up their time and they weren't able to do as much of the desk work, they definitely gained a ton of just experience and their scores were higher, so that proved to me that it's a valuable experience.
Jenzaia: That's so impactful, too, to actually see that in real-time, the differences. So going back just a little bit, I thought of something. How do you make your lessons accessible to everybody when you're teaching on Outschool or when you're in that in-person and hybrid model? Not so much the people you're in person with because you can provide materials for them, but what about the people that are at home and you have no idea what they have access to and how you can make those lessons work?
Amy: Well, I remember clear back whenever I was still in college teaching at an after-school program that was at a local art store. We learned very quickly that flexibility is key with any art project. There's something that could go wrong, or every kid is at a different level, even if they're the same age. So I have found that I keep my supplies to my classes very minimal. I list everything that they need, but I list alternatives too. If you don't have a canvas, you can paint on this, and everything to the back of or the inside of a cereal box, you know, make it work because you can be creative with recyclables. You don't have to have all the expensive supplies. In my drawing classes, you can have just a piece of paper and a pencil. You don't need anything else. If you're adding color, I can teach you how to shade and do things with colored pencils, as well as crayons, just a little tiny box of crayons. So I try to be very flexible with that. Over the screen, you learn how to read their facial expressions pretty well to see what's happening. If they're frustrated, you can sort of tell if something's going wrong for the most part. But the hardest part is the fact that they have the screen usually against their face and not their artwork. So you can't see what's happening, where in person, you can see if they're struggling at all just by walking around the room. So they have to be confident enough to either hold it up and show you, or at least reach out and tell you that they need help with something. So that's been the hardest part about it.
Jenzaia: Oh, interesting. I never would have even thought about the position of the camera.
Amy: Mhm. Yeah. Sometimes their cameras aren't very clear, so it's hard to see if they're drawing lightly. I learned, I use a document camera, so I have two views- me speaking, but then I spotlight my hands- and I can't just sketch lightly. I have to draw much darker than I normally would so that they can actually see the pencil lines. So there was a learning curve for sure. But once you just figured out those nuances, it goes pretty smoothly.
Jenzaia: Interesting. Thanks. So with your teacherpreneur journey, what would you say is the biggest challenge you faced?
Amy: The biggest challenge was the tech at first, and that was the scariest part. I have a master's in instructional technology. It's not like I'm not familiar with technology and haven't had to dive into learning new things, but it was just a completely different way of doing things. Because I'm such a hands-on type of teacher, I'm not doing a whole lot on the computer in class. They might do a little research or look at a reference picture, but whenever I was in person with students, technology was kind of on the back burner. I used the projector a lot, but I had to learn how to make videos and kind of just review all of this stuff that I hadn't used for so long and how to edit and post everything and just what's the newest and latest stuff. Then zoom, that was not something that, I mean I had been on it, it's not like I'd never used it, but it wasn't something that I was that familiar with. So my biggest reservation was what if something goes wrong while I'm teaching, and the fact that I do live in the middle of nowhere. So we are in kind of a valley and I have no cell service. It's not like I can use a hotspot if my WiFi goes down. I remember thinking, if my power goes out, I have no idea what to do. I won't even be able to get into the classroom to send them a message saying, I'm so sorry, we can reschedule or I'll refund or whatever. Believe it or not, the very first class I taught on Outschool, the power went out. It was one of the windiest days ever. It was kind of stormy the night before or something. It wasn't that cold though, but it was at the beginning of April and I was just like, oh my goodness, what am I going to do? I'm walking around my yard with my phone, trying to gain a signal to be able to message them. I had 10 kids, the very first class, I was really lucky and I got a full class and I was so excited about teaching this. My husband works from home anyway, even before the pandemic, so he was there and he's seeing me and I'm panicking and he suggests, he's like, "go up to my dad's, go sit on his porch, he will probably have internet because we're on a different line and they're about a mile and a half away from us." I couldn't have dumped all of my supplies into a bin faster, grabbed my computer, went up, logged in. So I was out of class for about 15 minutes out of an hour-long class. I went back up there, I went up to his house, sat on the picnic table, and logged in and all of the kids were there waiting for me. I could not believe it. We finished class and they were all okay about just staying a little longer to finish it up. That was my very first experience and I was scared to death of that happening, and then it did. So now I have a backup plan and I know exactly what to do. If the power would go out, it's just like, okay, dump everything, get in the car and go to a different location.
