To Give or to Get?

I teach a fourth grade religious school class every Wednesday afternoon and Sunday morning. Yesterday afternoon I was in the middle of teaching and I remembered that I had not done something I promised to do. Bob Schwartz, our business development guy, had asked me to schedule a meeting with somebody he met who was interested in our company. Beth Kahn, our office administrator, schedules all of my meetings and I had forgotten to speak with Beth. So, in the middle of class I called Beth and asked her to schedule the meeting.

Why is this such a big deal?

Michigan's economy is one of the worst economies, if not the worst economy, in the nation. Many, many people are unemployed, particularly those who used to work at one of the car companies, which supported Michigan's economy for a very long time. Obviously when an industry that supports a local economy suffers, as the automobile industry has suffered, other local industries suffer as well. The individual with whom Bob wanted me to speak used to work at one of the automobile industries. (I'm not certain what he did there, but my guess is he worked on an assembly line.) After working for twenty years he decided that he wanted to pursue a lifelong dream and become a writer and speaker. First, he earned both an associates degree and a B.A. I was most intrigued after Bob showed me a book that this individual wrote. Wow!! The title of the book is "Grade Grabbers: Improve Your GPA."

I suspect that this individual is interested in a job. But, even though my schedule has gotten pretty busy, I'm eager to sit down with somebody who decided after twenty years on a job to go back and get a college degree and then wrote a book. Without even having met this individual yet, he sounds rather interesting.

So, why did I call my office in the middle of teaching? I suspected that this individual might be waiting for a phone call from my office. I know that if I was in his situation I would be anxious. My thought was why make him wait. Alleviate his anxiety. After I got off the phone, I explained to my students why I had made the phone call. I told them the old adage that if you give somebody a fish you feed them for a day but if you teach somebody to fish you give them the skills of feeding themselves for a lifetime. If this guy is as much of a go getter as he sounds, then I would have no problem in giving him a job.

In Judaism, the greatest act of charity is giving somebody a job. Yet, thinking about this fact from my chair, I'm wondering why this is the case. I don't give people jobs to be generous. (I'm simply not in that kind of a position.) Rather, I give people jobs so that they can help my company grow and be successful. Perhaps this is selfish, not charitable? Can selfishness and charity compliment one another? I'm not sure but it sounds like an interesting question, at least to me.

A Freelancing Organization

This past Wednesday Pass-Ed held it's weekly strategy meeting. During the meeting I made the following point: One way to think about Pass-Ed is as a freelance organization. In other words, as an organization we do what freelancers do but on a significantly larger scale. I then challenged my staff to consider what differentiates us from individual freelancers.

Two important points came up:
First, we have resources available that individuals simply could not have. Rather than asking a single individual to do everything we divide up the work according to expertise. So, if we have a project that calls for both writing and animation, we'll divide the work appropriately. Furthermore, we always seek advice as to how to improve our content development from practicing our teacher associates, practicing classroom teachers whom we've contracted with to specifically fulfill this advisory function.

Second, the same resources that make us a valuable partner to publishing houses and other organizations needing K-12 educational content, makes us a great place to work for developers. We ask them to work to their expertise and they're supported in other areas, collaboratively. Furthermore, unlike so many freelancers who must spend a large portion of their time looking for new business, our developers don't have to do this. Instead our sales and marketing team gets the business for them. This means that they get more time to do what they want to be doing.

I'm in the process of developing a tri-fold brochure about our organization. (We have rented an exhibit booth at the Association for Educational Publishers' annual summit, in early June, in Washington, D.C. and we'd like to be able to distribute this tri-fold.) Well, after writing this blog post, I think I've just written the first draft for one of the tri-folds. It seems like a useful explanation of what we do.

International Reading Association Conference

One of the things that I really enjoy (at least some of the time) about being the head of a company is the travel. I get to meet many interesting people as I travel across the country. Earlier this week I was at the International Reading Association annual convention in Atlanta.

