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Have you ever just loved teaching so much, but then you found yourself in a

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position of blah, bah, humbug, I am just not feeling it. Where did my passion go?

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Do I even really want to do this anymore? Or do I have to do this anymore?

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Do I have to do it like this? Well, today's podcast is going to shine some light on the opportunity that micro

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schools give you as a a teacher, as a parent, an entrepreneur,

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this entrepreneurship that you will be gaining in creating your own school.

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I'm going to talk to you about how it literally fuels your passion, my friend.

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So get ready to be inspired. Let's do the thing.

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Welcome teacher to the Let Your Light Shine podcast.

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If you're searching for the freedom and permission to design the life you love

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as a teacher, you're in the right place.

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I'm I'm on a mission to help teachers just like you build their own dream school

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or homeschooling business. Music.

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In this present day, the world needs you, teacher friend, to step out in faith

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and give students an education they love and so deserve.

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In this podcast, I will teach you how to start a fulfilling and profitable homeschooling

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business that lights you up. I'm Mackenzie Oliver, former elementary teacher and instructional coach,

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gone homeschool teacher teacher, and business builder.

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I'm here to empower you to step outside the classroom and choose the experiences,

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the curriculum, and all the moments that put a smile on your face and your students.

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Does it seem like a dream? Well, it did to me until God opened the doors and made it reality.

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Together, we are breaking through fears and moving the crowd.

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Music.

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So get out your notebook, sharpen your pencil. It's time to get your teach on.

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I just want to give a great shout out to my girl, Madeline.

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Thank you so much, Madeline, for giving me a beautiful response when it came

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to your business bundle. I asked Madeline, who had just received the business bundle,

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how it was going, how she was doing with it.

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And she said that the business bundle is great and inspired me me to get started.

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I just came up with a name, logo, my five pillars, and then I filed for an LLC.

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It moved me right out of analysis paralysis. Way to go, girl.

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Yes. Thank you for the review. But most importantly, thank you for taking the

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opportunity to invest in yourself, invest your time, and just put your beautiful

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idea into action, honey. Great job.

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And another great shout Shout out to our girl.

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From way back at the beginning of the Teacher Let Your Light Shine phase era,

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when it all began, Mercedes Grant.

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Mercedes wrote on her Facebook page the other day that she loved being able

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to take what she cultivated in her classroom and spread it to an entire school.

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Mercedes actually was someone who had dreamed about having her own micro school for a long time.

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You should listen Listen to her story about how her aunts or her grandmas,

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one of the other, they actually had a school.

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And it's just so beautiful to see how she's taking something from her time or

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her generation back in the day and taking it and carrying it forward.

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We get that opportunity ourselves, my friends.

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We get to give that back to the generations that come after us, your own children.

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Your nieces, your nephews, whomever it is, it's very special to you that you

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can leave this school as a legacy to them.

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And I just talked about that in our previous episode. So go back and listen

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to the previous episode about leaving and just what happens when you take that

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leap of faith and how it not only blesses you,

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but it blesses so many people in the moment, but also for many years to come.

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Now, Mercedes does have her own school.

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She is an advocate for students learning at such a cool, authentic, personalized path.

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I've watched Mercedes really, really give her heart to this endeavor.

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She moved from another state.

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To a new state and literally started from the ground up not knowing anybody, not knowing anybody.

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And now to see her have her school and to ring the bell at her school,

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she's got this really cool bell, watching her take this love that she had for the classroom and then spread it

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to her campus is just beautiful.

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And I thought, wow, honestly, the way that she put it, I just responded to her on her Facebook page.

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And I said, well said exactly that culture that I created in my classroom,

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the culture that you create in your classroom can be your entire school culture, right?

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If you've got, if you just love the culture that you have, whether it's motivating

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students, students, building confidence, showing nurturing, showing perseverance,

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creating this community. Hands-on learning, differentiated learning, patient or energetic teaching.

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Whatever you bring to your classroom, that's what you get to bring to your entire school.

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That is a great segue into what we are talking about today, which is how having

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your own micro school can can ultimately bring back the fire,

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the passion for your job and how it can literally reignite you again.

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Really, that's exactly what happens. And for me, if you've been around here

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for the past couple of years, just listening and watching our journey,

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you will have heard me say that I became so upset.

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Oh my gosh, you guys just devastated.

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Why do I no longer enjoy what I'm doing, but I do enjoy it, but I don't.

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I don't want to stop doing what I'm doing. I love what I'm doing,

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but I don't love what I'm doing. Where's the disconnect?

