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Erin Hoffman-Austin - 2023 CCFLT Teacher of the Year
28 Plays2 years ago
Erin E.H. Austin is a National Board Certified French teacher in Colorado. She began her teaching career in Minnesota in 2002, and she holds a B.A. in both French and Art Education, a M.A. in Curriculum & Instruction, and graduate certificates in French Studies and Gifted, Creative, & Talented Education. She was a NEA Foundation Global Learning Fellow in 2018 and now presents nationally on global education-related topics. In addition to doing contract writing and curriculum consulting work, Ms. Austin is the author of The Ultimate Guide to Selling Your Original World Language Resources: How to Open, Fill, and Grow a Successful Online Curriculum Store (Routledge, 2021). The book is based on her experience with her own TeachersPayTeachers curriculum store, and she leads workshops to show other educators how to make money from their original resources. In addition to the National Board podcast, she has been a featured guest on the Leading Equity, Side Hustle School, Dr. Will Show, and Punk Rock Classrooms podcasts. Ms. Austin is currently the chair of the associate board of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado, an organization she has been involved in since 2005, and she sits on the board of the Abundant Yoga Community, a young non-profit in western Wisconsin whose mission is to bring yoga to those with financial or geographic barriers.
Connect:
- Twitter: @Erin-EH-Austin
- LinkedIn: Erin (Hoffman) Austin (www.linkedin.com/in/erin-eh-austin)
Book:
- The Ultimate Guide to Selling Your Original World Language Resources (on Amazon)
- The Ultimate Guide to Selling Your Original World Language Resources (on Routledge's site)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Discussion Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
What's going on everyone? Welcome back to National Board Conversations. On this episode I speak with Erin Hoffman Austin. She is a National Board Certified Teacher at Fort Collins, Colorado. We talk about her journey as a candidate, how she became a French teacher, discuss teacher advocacy in Colorado, and finish up with some tips to help get your side hustle going. So I won't keep you much longer. Here's my conversation with Erin.
Erin's Teaching Background
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Erin. Thank you for taking the time. I'm glad we got to catch up. How you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you so much, Eddie. I'm excited to be here. All right, so we'll get right into it. Can you give us a quick intro of yourself, a current role, and where you at?
00:00:37
Speaker
Yeah, I am a national board certified French teacher. I'm in my 20th year of teaching French, which seems crazy to me. But I'm also certified in K-12 art. So some years, depending upon the year, I teach AP art history. So I be French and AP art history. The first, I think it was about 12 years of my career, I was in suburban Minneapolis.
00:01:03
Speaker
And then in 2014, I moved to Colorado and that's where I'm teaching now. I mean, that's awesome.
Inspiration to Teach
00:01:10
Speaker
So why did you become a teacher? What puts you to become a French teacher, French art for them? What puts you towards that direction? Well, I became a teacher just because I love working with kids and particularly teenagers. And I've always just thought they were super fun. And I come from a family of teachers. We always joke that,
00:01:31
Speaker
on my dad's side of the family, we could open our own family school because we have an administrator, a math person, a science person, language, art. We've got everything. Oh, so y'all don't need y'all. Yeah. Yeah. We could open our own Academy. Um, but then once I realized like, yeah, I want to keep on working with kids, I can be a teacher like everyone in my family, but what do I want to teach? And I had a super inspirational French teacher in middle school.
00:02:00
Speaker
And then, when I was a freshman in college I over J term my college had a 414 calendar so in January, I was actually an assistant in her classroom and got credit for it. And I was like yeah this, this is what I want to do and a couple months later, she and I had the same spring break and we went to Paris together.
00:02:23
Speaker
And after I went to Paris the first time, it was over. Like I was totally in love, totally in love. And she actually became a national board certified teacher. Oh, that's awesome. Look at that. Yeah.
Teaching Philosophy and Methods
00:02:36
Speaker
So what's your favorite French lesson to teach? I really like doing anything that I can be super active and theatrical and let my freak flag fly a little bit. So I really like playing games, but
00:02:53
Speaker
If we're talking like lessons, I really like lessons that surround literature. I think those can get really fun. I get really animated with each character and act things out and have kids act things out. If kids are laughing a little bit, I feel like they're paying attention more.
00:03:12
Speaker
No, like those are the memorable lessons and then the ones that engage like art, like all types of emotion and movement into, so yeah, it's very like, it's awesome that you do lessons like that. There's games and laughing. And if they're laughing at me, like, I don't care. Bring it, bring it. They come to school for us for a chance to laugh at the teacher. So it's not always easy. So what keeps you coming back as a teacher? What keeps me coming back is I think the same thing that should.
00:03:41
Speaker
keep everybody coming back and it's the kids. That has to be the reason why we went into this profession. And it has to be the reason day in day out that we stay.
