Facing Out From The Whiteboard: The Mechanical Metamorphosis.

Transferring your skills from the classroom to the advertising sector might just be more worthy than you think. Part two: the mechanical metamorphosis.

Part two of my considerations of how well you can transform from the classroom to the digital marketing world focuses on a more technological and mechanical approach to advertising - something I know I need more practise in to succeed. This is not exhaustive and serves as an introduction to my transition from the pedagogical world to the commercial one.

• Computer skills - analytical knowledge
No-one can get far these days without knowledge of technology. My mother has never worked out how to find certain features on her digital TV. Unfortunately for her, the how-to guide is on the TV and she has never found it. It’s a vicious circle; teachers use computers all day every day. Look closely and you can see this in their goggle eyes as impossible algorithms shoot past their irises. Kids these days know more than the teachers do – this I have proved many times when searching for the video that was ‘there a minute ago’ – but it doesn’t detract from the fact a teacher must be in the technological know-how; if only to prevent kids from laughing at their lack of know-how. Teachers also use computers for collecting data: on SIMS, Excel and sometimes Word – all of it the same information! Yes, that’s three times we have to log it and then we have to trawl through the same data, number crunching and analysing which pupils are achieving and which aren’t. Who needs extra support in lessons and who needs stretching. Who won’t achieve their end of year target, who will and who will exceed theirs. Who might have learning difficulties and who plays up in lessons – yes, data can tell you this. Actually, it can’t but apparently teachers can work it out based on a number. In an average teaching day, a teacher will use an IAWB, Power point, Word, Excel, some stupid data collection thing, Photoshop, Adobe, Paint, Canva, the list goes on. What we don’t yet use it for is easy enough to learn with a bit of experience.

• Manage their work – team playing and delivering identifiable results
This one is tricky to prove with little tangible proof. However, a typical half-term for me goes like that this: spend the holidays beforehand planning for the rest of the department so they can enjoy the break (not sure why as I’m not a position of management but I was somehow the lucky one for this). Come into school on the first day back and try to fit 3 hours of photocopying and forward planning into a twenty minute slot before the hordes arrive to use the one photocopier we have for the whole school. Teach all day 3 days a week with one 50 minute slot to mark six GCSE classes of work and two KS3 classes – a total of 164 books, plan 19 lessons for the next week, complete all my admin tasks, deal with parents, detentions and achievements, print off resources, get a drink of coffee, use the toilet and scoff a Bounty to relieve the build-up of stress. Don’t do the latter whilst on the phone to a parent! I’m not making excuses but even the Avengers Academy, Fantastic Four and the Suicide Squad combined would struggle to do all that. Yet, somehow by working through lunch, break before and after school, I do it.

• Commercial nous – current affairs in the industry
As a teacher, you never stop acquiring new skills and staying up to date with changes. At no point will a teacher hear the magic words, ‘wow, you actually can do your job and there is nothing you are not doing well. You’re prefect!’ It’s the same in the world of advertising and by researching, reading, discussing and thinking, it won’t be too hard to stay on top of what’s new in the commercial world. I hope. Three internships down, I think I’m working on building my nous as I get to know the marketing business.

• Test everything and assume nothing
As a teacher, this is actually really important. One of my earliest mistakes was to assume my class would understand what I was talking about. In my opinion, there is no better way to make you feel you want the earth to swallow you up than to have 30 faces staring at you in a mixture of boredom, confusion and looks of this-is-shit-I’d-rather-be-playing-Grand-Theft-Auto. It took a few attempts to get the hang of but now I never assume. In fact, I pre-empt that they will have no idea and go back to basics. In the advertising world, this I’m still working on. We all have our weaknesses and I am fully aware that mine lie in the penultimate two items on this list.

The biggest positive of writing a blog is to see in writing results you might not have been aware of before.  I now have a strong focus on what I want from the next few months. By spending more time writing a variety of copy and working with an advertising agency, it won’t be long before I’m ready to take on the worlds of advertising and writing for a living.