9 | Creative Inspiration with Jess Karr

This week inspiring teacherpreneur journey is with Jess Karr of Karr Art. I absolutely loved chatting with her because her determination and passion for teaching came through the entire conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Jess is a K-6 art teacher from Ohio with 12 years of experience in all grade levels (K-12).  She has a passion for helping children build creative confidence through intentional planning and differentiated resources. If she's not making art she's probably eating ice cream.

We chat all about how was inspired to create resources for her students that would be inspiring, creative and inclusive.  Her multi-faceted approach to teaching art allows students in class and online to learn and grow as artists.

I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did!

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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. Before we get started, I'm really excited because I created a free quiz just for you. You can head to marketscalegrow.com/quiz to find out if Facebook ads are right for you and your business. This two minute quiz has a couple of questions that you can answer to find out if Facebook ads or something else are the next marketing strategy that you should be implementing in your business. So head to marketscalegrow.com/quiz to find out today.

Jenzaia: Welcome, welcome. Today, I am talking with Jess Carr. She is a K-6 art teacher from Ohio and has 12 years of experience teaching all grade levels from K-12. She has a passion for helping children build creative confidence through intentional planning and differentiated resources. If she's not making art, she's probably eating ice cream, which means that we should be best friends because you'll probably find me eating ice cream, too. I am so excited about this conversation. So let's jump in.

Jenzaia: Hi, Jess. Welcome to the podcast.

Jess: Hi Jenzaia. How are you?

Jenzaia: I'm doing very well. I'm so excited to talk to you and learn more about you. So do you want to start by telling us where you're from and what you teach?

Jess: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I am a K-6 art teacher. I live in Ohio and I have 12 years of teaching experience in all grade levels, K-12.

Jenzaia: That's so exciting. You're still in the classroom?

Jess: I am in the classroom, but currently on extended maternity leave.

Jenzaia: Oh, that's so nice to be home with your little baby!

Jess: Yes, it's been nice, especially this year with all of the craziness going on. It's been a little extra nice to be home during the pandemic, even though my heart goes out to everybody out there making it happen.

Jenzaia: I'm also on maternity leave because I'm in Canada. So, our maternity leave works a little bit differently and it's normal for me to have a full year off, but I totally feel the same way you do about that guilt of everyone going through this and that emotional weight that is just so heavy on everyone's heart right now.

Jess: Absolutely.

Jenzaia: So your teacherpreneur journey, when did it start?

Jess: Yes. Pretty recently. My teacherpreneur journey started in the summer of 2020, so just about, sevenish/eight months ago. I'm not a math teacher, I'm an art teacher. But in summer 2020, I was about seven months pregnant and I was searching online for resources to help me get ready for my maternity leave. I was trying to plan ahead. I'm an absolute planner. I over-planned, I love planning, give me all the pens, give me all the planners. So I went online looking for resources and I wasn't really coming up with anything that ticked all the boxes of the things that I was going to need, not just for my maternity leave, but just for the unique needs of our school year in general. And then also throw into the mix that I have a substitute teacher that's going to also be working in a pandemic. So it was just a very unique thing, a lot of things that I was looking for and I didn't find. So I had all these things I was looking for, couldn't find them, and I decided I'm just going to have to dive in, invest the time, make these resources for my kids, for teacher, because I didn't want to sacrifice quality while I was away. The kids really needed quality content, not overwhelming and rigorous content, but it needed to be intentional. So I just got to work. I spent an unhealthy amount of time on my laptop putting together resources. I wanted there to be a social-emotional learning aspect. I needed to consider resources for families that maybe didn't have art materials at home, maybe didn't have technology at home. My substitute was also going to be juggling a hybrid schedule and virtual kids. It was just a lot, so I spent a lot of time planning, and then kind of on a whim, I decided to put my resources out online onto Teachers Pay Teachers and was overwhelmed by the need that a lot of other teachers needed also. And that's how I kind of got started. It was kind of on accident and on a whim, but that's how it happened.

Jenzaia: So what kind of resources do you create? Are they are projects or art lessons? What kind of stuff is it?