Jenzaia: Wow. Of course, of course that would happen the very first time. Not once you're comfortable and you kind of know all of everything else, when you're still trying to figure everything out, that very first time, the worst possible situation has to happen every time.
Amy: Yeah, and the power didn't come back on for my second class, which was scheduled for later in the afternoon. So I went up early, I just set everything up and I just had class on the porch, and just assumed that my power wasn't going to be ready. I didn't want to wait till the last minute. I have not had to do that again. But it has flickered. I've disappeared for a few minutes where it flickered and the WiFi had to kick back up and stuff. But overall, they were so understanding.
Jenzaia: I think that that's a huge lesson that a lot of us have learned through the pandemic, is other people are so much more understanding just in general. I've had meetings with my daughter on my lap and people love it. The first time I had to do it, I was apologizing, but people are just so understanding and so awesome.
Amy: I think too, that it helps make you feel like you're a real person. The other thing that we see are animals all the time. Animals are always walking in the background, cats are crawling up on top of the screen. Every time that happens, the kids get so excited. I get so excited. It's just nice to see them. I actually created a class that is pet show and tell and draw. So we draw a different pet every week and the kids are welcome to bring their pets to the classroom. Whether that's the pet we're drawing or not, it doesn't matter just because we're not drawing a dog that day doesn't mean the dog can't visit. We love them, but we've seen everything from a tortoise to a couple of geckos. I had two boys that are brothers bring little tiny baby chicks and turkeys into the house to show us. Yeah, we've seen everything.
Jenzaia: What a great idea. I love it.
Amy: It's fun. I mean, the adults that I've had zooms with get just as excited about seeing animals. So why not?
Jenzaia: And the kids, I can just imagine, having had a student bring their rabbit in for show and tell, and knowing the reaction of kids there, I can only imagine how excited they would be to go to pet show and tell drawing class each week and just see all the animals.
Amy: Even if they don't have a pet, they'll bring a stuffed animal. They're just excited to share something about their life, too.
Jenzaia: Yeah. Especially a lot of them are probably at home, not seeing their friends as much, and just having that interaction and other kids who are just as excited about animals as they are.
Amy: Some of them attend a class where they know someone else in the class, but they're at a distance or there's actually three students that are all friends and live close by. But because they hadn't been seeing each other, at the end of that class, it's hard to get them off because they're just so excited, but they don't really say much. So it's become a ritual where they wave with both hands forever until I finally count down and say 3, 2, 1 goodbye and then 'click' end the meeting. But you know, it's just that one extra little thing that they get to do and still have contact with their friends and it's fun.
Jenzaia: Oh, that's amazing. So, next question. How do you market for Outschool?
Amy: Well, luckily Outschool does a lot of the marketing for me because that's my weak point. That's how I got connected to you because I joined the Teacher Hustle University because marketing is where I knew I was lacking. I just had no idea where to begin. So Outschool does take 30% of that $10, like whatever you're charging per student, you make 70% of it. To me, that's well worth it because I wouldn't have reached students from all over the world. I'm in a rural part of Pennsylvania, so I'm not going to see that many people and I don't know that many people. I have learned to figure out how to funnel the classes so that you start off with a one-time class and you build into those multi-day or ongoing classes, and just learn how to create something that people want from the beginning to then become loyal customers to you, which I think is important in the marketing stages. So, I'm getting there, but I'm still in the beginning stages of truly marketing my business for myself. I want to be able to help Outschool teachers now as well, because I had started off not knowing anybody and just watching videos, all the YouTube videos, and going on all the Facebook groups and forums and trying to figure out how to navigate everything. So that's where I'm at in my business. I want to branch out and also help teachers. So I'm just kind of starting out and figuring out that, and Facebook is a big platform for Outschool teachers. Instagram as well, but I feel like we get more information out of Facebook as far as helping each other. I know that's your jam, so that's why I'm here.
Jenzaia: Yeah. Facebook groups are amazing for that kind of thing. I feel like everything I need to know for all parts of my business, there's a different group that I can go to and I have that community of other people who use this platform or that platform or whatever it is. I can like pick their brain and get what I need, so it's definitely such a great tool for that.
Amy: Absolutely. Yeah. I think I like Instagram in a way, for more of the visual aspect of things and it's not like I haven't met and connected without school teachers there, but for Facebook, it's more like the information and just the help that you might need to get. If you have a question about 'this happened with my technology' or 'what do you do about a refund in this situation' or whatever you can post it and there are tons of teachers that are willing to help answer those questions immediately.
