What Teachers Want You to Know

In April, educators and education industry partners gathered for the edFocus Industry Summit, hosted by edWeb.net.

They learned tons of valuable information from educators, most of which has been gathered in the in-depth edFocus Industry Summit report, available here. It’s full of insights from students, teachers, principals and more!

For a recap and further discussion, edWeb also hosted a webinar titled “Educators Have Spoken… This Is What Industry Partners Need to Hear” with three brilliant industry leaders. While the information wasn’t focused specifically on travel, the concerns and requests from educators are applicable to anyone they work with.

You can watch the webinar recording here, but we’ve rounded up the key takeaways as well:

1. Everyone was a novice in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed us into uncharted waters, forcing us all to learn. Educators had to think like it was their first year on the job, which is both highly stressful and an exciting opportunity to rethink the way we do things.

2. What did you learn? Now, we all have a chance to reflect on the past year and think about what we did that worked. As we return to normal in some ways, no one should be throwing away everything they did over the past year. Take this opportunity and make the most of it! We need to switch from a deficit mindset to an asset-based mindset: This wasn’t a “lost year,” it was an unusual year where we still learned a lot. Things will never be the same, and that’s actually exciting!

3. Don’t run social-emotional learning (SEL) into the ground. This concept means introducing more emotions, empathy, relationships and goal-setting in education. However, teachers warn that SEL could become a meaningless phrase if used primarily as a marketing tool, as seen in the No Child Left Behind and Common Core eras. If you’re going to market an experience or product as assisting with SEL, you should mean it and—more importantly—be able to show it.

4. Assist in racial and social justice work. Schools across the nation are looking closer at their racial justice and diversity programs to improve equity everywhere. Industry partners should be thinking about this as well and how they can help—for instance, including diverse and unusual attractions/destinations in itineraries. As one speaker said, “It’s the first lens through which we should make all decisions and all efforts, whether it’s on the recruitment side, on the representation side—it’s in the dialogue alone. It has to be the primary filter for everything that we do. And the pandemic and all that’s happened in the past year revealed how marginalized populations have been harder hit and the strife that’s gone on. It’s our duty and it’s our obligation to do better.”

5. Virtual panels and webinars are a hit. Educators everywhere seem to agree that having shorter, more focused virtual seminars is more helpful than the old model of a three-day conference where you learn way too much in a short period of time. The virtual model allows for bite-sized, regularly scheduled professional development sessions that busy professionals can access any time. This can be used to help inform/reach educators, or on the flip side, webinars like this one are the perfect way for people in the industry to learn from educators.

6. Be a partner, not a vendor. This one is huge. Whatever service or product you’re providing for educators, what they really want is a partner that knows the ins and outs, builds a relationship and listens deeply. Educators everywhere have made clear that having industry partners who actually listen to them is key. They’re incredibly busy, and they want to work with someone who acknowledges that and offers to lighten the load. As one presenter said, “The work of a school leader and a district leader is sometimes unimaginable, and they are working in all different capacities to serve a variety of very, very challenging needs. I would say that the best thing industry folks can do is to be truly good partners, to focus on building relationship. That doesn’t start with the beginning of the sales cycle and end with the sale, but that actually is a 360 kind of perspective that involves deep listening and collegiality.”