Jess: So it's a little bit of both. I started from just kind of scratch, experimenting with interactive slideshows. Our district put us through a Google training because we had switched over from something else to all Google over the summer. So I had just gone through a Google training and felt pretty comfortable using Google slides, and did some research online and figured out that I could make really cool slideshows with movable parts and interactive things that I thought was kind of the best of both worlds, where you could present information, you could embed videos, and then they could obviously easily upload that to be graded or checked for completeness. So, I started that with interactive Google slideshows, and I built a product line based on the elements of art. That was seven different products that I knew that was going to carry my students through at least seven class periods of work. That was kind of my planning ahead just to keep it kind of basic, but also consistent so that they knew what to expect from week to week. The content was similar and the setup of each lesson was the same, but at the end of each slide show, I had an opportunity for them to choose from one out of three different hands-on traditional art material lessons. I was really intentional about what I chose for that. I had three different options, tiered for the kind of materials they had access to. I had kept it simple. Like, "if you just have pencil paper" or "hey, if you have a toilet paper roll, you can make this." Then I had an intermediate level and a more challenging and more in-depth project. So, it was really important to me that I still made these accessible to all of my students no matter what kind of materials they had, and also the grade levels, because as an art teacher, you teach all of the grades K-6 at the same time. So I had a lot of different preps that I was dealing with too.

Jenzaia: Do you teach your students for like an hour every week?

Jess: Yes. They usually have art once a week. It's about 50 minutes, 48-50 minutes.

Jenzaia: 48.

Jess: Those 2 minutes really matter when you're cleaning up an art room, let me tell you! So, once a week, but our schedule was just really wonky with the pandemic and they changed it a few times on us, so I was just kind of putting something out there, trying it. In the beginning, there were some technical issues that we had to work through... getting parents and students acclimated to how to upload photos, how to take decent photos, you know, all of those technical things. But after we got over that, they could anticipate that the next lesson was going to have the same format, it was just different content. So it worked out in the long run.

Jenzaia: I love how you tiered the final piece to what they would have access to because I know in my house, my kids are really little. I don't have that many art supplies, but I can definitely find a piece of paper and a pencil. Whereas, other families may have everything or for the kids who are at school, because you said you were doing a hybrid model, right? So the kids who are at school would have access to a ton of stuff. So I love that idea of using whatever the element of art is in those different ways.

Jess: Absolutely. It was really important to me that I didn't leave anyone out. I didn't want anyone to feel like they couldn't create something because they didn't have what they needed. It was enough as it is to just be living through the pandemic. I wanted to make it as accessible as possible for all of our students.

Jenzaia: That's awesome. You also said that there was a social-emotional piece to it. How did you work that into art? Because I love that idea.

Jess: So I created a separate bundle of resources based on my favorite books that I would use in my classrooms that were also a little bit art-related about color and emotion. Those resources were more about, "Hey, you introduce or read this book to your students, and then here's a really cool drawing activity or art project that you can do after it" and it just kind of kept it light and you're not really focusing on techniques or skills. You're focusing more on how they feel and which was/is still really important for students to think about and to talk about especially in the online space. You want them to really feel in touch with their emotions and to talk about how they're feeling and the art element. Obviously, if they can't really verbalize it, a lot of times giving them an opportunity to create how they feel was really important to me too. So I incorporated those lessons with a lot of my younger students in the classroom and in the virtual space for our kids that chose virtual last year. Basically for my product, I typed up the lesson plan, provided a link to a read-aloud, and then there were a few extra supplemental worksheets or coloring pages to go along with it.

Jenzaia: So cool. As I said, I love the idea of tying the emotions into the art piece, because I do think that it's a good way for us to let our emotions out is to have that more creative aspect.

Jess: Absolutely. So important.

Jenzaia: So how has your business changed? It's still so new, but has it grown or changed or pivoted if you will, the word of the year.

Jess: I'm still trying to figure that out. The overwhelm of the back-to-school buying/selling has kind of calmed down a little bit, so I'm trying to navigate what to do next. I know now that I feel confident that I have maybe an eye for what teachers are looking for based on how it started. So I feel like if I can continue to keep my ear to the ground and my eyes open and just learn what teachers need, then I can still continue to create for them. Since I'm not actively in the classroom right now, I'm still in touch with my substitute teacher, but I'm not living it. So, it'll be really interesting when I go back to school. That'll be a big turning point for me, I think, how my business changes at that point because right now I've focused more on learning. I am turning to Instagram to see what other teachers are struggling with. I'm looking at how I can grow my business as far as learning about marketing, which I know is what you are so interested in, and just how I can find out more about what people need, as teachers, and as students. I have a five-year-old who's going to be in kindergarten next year, and so it's crazy. I can't even wrap my head around that. But he has lived through this pandemic just as much as everyone else with not an online group of kids or an in-person group of kids, and really just with his family, which is fine, it's just, everyone's experience is different. But what will he need moving forward n a classroom setting? I can go back to the social-emotional thing, but what are kids going to need next school year when whatever happens, happens? What are teachers going to need, too? It's just going to be a little different. I'm still trying to figure that out. So I'm mostly focused on learning and just staying open.