Jenzaia: So the closest thing that I have kind of to compare Outschool to is Teachers Pay Teachers. What I'm thinking is, the same will be a freebie on TPT, is that almost like your one-time class that you try to entice people to check you out, and then it, as you said, funnels into a bigger, like on TPT, it will be a bundle or a product line that you'd be wanting people to get into. So those one-time classes are almost the same thing as trying to get people into your bigger multi classes or the subscription model?
Amy: Definitely. Yeah. I offered a ton of one-time classes whenever I first started. That was a really good way, number one, to find out what I actually love to teach. I don't teach every single class that I started out with and I figured out what my pacing would be and just how to be a good teacher using those one-time classes. You start seeing kids sign up and you're going to see new kids constantly in the one-time class. Occasionally, you'll have someone that takes the same one-time class a couple of times. I had a parent message me saying, "my daughter just only wants to draw horses, so she's back" and that's great. She improved and you see that improvement, but the one-time class is basically the way that they can test you out as a teacher and see if they like your teaching style. There's a ton of art teachers that people can pick from, so their kids need to click with you. My personality is not that like, I'm not always on, you know? I'm not the big, huge personality where I'm over the top. I've definitely, in my reviews, been told I run a calm, patient class and that's what I'm there for. That's my personality. I want them to experience this really calm activity that they are going to enjoy, kind of taking time for themselves. I'm not saying that we never have fun. We definitely have fun together, but there are definitely different personalities that you'll find. I'm not offended if someone puts in the review or if they unsubscribed to an ongoing class, they can give you a reason why, and it's just not for their kid. We're not going to click with everybody, but my goal is to make it the most enjoyable timeframe and experience that they can have. So I hope that they take a one-time class first to kind of gauge that.
Jenzaia: That's huge in marketing though, is attracting the right people, but also repelling the ones that aren't the right people so that those people don't get confused and like, 'oh, maybe' and they sit in that like the middle ground of like, 'no, this isn't for me and I can move on.' Also, I think you just described the two art teacher personalities- the calm presence of you, and then the over the top, oh my goodness, gigantic personality. I could be wrong, actually, I'm probably wrong, but in my experience, there are very few art teachers in that middle kind of ground. I feel like there's a lot of calm presence ones and then a lot of like big personalities. I've taken art classes with both kinds of people and I've enjoyed both, but I can totally picture those two art teachers in my mind.
Amy: Yeah. I agree. I'm sure there are teachers in the middle. I've enjoyed classes with people that are different personalities than me. It doesn't mean that I don't like their teaching style. I'm just saying that's not my teaching style. So everybody teaches in their own way. The other thing is, I also try to stress that the way I'm teaching, someone else might tell you to do it a little bit differently than me. We all learned in different ways ourselves. We all teach in different ways. There are techniques that one way is going to work really great, and then there are other things you could do that you can do it in so many different ways and show your own style. That's important to me too, that I teach, and because I draw in a style or the way I paint looks a certain way, I don't expect my students to have a direct copy of what I'm doing. I want them to feel comfortable enough to show their own style as well. So, our outgoing or more introverted personalities are one thing, but then the way we create is a whole different thing too. So, the kids really run with it. They use their imaginations and by the end, even if I'm teaching, this is how to draw a rabbit or whatever, you mentioned about a rabbit coming into your class. Ours always look different at the end. Color choices and just the way we draw are going to look different.
Jenzaia: That's so interesting that you are pointing that out and just the power that can give students to know that they have their own creative abilities that they can put into their artwork, but that's so important.
Amy: Right, and they don't necessarily come to class with the same level of ability, and that's okay too. I always want them to know, you're going to grow, you're going to get better. The more you do it, the more you practice, if you practice in between class, or maybe you don't have time and that's okay, and this is your creative time. That's why you're there for me to teach you how to do these things so that you gain that confidence. Don't compare yourselves to each other. There's the occasional student that won't lift up their drawing or they don't want to share for whatever reason, not always every week, but just sometimes, one week here and there. That's okay, but being able to see what they're doing and being able to tell them different techniques or give them suggestions is really helpful. So most of them are pretty open to sharing within the class because the kids are very encouraging to one another, too. So that's really nice whenever you start seeing them give that encouragement and pumping them up.
Jenzaia: That is really inspiring for sure. You mentioned something about wanting to help other teachers on Outschool. It sounds like it's just kind of a little seed of an idea at this point, but what are you potentially imagining that becoming?