National Board Certification Journey
00:03:54
Speaker
And you are national board certified teachers. Why did you end up pursuing then? What was your journey like? Was it like, did you achieve on your first shot? I did.
00:04:06
Speaker
I did not think I was going to and I will say that my component for was abysmal but everything else was high enough that it was all right. Why I went for board certification. I appreciate that question because what happened was I was an NEA foundation global learning fellow.
00:04:30
Speaker
And I got that fellowship and I went to DC and I met all the other fellows and right away, I was like, Oh, no. Cause in that group, I was meeting all these people that were national board certified teachers that were teachers of the year in their state. There was one man who was in the national teachers hall of fame.
00:04:52
Speaker
And I just started thinking, Oh my God, I think I'm here by accident. Like, I think they chose me by accident. Like I don't fit in with all these accolades. Yeah, totally. So I thought, well, let's dig into this because it was so cool how every single one of those people loved talking education and wanted to be better all the time. And that was my first
00:05:22
Speaker
real time surrounded by teachers like that. And it was, it rubbed off on me and I thought, okay, I need to do this, first of all, so that I feel like I belong in this group. And second of all, because man, this is contagious.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, so quick story with my first weekend, or my first like couple of weeks here at National Board, we did an event in San Diego. And like you said, it's infectious, the way the teachers want to be better for the students and be better for themselves. It's infection. I was like, Hey, like just being around here, make me want to be better for myself. Like, yes, it's very infectious. Yeah. And it, there's a stark difference when you're around a whole group of people like that versus a group of people who are not.
00:06:08
Speaker
Yes, like it's very lasting. It is very lasting. Yes. What advice do you have for current candidates going through a process? I would say two things. If you maybe not current, but if you're thinking about it, first of all, get a mentor or a partner.
00:06:28
Speaker
Like, do not go it alone. And second of all, start reading early. Like, if you're thinking, oh, I might want to do this, really start reading about the components and reading about what you have to do, because I think so much of it, you have to be preparing like a year in advance. So that's key. And then I think if you are currently going through the process,
00:06:54
Speaker
Really take advantage of the things that national board has for you, like the webinars that really break down each component, I think are great and also realize that more than half of people don't certify the first time through and it's.
00:07:13
Speaker
It's about the process, not about the product, which is frustrating. Yeah, I think it's important to acknowledge that people don't achieve on the first try, because just the data we have is it shows the more people who take their retakes, the higher percentage of certification it is, the more retakes you take. So I believe you get three chances at it. And so it's cool to take your time. It's OK. Yeah.
Advocacy Work for Teachers
00:07:39
Speaker
And I teach in an IB school, and part of the whole IB
00:07:43
Speaker
International baccalaureate thing is process process process reflection reflection reflection, so I thought man that's that's a lot like national board it's not about the endpoint it's about getting there and improving.
00:08:00
Speaker
So you're in Colorado. Colorado recently got rid of their national board certified teacher stipend. And then you and a bunch of other national board certified teachers are leading some advocacy work there. Can you talk about what's going on there in Colorado? Yes. So at the beginning of the pandemic, the state of Colorado did away with their stipends for national board certified teachers. I still get a stipend from my district, which is small.
00:08:28
Speaker
but I don't get one from the state anymore. And now that we're hopefully seeing the light at the end of the tunnel pandemic wise, there is a bunch of us who are NBCTs in Colorado who are in a Facebook group together. And we have been working with each other to advocate for getting those stipends back. So that means emailing our representatives, calling our representatives,
00:08:54
Speaker
emailing, I just did a couple weeks ago, I emailed everybody on the education committee in the state legislature, including the Commissioner for education in the state. And then about a month ago, there were two or three of us who were interviewed by a news station in Denver. And we helped him, the journalists do a story on this.
00:09:19
Speaker
and the fact that national board certified teachers are the highest certified in our field and teachers are leaving. So please try to make us stay by reinstating the very small stipend that we had.
Passion for Global Education
00:09:40
Speaker
So you touched on the earlier global ed has become a huge passion of yours. Can you provide a summary of what that is for those who are interested or unsure what it is and what sparked your interest in getting involved in that concept? You recently did a webinar for us about global ed, introducing that to some folks. Can you do that here on the podcast? Yes. I really hadn't heard of global education as a field until I was an NEA foundation global learning fellow.
00:10:10
Speaker
And during that fellowship, it was all about global ed. And we worked with Dr. Fernando Reimers of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and helped him as contributing authors on one of his books. And if someone had said, what's global education before that program, I thought, well, it's like learning about the world and putting the world into your lessons. And as a world language teacher, I'm automatically doing that.
00:10:38
Speaker
Like I'm teaching about culture, I'm teaching about languages that are the dominant language in countries that are not ours. And then as a global learning fellow, the one thing that completely revolutionized my thoughts on all that was that part of our learning, we were told that global education isn't learning about the world.