Jenzaia: That's such an important piece at the beginning of your business, well all through your business, but when you're first starting to really get to know people who are looking for your products or your service, and to figure out what they need and how you can really help them and serve them. So that's awesome that that is what your focus is right now. I think that's perfect. On a personal note, my son's 2, so he is similarly living the life of no friends, no family, no anything. S when we go to the park and he sees other people, he stares like he doesn't even know that they existed. Right? It's just a little heartbreaking to try to understand what he thinks is going on. So, it's such a good point of what teachers and students are going to be experiencing next year when, fingers crossed, it gets a little bit more normal, and how things change and grow and continue to how we navigate through what's coming.

Jess: Absolutely. I don't think it's going to be a light switch moment and we're going to go back to normal. I think there's going to be a transition period. Who knows if we'll still have online learning next year or not? Probably so, at least in some part of the world. I can imagine we're not going to come out of it completely. But also yes, from the social-emotional standpoint, we're going to need to think about it. In the States we're, my heart breaks, that we have to do testing this year for a lot of states, which to me is obscene to ask teachers and students to go through all of that. So I'm kind of getting off-topic here, but my heart hurts. I want to solve the problem. I don't know how to. I'm trying to figure all of that out, trying to solve the world's problems.

Jenzaia: Art makes everything better.

Jess: Yes.

Jenzaia: Just on a note, my school board and a couple in the surrounding towns have already given notice to parents that next year they'll have the choice to be virtual or in-person again. We don't have hybrid here, it's you're in-person or virtual. So next year they've already said, "we're giving you that option again."

Jess: Wow. That's good to know ahead of time. We haven't made that judgment call yet, but I anticipate something of the like.

Jenzaia: Yeah. So a question that you may not be expecting, but how are you balancing your business and your new little baby and your son and whatever else you have going on in life and taking care of yourself? Because as we've definitely talked about, we are still in the middle of a pandemic, so that's stressful for us as adults as well.

Jess: Yeah, I'm laughing because it's crazy, ridiculous, busy here all the time, even though we're not going anywhere. It seems so ridiculous that we're here day in and day out. Where does the day go? I don't know. But I will tell you that focusing or spending time on my business has turned into spending time on myself. It really has been a creative outlet for me that I didn't know that I needed. I don't know if it's because I'm not in the classroom and I'm really trying to fill that void because I love being in my classroom and I miss it every day, even in these circumstances. But I really have grown to just enjoy the time that I spend working on my business. And what do I do to make it work, to carve out the time? When my baby naps, I shamelessly let my five-year-old watch TV or play on the iPad and I get out my laptop. That's our screen time. If my baby gets up early, I get up early. If my baby sleeps in late, I get up early and I work before he wakes up. I just make it work and I'm excited to make it work because it's my me-time.

Jenzaia: Yeah, I feel that. If my little ones let me sleep in, I do not get up early. But my daughter often does not let me sleep in early, so I'll feed her and then put her back to bed. I don't go back to bed in those cases. Yeah, she's my alarm clock and 5:30 is a great time to get up. I feel that too. It's just that nice, peace that I still feel like someone outside of being a mom and it's not a burden. It's actually so enjoyable and I love doing it.

Jess: I completely agree. I didn't know that I could love work so much. It's been a welcome new endeavor.

Jenzaia: Are you planning on going back to the classroom in September?

Jess: I am, yes. Absolutely. I can't wait to go back. Not that I need to get out, but I just have so many ideas. I love to create. I love my kids, my students. I can't wait to see them. I'm sure they're so much taller probably than me already. Yeah, I can't wait to go back.

Jenzaia: Yeah. I really miss the classroom too. September is my go back day as well. I'm looking forward to the adult connection at work as well and seeing adults in person again. Looking back, have there been any really big moments in your business that were turning points or huge challenges or milestones, anything like that, that you look back?

Jess: I wouldn't say I've had anything huge to overcome. Occasionally I'll get a comment or a review that kind of hurts my heart a little bit just because I pour my heart into what I do. I feel like sometimes the criticism can be a little bit harsh, but I understand where people are coming from and I don't want to blame anyone for how they feel. That part hurt for a minute, but then I realized... I actually joined a marketing group and learned a lot about mindset, and realized that as long as I know, in my heart, what my intentions are and what I'm doing, that's all that really matters. So I've, a couple of times, just had to shift my thinking and refocus and just remember what I'm doing and not let it keep me from creating more because there are definitely a lot more people that I'm helping, and that love what I do than the opposite. I would say that's the only thing because I could see that being a roadblock for other people- they are maybe scared to put themselves out there, they're scared of what people might think, they're scared of letting somebody down- but I would say don't let that happen, just stay focused. Keep your goal in mind and just as long as you have good intentions, then you'll get through it.