Amy: I actually met with one of our other Teacher Hustle crew members on a coaching call and she just had questions. She's already part of Outschool. So the thing is, you can have a mentor, which I didn't know. So I signed up blindly and didn't do that, where if you have a mentor, you use their referral link and then they get a little extra for like helping you through the application process. But there's a lot of teachers that are new that either did that and maybe they still have questions or the mentors are really busy and they want just more help themselves, or they didn't know about it like me. I felt like I flubbed through the first bit of time on Outschool and just hoped I was doing everything right. So now that, I mean this pretty much my main part of my job. I do the residencies and just other things on the side. As far as teaching, I teach pottery classes too in the town near us. But, I made this a mostly full-time job with part-time hours and I love it. So the people that are kind of starting and struggling now, I feel like I can help them answer all those questions that I flubbed through, you know? It's something that just comes such second nature to me now, but I remember just spending hours and hours searching for answers. So I would like to make it a more streamlined effort for them so that they don't feel like they're just wasting time and spinning their wheels. They want to be good teachers. That's what they want to do. I wanted to teach and I didn't necessarily want to do all this backend stuff that seemed like it was taking up more time than teaching. So if I can help them do that, that would be great.
Jenzaia: Awesome. Well, I hope that that becomes what you're imagining because that would be really helpful for teachers. I'm just thinking about all the pieces you would need to put in place to start teaching on Outschool, and it's overwhelming me. I know it won't be something that I go do because it's so many different moving pieces. But having a resource, someone like you, that would help to take some of those pieces away, would make it definitely much less intimidating.
Amy: Yeah, that's the thing- the intimidation factor. I think the more answers you have upfront, the more comfortable you're going to feel. Once you're in it and things start to happen and you realize, oh, I really like teaching this class, but this type of class, but how does that work? Or, what do I even do to go about using the two cameras? Because right now I'm only using one camera, but I would like to start demonstrating something on the table. Answering those kinds of questions, isn't as hard as it seems, but whenever you don't know, everything seems hard. It's scary.
Jenzaia: Yeah, and what you don't know is that terrifying piece that stops you and paralyzes you. Right?
Amy: That's the word I was thinking. When you were saying that sentence, I was like, it will paralyze you. So as far as helping the teachers, I've had this idea for months and I was just kind of paralyzed as far as, I have all the ideas, I already developed different workbooks and things. It's like, okay, just putting it out there. Because I need the help with the marketing aspect of things, that's where I was just sort of paralyzed, you know? It's finally starting to come into reality and I'm ready to do a mini-course to go over like, 'this is what the platform looks like. This is where I can answer some questions for you' just to alleviate that anxiety of the beginning stages. I have lists and lists of things, categories of, 'this is how I can help you do this. This is how I can help you with technology. Just setting up your classroom,' just things that happen now for me all the time because I'm used to it.
Jenzaia: Yeah. A mini-course would be such a good jumping-off point to get you into helping people with this. I love it. I can't wait. I can't wait for it. Yay. Okay. So rapid fire questions for you. What is your favourite social media platform?
Amy: Facebook for information. Instagram for the visuals.
Jenzaia: Then, favorite tool or software or app that you use in your business?
Amy: I would say Canva is now, but I didn't see the hype for the longest time because I was a Google user. I thought, well, I can just do that in Google slides, but I absolutely love using all the features in Canva now that I'm used to it.
Jenzaia: It took me a bit of an adjustment period as well.
Amy: That was one of those things that I was paralyzed by at first, because I just thought, well, that's one more thing to learn. But once I started to, I realized how much time it's saving me.
Jenzaia: Yeah, definitely. I'm with all the stock images that are there, it's so, so much easier than what I was doing before.
Amy: Yes.
Jenzaia: Then last rapid fire question. What advice would you give for somebody who is just starting out on their teacherpreneur journey?
Amy: You just have to do it. Like I said, I was scared to death of the technology and my worst fear came true the very first class I taught. I thought, okay, well, if that's as bad as it can get, because that's what I was fearing the most, and I made it through. It'll be okay. So really just doing it. That's where I am with this mini-course. I want to be able to do this and I kept just waiting and waiting and waiting. So it's time to just do it.
Jenzaia: Yes, yes. Dive in. Awesome. So if anyone wants to find you, where is the best place that they can go?
Amy: I have a website that is amyroadman.com and my Instagram and Facebook is @amy.roadman.art.
Jenzaia: Perfect. I'll make sure those are linked in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Amy: Thank you. It was great. This was a really nice experience.
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