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What's wrong with me? That's what I was asking myself. What's wrong with me?

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Why am I not into this like I used to be?

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But I am into it. It was like weird. I want to be into it, but I just can't

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force myself to get into it. Why is that?

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It's like exercising, you know, where you know what's really good for you and

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you really you enjoyed it at one point. you saw the results,

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it was going really good, but yet he just couldn't get into it.

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That's kind of how I felt about teaching after a while.

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And then I was mad and I was ashamed of myself. How dare I lose this, what I was known for?

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How dare I step away? It was just, it was just a rough road.

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It was just a deep pit that I was in because I didn't want to be there.

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And I wanted to love teaching again. I wanted to be excited about it.

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I wanted to be compensated for my time. I didn't want it to be bottled up anymore.

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I didn't want it to be confined. I didn't like the rules. I didn't like the regulations. I didn't like all the

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nonsense that was just stealing my joy. And here we are today with a micro school that started out of our living room,

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and then again in our living room, and then it was busting out of the seams

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in our living room year three. And now we have have 50 students in our micro school.

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And I'm telling you, I was the person who said, I don't want to grow my school very big.

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I'm great where I am right now. And I think some of that had to happen because I was scared that I was going

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to lose my passion again. But here we are.

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And I hope that you are able to see the possibilities that happens when you

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hear about building schools. schools.

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And I know what you're thinking, building a school, how big of an endeavor is that?

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Well, if you listened to the last episode, remember, you can think very big, but you start small.

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So let's talk about how we actually can get our passion back into the world,

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or just give it a a little bit of a touch up, a little bit of a fresh start.

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And that is number one. This is going to be something that I actually am going

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to build off of from our last episode. Our last episode, I discussed with those of you, am I really ready to leave

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the classroom? Am I really ready to build a micro school?

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A lot of the times when I'm working with people during our coaching sessions,

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I will hear them say, I see all these problems.

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And then I'll ask, all right, let's go through. How can you solve that problem?

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And a lot of people will give great solutions, but they can't see that they

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have the capabilities of being that solution.

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And I'm not asking you or telling you that you need to be super human here,

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but you do have a power within you that is really, really standout-ish.

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That's it. Yes, standout-ish. Instead of focusing solely on

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what you know from teaching we have to

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think about what you are really good

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at and what people think that you're good at and the problem

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is is that you may not see what you're good at have you ever just looked at

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moms with their babies or their kids you're like wow she's such a good mom and

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i try to tell moms that all the time whenever i see them and they're like oh

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no or you're such a thoughtful wife or you're such a thoughtful teacher they're They're like, girl,

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if you only knew what I just had to deal with, right?

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Or no, if you just knew how frustrated I got, or no, I'm not very good at this.

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You don't see it yourself. And this is, guys, I hope that you really do take time to do this.

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Just if you don't want to write it down, you don't have to, but I just want

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you to think for a second. What are some of the compliments you've received from parents?

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What are some of the compliments you've received from other teachers or your

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administration or your spouse, or your students?

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What is it that they really love about you?

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Because what you do in that classroom, or what you did for that child,

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or what you did for that family, or that lesson that you created that was so

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good, you have the ability to do that as much as you want.

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You can even have the ability to teach other people how to do it,

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so that you are not only teaching yourself, but you're teaching other people to do it for you.

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If that's how you see being able to start a school and maybe you want to be the director.

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The thing is, it's so incredibly apparent what your talent is if other people ask you.

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If you don't know it, go back to some of your teacher evaluations.

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I guarantee that there's a lot of really great things in there about you.

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And I think you need to sit with that for a minute.

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Sit with that and think about how you will be given the opportunity when you

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create your own school to take that and spread it through your whole campus

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or to be able to teach that way all the time without the paperwork,

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without the mumbo jumbo, without whatever it may be and that's why it's really

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important if you purchase the business bundle, this is where you get the opportunity

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to share your superpower. And if you don't know, I really hope that you'll take some time reflecting what

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has been a topic of conversation when it came to you as a teacher.

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Number two, another really great way that a micro school can totally reignite

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your passion is that you get to design your own dream classroom,

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your own dream school. Yes.

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Imagine your ideal learning environment. What does it look like?

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What's it feel like? How's it function? Forget about the traditional classroom setups. Those are gone.

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You get to envision a space that sparks creativity, collaboration,

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and curiosity. curiosity and this vision will truly drive the design of your micro school.

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Another shout out to Lori Rubel because she just posted in our Facebook group

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that someone's going to build her a classroom. And she said, although it's amazing, it's overwhelming.

