Since I was griping about the failings of other teachers yesterday, today it is only fair for me to confess one of the biggest mistakes I myself made as a teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n
I did this over and over again and never even realized I was wrong until after <\/i><\/b>I left teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n
(I am truly embarrassed by this now. I wish I could go back and correct this failing.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Are you curious?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Here it is:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I told my students time and again that I “knew” none of them would be going on to a career as a writer, but they should learn how to write anyway because it is a valuable skill in most professions.<\/p>\n\n\n
The second part of that sentiment is true and I stand by it. But why did I assume that none of my students would ever go on to get a paycheck through writing professionally?<\/p>\n\n\n
I wouldn’t find it unusual for a math teacher to play up careers in math or a science teacher to encourage students to pursue careers in science.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But me? For some reason, I shot down the possibility of writing as a vocation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I wasn’t even aware of the possibilities. I knew nothing of copywriting, editing, ghostwriting, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n
A few months ago I changed some of my LinkedIn settings so that I would get notifications for writing jobs. Now I get notifications on a daily basis for “30 new jobs in copywriting”. Good paying jobs.<\/p>\n\n\n
If I were teaching high school English these days, I would require them to research writing professions. And I would have my students checking out Upwork and Fiverr, two popular websites where freelance writers can get experience and start to build a portfolio. It would make a fantastic afterschool job for some of the better writers.<\/p>\n\n\n
Maybe even the beginning of a career!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since I was griping about the failings of other teachers yesterday, today it is only fair for me to confess one of the biggest mistakes I myself made as a teacher. I did this over and over again and never even realized I was wrong until after I left teaching. (I am truly embarrassed by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3454"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3455,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3454\/revisions\/3455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}