00:11:05
Speaker
it's learning with and from the world. And that changed it for me. I thought, oh, yeah, I teach about the world, but my students are not learning with the rest of the world or necessarily from the rest of the world. And so it's about creating those global connections and providing global experiences for all kids. So how have you incorporated it in your work?
00:11:31
Speaker
Well, a really easy thing, a big thing, but simple to understand is that since about 2004, I've been leading student trips abroad. So that's getting kids out in the world. But, you know, to a different extent, it's about like finding classrooms and other countries where students can communicate via Flipgrid.
00:11:56
Speaker
or via letters, things like that. Also, I have a hosting program where I work with a company that brings French speaking students to the United States. And I help find host families in my students, because not every kid can afford a multi $1,000 trip abroad. But can they can more kids afford to have someone in their home for two or three weeks in the summer? Yeah,
00:12:24
Speaker
That's a cultural exchange. That is learning with the world right in your home. So those are just a couple of things. That's amazing.
Writing and Resource Sharing
00:12:33
Speaker
And so, you know, you know that you're writing a book about global aid. Can we get a sneak peek of what's going to be in it? Yeah. So I am a published author with Routledge and I am working on my next manuscript proposal.
00:12:49
Speaker
and my editor is excited about the idea. So hopefully it will go on to review and eventually become a book next year. But I'm writing a book for world language teachers about how to create a global connection plan. So how you give global experiences to all kids. So I'm in the book, I talk about global experiences in four different quadrants. So global experiences that are student led,
00:13:19
Speaker
and low cost, global experiences that are student-led primarily and higher cost, global experiences that are adult-led and lower cost, and global experiences that are adult-led and higher cost. Awesome. This is going to be the concept of global education. It sounds phenomenal and something that we need to keep pushing for.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, because I strongly, strongly believe that the world is, I mean, we're getting more connected all the time, digitally and not. And we're now in a period of time where you can work for a United States company from anywhere in the world. And we have to prepare kids for that. And so helping them understand about the world, understand and work with people from all over the world when they're young,
00:14:15
Speaker
is going to set them up for success later. And having global experiences, I firmly believe, is not just for people who have means. It is for everybody, and it is up to us teachers to make sure that we give kids global experiences. Because it's not, can we do it for kids? It's how do we do it for all kids? This is awesome. So you're a big advocate for side hustles, and you talked about it. You wrote a book.
00:14:45
Speaker
encouraging teachers by leveraging their own expertise. How did you get into that? And how did that book come together? My book is called the ultimate guide for selling the ultimate guide to selling your original world language resources. So in maybe 2012, 2013, somewhere in there, I heard about this new little company called teachers pay teachers. And I, I like made an account, but I didn't really do anything with it.
00:15:12
Speaker
And then I moved to Colorado in 2014 and I was like, oh wow, the cost of living here is a lot higher. A lot different. Yeah. And I, like most teachers, I, I had a side job, but I needed another one. So I really started filling up my teachers pay teacher store and I created curriculum and sold it. And over the years really developed kind of best practices for that as a world language teacher. And I work with a Spanish teacher friend of mine were partners
00:15:42
Speaker
And I thought, wow, like I'm making a good amount of money and I bet I could show other teachers how to do this so they could make money at home in their pajamas using their degree. And so my district put on these classes where teachers in the district could teach other teachers various things and the students who are teachers could get credit for it.
00:16:11
Speaker
And I taught a class on how to sell or how to open, fill and grow an online curriculum store, like in teachers pay teachers. And that was kind of my rough draft. And I thought, all right, let's make this into a book. And I wrote manuscript proposals to 10 and sent them to 10 different traditional publishers. Every proposal was between 15 and 25 pages. And I heard back
00:16:39
Speaker
with We're Interested from Routledge, which is an imprint of Taylor and Francis. They're an international academic publisher. And then I went through the process of the review and I kept on going on and on and getting past each level of steps and got a contract, wrote a book, and it was published last year. That's amazing. So we'll link to it again. What was the title again? Sorry about that. We'll link to it in the show notes of this podcast. But what was the name of the book?
00:17:09
Speaker
the ultimate guide to selling your original world language resources. All right. If you want to check that out, be sure to see the link in the show notes. Can you provide a few tips for teachers on how to get started? Selling curriculum? Yeah. Okay. First, find a platform that you like. Teachers Pay Teachers is probably the biggest one, but there are some others too.
00:17:33
Speaker
And then the biggest thing is to just start like, don't worry about all the details initially, because you could be bogged down for a year. Just start, start writing curriculum and upload, upload, upload. So I talk about in my book, the golden rule I say for selling curriculum online is it's a numbers game. The more you have online, the better you'll do.