Jenzaia: Such good advice. The mindset piece is just so important and it continues to come up and just having a group of people, it sounds like you've found, that will help focus you and bring you back to the quote-unquote right spot when you get pulled by that negativity, is so important. So, really glad that you found those people.

Jess: Me too.

Jenzaia: Oh yeah. My favourite question to ask because this is a marketing podcast. How are you, if you are, you may not be... six months, eight months into my business, I definitely was not marketing anything at all... but how are you marketing your business?

Jess: I am just starting to scratch the surface. I have to tell you, when you asked me for a website or something, I don't have a website. I don't have a Facebook business. Just last week I signed up for a YouTube channel, but I don't know if I would consider that marketing.

Jenzaia: That's exciting!

Jess: Yeah, I signed up for one, so that's a start. But I love Instagram. I've always been on Instagram. So I started an Instagram account for my business, but it kind of looks more like just everything art in my life. It's not really all about my business. It's what my son creates. It's my lesson ideas. It's all that kind of stuff. Then occasionally I'll just tell my followers, "Hey, I have this sale." Today I made a really cool reel, I thought. So yeah, I'm scratching the surface and just seeing what happens, but as I said before, I'm still just learning and listening and observing and trying things a little bit at a time, but no real marketing plan here. Check back with me in a while and I'll let you know if I've made any progress

Jenzaia: YouTube is definitely part of your marketing strategy. That is your long-form content, and it's, in my opinion, probably the best one for an art teacher, because you can do examples and show people. It'd be really hard to do that on a podcast. And a blog, you could do it with pictures, but I'm not artistic at all. I cried in our class in university because my lines were “not line enough”. I remember it so clearly. The teacher was like, "they're perfect because you did them." I just couldn't wrap my mind around it. I have a better concept of it now, but I'm not artistic. So when I'm looking for our projects and stuff for my students, I need super visuals of videos. So definitely part of your marketing strategy, you're gonna rock it. Yeah. I love that.

Jess: Yeah. That's why I went for YouTube over a blog to start with. I figured I would just do demos, like you said, and we'll see what happens. I definitely am not the kind of person to put my face up. I'm not a selfie person. I'm not an Instagram talker. So yeah, you'll see my hands and you'll see my art and that's about it.

Jenzaia: I was going to say, you can do a top-down view of what you're actually doing your face doesn't need to be in it though. Whenever you're comfortable, once you're there, that's a big step in the marketing too of showing your face.

Jess: Yeah. I got to get over that, that mindset again. Right?

Jenzaia: What about Pinterest, because isn't that big in the art world too?

Jess: Yes. So I have a Pinterest. I am Pinterest not proficient. I have like three views on my things. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Still have a lot to learn there. Don't take any advice from me. Just start the account and have somebody else do it for you is probably what I have to say about that.

Jenzaia: My Pinterest is all travel pictures and quotes and baby showers and really personal stuff and not business-related. So I'm also not the person to go to about Pinterest.

Jess: I clearly still have a lot of marketing to learn. So I'll be listening to your podcast religiously.

Jenzaia: Oh, I can't wait. Yay. So is there anything you'd like to add before I hit some rapid fire questions?

Jess: I don't think so. I really just want to encourage anybody who is maybe thinking about putting their idea out there just to do it.

Jenzaia: Would that be your advice? Because that's one of my rapid fire questions.

Jess: Oh yeah, sorry!

Jenzaia: No, no, no, no, no. That's perfect. Is that your advice for somebody who's just starting on their journey?

Jess: Yeah, absolutely. If you have an idea, just trust your gut and go for it. I think that would be my advice.

Jenzaia: Awesome. Then, favourite social media? I think I can guess...

Jess: Instagram for sure.

Jenzaia: Yeah, me too. Then, favourite tool or software that you use in your business?

Jess: Hands down, my iPad with my Procreate app. I make my worksheets on there and drawing guides and I love it. Love, love, love.

Jenzaia: Yeah, I love that kind of stuff, and just seeing people do their thing artistically and maybe living a little bit vicariously through people. So cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us. If people do want to come find you on Instagram, where would they come look?

Jess: So my Instagram handle is @karr_art_.

Jenzaia: Perfect. I will make sure that that's linked in the show notes for anyone. Thank you so much for joining me!

Jess: Thank you. It was so much fun!

Outro: Thank you for listening to this week's inspiring story. If you'd like to share your story with us, then head to marketscalegrow.com/journey and complete the quick application form. Then, head to our community at marketscalegrow.com/community so you can join our group of inspiring teacherpreneurs who are working on growing and scaling their businesses, too. See you soon.