I was amazed at how few companies were promoting products related to technology. While I spoke to many people who advocated the importance of developing more web-based products, few companies were selling these kinds of products. However, more companies had such products this year than last year. My guess: Within six years the exhibition hall will be filled with technology products. One only has to look at the report, "America's Digital Schools, 2008" to recognize that the use of computer technology in U.S. schools has dramatically increased over the last couple of years.

I had one dominant thought as I perused the booths in the exhibit hall. Pass-Ed is in a wonderul position to help publishing companies reposition themselves to take advantage of opportunities in the digital world. As I write this blog post, one of our staff members is sitting across the hall working on a flash development project, another is developing a transcript for a training video, and still a third is working on educational content for a website partner.

The next few years do promise to be very exciting in the educational publishing industry.

A New Logo

I'm thrilled to introduce Pass-Ed's new logo to the world.

There's something about a bridge that has intrigued me since I started to think about education from what I hope is a sophisticated perspective. I've always thought that good teachers connect important content matter and students. They develop bridges. The best teachers know how to construct lots of individual bridges so each student can interact with subject matter in meaningful ways.

Bob Schwartz, Pass-Ed's new head of sales and marketing, and I just had a discussion about the role of a bridge from a publishing perspective. I suggested that a quality publisher might be compared to an automobile. People need cars to drive across bridges. But a car without a driver, or published material without a teacher, is pointless. I'm not sure how much I like this metaphor but it's an idea.

I'm certainly not willing to equate a driver and a teacher. For the best teachers know that students often learn best when they are encouraged to follow their own chains of thought and motivations. Perhaps in these cases, the published content becomes both a car and a driver. Here's a current example: Dan Wilson, an intern with our company, is currently developing an activity considering Western expansion using Google Earth, for a client. The KML file includes video, pictorial images, prose, and critical thinking questions among numerous other content. Dan's also developed activities to engage students. Students might enjoy interacting with this content at their own pace and in their own methods. Too much teacher guidance might hinder the learning experience, since it's a student centered activity. Pass-Ed's content has become both driver and car. The content is actively enabling students to interact with important ideas about Westward Expansion. The content is serving as a bridge.

Judging a Book by its Cover

Sometimes you should judge a book by its cover. This is especially true of Chip and Dan Heath's new book, "Made to Stick." The book presents a paradigm for understanding why some ideas attract a following and others don't. You can certainly understand why somebody would pick up this book - they stick to the duct tape.

After reading this book, I'll never look at velcro in the same way again. Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that one side of the velcro has dozens and dozens of little hooks that catch on to threads on the other end. Go ahead and try and see those hooks.

As the founder and CEO of Pass-Ed I'm constantly thinking about hooks. What can my organization do to try and catch the attention of others? What can we do to make people give us a second look? We need to have a great story to tell - a story that makes people want to listen.

Just what is that story? It's one thing to write that our company produces content in all major subject areas for both print and digital venues, as we've been writing. However, that story isn't going to inherently keep people's attention, unless of course they recognize a need for content and don't have the ability to produce their own content.

Perhaps the story that will cling to people's attention is that of a little boy who couldn't speak properly. This cute little five year old had such a hard time talking that he pronounced "biurthday party" as "diddy daddy." Given this child's gross motor skill deficits he was in special education through first grade and in speech therapy through junior high school. He did wonder if he had the skills to succeed and often felt as if he did not. This kid never scored a basket in a basketball game or hit the ball out of the infield. But, he did enter an Ivy League school and go on to pursue his doctorate in education at one of the top schools of education in the country. This kid, now an adult, still wonders if people are listening to him. After all they certainly had a hard time listening to him when they couldn't understand him. Consequently, he recognizes that students must learn to respect one another, listen to one another, and challenge one another to think critically as they discuss important ideas. This kid has built an educational development company that promotes healthy interaction between students, an interaction that promotes respect and development of self confidence. Following in the footsteps of his own teachers, this kid has worked hard to develop resources to help students take advantage of their strengths and overcome their weaknesses.

This is my true story.

I wonder if my story has the necessary hooks to make people want to pay attention?

The title of this blog post, Judging a Book by It's Cover, makes sense to me. Because my story is truly the cover of a book. Just because I have this story does not mean that my organization produces rich content of the highest quality. But, will my story make people take a second look?