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Where do I even begin? How in the world do I get to design it?

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And she's like, I'm, I'm needing some ideas.

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She's almost in shell shock, which by the way, can I just give you a little

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bit of a rundown on Lori, Lori Bloom Rubel.

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Lori and I taught together in Missouri.

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I moved to Florida 10 years ago with my husband.

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She moved to Florida two years ago, two, three years ago with her husband.

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She and I, she lives about 45 minutes away from me.

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I invited her to the Teacher Let Your Light Shine Facebook group when I just

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opened up the Facebook group because I was like, Like, oh, she's a teacher. She's a homeschool mom.

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She quit teaching. She was a homeschool mom. She loved it.

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And then she says, I was wondering, like, why would I even be in this group? But I'm not.

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I'm good with it. Let me just see what's going on. And then she just watched

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it, watched it, never had the idea to even start a school, but she just was

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in the group and would get, oh, let me see. Oh, what'd she write?

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Now she started the school in her house.

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Then it went to a church and now she's getting someone to build her a school. Come on, folks.

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Let's just Just sing a hallelujah.

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It's so good. It's so good. Not my singing, but the idea that you get the opportunity

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to design your own dream school.

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As we're looking at other possible locations, I'm like, oh, you guys know my idea.

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If you've been here for a while is I really want this farmland and I want homes

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and I want little cottage schools. tools.

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It may not be here right now, but it's still the dream and you get the chance

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to design it. Number three, come on you friends.

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You know it. You're going to love it. You get to create a curriculum that ignites your passion.

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You get to think beyond the textbooks, the standardized tests.

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You get to develop a curriculum or purchase one that taps into the passions

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of both you and your students, get to incorporate real-world projects,

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guest speakers, and just super great unconventional learning experiences.

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You really do get to make education very adventurous.

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Just think, you know those lessons you're like, why do I have to do this?

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Not anymore, my friends. Number four, technology, flexibility. Now technology, it's interesting because

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we started Started off year one with just a desktop computer at my house that six kids had to share.

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And now we have 30 Chromebooks.

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All which were purchased through the fundraisers that we have had.

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And what I love about leveraging technology is just being able to enhance your teaching methods.

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So you can consider blended learning, virtual field trips, interactive platforms.

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If you really embrace flexibility in scheduling and content delivery,

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you can really allow for personalized learning with technology.

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And you just have so many other great flexible ways to use it.

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And flexible ways to design your schedule.

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Number five, this goes back to what Mercedes mentioned, what I mentioned about

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Mercedes at the very beginning is that you get to build a tribe, not just a classroom.

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You get to cultivate a sense of belonging and community among students and parents

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and yourself. It's not a classroom, it's a tribe.

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You get to encourage open communication, collaboration, support,

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and you can literally design a school as a place where everyone feels valued and connected.

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And number six, this is so good.

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You get to monetize your passion rather than your skill.

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Instead of just merely receiving your paycheck, your salary,

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honestly, it's probably super invisible to you.

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You may not know how much you truly make, how much is going to retirement and

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taxes and insurance and all of that.

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I I definitely encourage you to take a look at that, figure it out.

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Because if you're going to be coaching with me, I'm going to say, let's look at that.

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So let's see how much you really are bringing home so that we can account for

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that as we build out your financial forecast.

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Listen, you get to charge for your passion. You can monetize your passion in

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so many unique experiences that your micro school offers.

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Guitar, music, field trips, dance class, art class, STEM, speech and debate,

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leadership, entrepreneurship.

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Are you passionate about those things? Guess what?

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You can design your whole school around it. Oh, it's so good.

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So good. You can host events. You can host workshops, even create merchandise.

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Literally, you could create merchandise for your school, for your educational

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philosophy. This is what happens when you build your own school.

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Doesn't that sound funny? When you build your own school, it's like,

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wow, go build your own school. That's just something you can do on a Saturday.

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Guys, you actually can just Saturday by Saturday, if that's what you want, or day by day.

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We think big, we start small. And you can start also too by heading over to

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teacherslayourlightshine.com slash shop.

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And you can see all the goodies that are in our business bundle,

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which is exactly what you need to get started.

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You've got to come up with these pieces, my friend.

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You have to have a process of getting the invisible idea out onto paper.

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And there are several things that you're going to need when it comes not only

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to conversing with parents and showing what you offer, but also how to market

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with these materials and then be able to also create your handbook and contract.

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All right, everybody, I hope that this episode ignites your passion.

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Make sure you join us in our Facebook group to let your light shine micro school community.

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And until next time, I will see you on the other side.

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Music.