00:18:00
Speaker
And that's not to say that you can upload crap. It has to be good resources for kids. But the more you have, the better you'll do. So pick a platform, dive in, and upload, upload, upload. Awesome. And so you noted earlier, with your global ed and all types of things you're into, you're an avid traveler. Yes.
Budget Travel Tips for Educators
00:18:22
Speaker
So do you have any tips, any budget saving tips for educators who aren't able to travel as much as they would like to?
00:18:27
Speaker
Too many for the time that we have, Eddie. But a couple of things. First of all, get hooked up on Scott's Cheap Flights. So it's scotscheapflights.com. There is a free version and a paid version that's also super cheap. But that website will send you airfares that are like flash sales and mistake fares. And you can get super cheap tickets.
00:18:57
Speaker
on there. I also am really big into hunting out experiences that are free. So sign up, like, apply to be an NEA Foundation Global Education Fellow, because that fellowship culminated in a 10 day trip to South Africa, that was free. Yeah. Or like, the Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms program,
00:19:26
Speaker
Same thing, it ends in a trip abroad that's free. Now you have to apply and you have, and it's a competitive program, these things are, but why not try? And then lastly, I am really big into travel hacking. So that's the kind of thing you can Google it. There's a lot of information about it, but it's basically how you, uh, accumulate miles with different airlines without actually flying. Hey.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Something we have to look into. Yes. So you know, we got to get a travel story out of you.
Memorable Travel Experiences
00:20:02
Speaker
Can you share a couple, share one of your favorites? Oh my God. So many good ones. I often tell my students about, my dad was a high school biology teacher and he took trips abroad with students and they were always,
00:20:20
Speaker
science themed. So I studied marine biology with him in the Bahamas. I studied the rainforest in Belize studied the jungle on the Amazon. When we were in Belize, we had a local guide, a Mayan guide take us into the rainforest to go iguana hunting, not to kill them, but to catch them and like hold them. And he shimmied up a tree like the iguanas would
00:20:48
Speaker
sleep in the trees and he shimmied up the tree faster than I've ever seen anyone climb a tree and bounced on this branch to shake the iguana off. The iguana fell into the river. The guy got off, chased the iguana in the river because they can't swim very fast, caught him by the tail. He's thrashing around and eventually just gave in and then we got to pass the iguana around and that was fun. In Peru,
00:21:16
Speaker
So I grew up in the Midwest in a big time fishing family. And then in Peru, we got to go, anybody who wanted to could go fishing. And I was like, yes, what are we fishing for? Well, piranha. And when you fish for piranha, the bait is raw meat. And that was different. That was a good time.
00:21:42
Speaker
That would have been a shock to the system for the first time. Like, oh, what are we doing? Yeah. Yeah. And then kind of like combining your last question, like cheap travel and and this one travel stories. I for a long time would travel abroad with my best friend on couch surfing.org. So we created profiles and you just stay on people's couches for free. I bet. Yeah. So the first time we did that was in Italy.
00:22:12
Speaker
And we didn't have any references because we were brand new. So no women would host us. So we had to start asking men. And they we got men to host us. And we learned that Italian men love to cook for American women. Wow. We got fed great food and did not pay to stay. Oh, that would have been amazing. Yeah, like, well, we bought we bought all of our hosts like a bottle of nice wine, but
00:22:42
Speaker
That's amazing.
Shoutout and Conclusion
00:22:45
Speaker
So we have a new feature on the podcast that we call the shoulder tap. It's when you give a tap on the shoulder and let you let a teacher know that they're ready to become nationally board certified on here. You'll give them a quick shout out. So today, who are you shoulder tapping? Oh man. I am shoulder tapping Victoria hatch.
00:23:00
Speaker
She is a French teacher in Boulder, Colorado, and she was actually my student teacher. And I remember when she was student teaching with me, I just thought like, like you just sometimes, you know, like, you know that someone has got it. You're like, yeah, she's got it. Like she has got what it takes to be a teacher and to be effective as a teacher. She was excellent with students and I saw growth.
00:23:31
Speaker
And she was really excellent with the language. And I just thought, man, she's already awesome. And it's going to keep on growing. So I think her next step should be board certification. That's amazing. We'll be on the lookout, Victoria. We coming. Yes. Where can the folks find you on social media? Last year, I joined Twitter. So it's still a little new for me, but I'm enjoying it. So my Twitter handle is at erin, E-R-I-N dash
00:24:01
Speaker
E H dash Austin A U S T I N. Awesome. And we'll look to that on us too. Thank you for taking the time here. This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much, Eddie. That was good time.
00:24:14
Speaker
It was great to catch up with Erin. Glad to hear that she's doing work to help Colorado MVCTs get the pace type and they deserve. Be sure to put those travel tips to use. We'll leave the links in the description. And I'm wanting to say thank you again to Erin for joining me and thank you for listening to National Board Conversations. Be sure to follow us on all social media for all your National Board updates and we'll see you next time.