What is your VI specialist archetype?

The beginning of the school year is about to pop off! So we are coming back from our break to bring you season five and today we are diving into the different types of VI Specialists and we're going to help you identify which one you are so that way you can create even more impact and lead even more balanced, fulfilling lives. Are you ready to rock and roll? Let's do this!

In this podcast episode:

• Updates throughout the break

• VI Specialist Archetypes

  1. Burnt-out-Baileys

  2. Summertime-Stevie

  3. Die-hard-Dean

  4. Impactful-Irene

• Two offers for you

Transcript of the Episode:

Updates Throughout the Break

Welcome back to the podcast and welcome to Season 5. I cannot believe this is our fifth year starting this podcast being here with you. This is amazing! If you got an actual break, just high five yourself. Congratulations! Send me a DM on Instagram because I want to know where you went, what you do. Did you hang low? Did you go places? You've got people moving all around the world these days and everything is being changed up. And guess what? I am here for it.

Today we're going to be diving into what type of VI specialist are you? Whether that's a teacher of students with visual impairments and orientation and mobility specialists or any other kind of VI specialist. Now, these probably go for all kinds of teachers, and maybe even all types of anybody in education. But I'm gonna call it a VI specialist archetype because these are my people. And this is exactly what I know to be true. So we're gonna dive into that. 

But first, if you're interested at all, I'll give you a little bit of like, what's been going on? Because it's been over a month. Where did I go? What have I been doing? Well, if you're on Instagram with me, especially on Instagram Stories, you see the day to day of my life. So if you're ever interested in that, please come on and like hang out with me on the day to day, because I'll show you glimpses of everything going on.

So for those of you guys who are on Instagram with me, you know that we've been hanging out, we've been working, we've been doing a lot of things behind the scenes. The really cool thing about this job that I have right now is that A, nobody really talks to me unless I want them to which is so nice for an introvert. Oh my introverts are like, Yeah, that sounds amazing. But the other really cool thing is, during summer, I can see why admins love summer so much because you can get so much done. It is amazing the things that you can get done when you don't have to teach. It's been so lovely.

Now we haven't taken any time off here at Allied, this is the summer where I really knew that we needed to be ahead of the curve of what is coming down the pipe. And I really wanted us and we have a really, really small team to buckle down and to sow the seeds that I know we needed to sow and do so correctly.

Things have been really fun on the personal and my kids are in camp that has been going really well. They love camp, there were two weeks where we had them pulled from camp just to save a little bit of money and actually, like spend time with my kids. And that was really fun. I got to see them for one week. And then I got sick. And so they were with their dad the other week. And you know, you just got to be grateful for your co-parent and the people that you choose to create lives with because he really stepped up when he wasn't expecting to. And that was really nice. But since then, I've just really been back at it. We've been recording podcast episodes, and this season has so many amazing guests coming down the pipe. I cannot wait to share more of that with you. So that's me in a nutshell of what's been going on.

VI Specialist Archetypes

Now let's talk about you. And what's about to pop off if you haven't been paying attention. We're about to roll into a year with a crazy teacher shortage, friend. And I could see that coming down from miles and miles away. So what we did on the back end was we hired Teachers have students with visual impairments to expand our clarity lesson plan offers.

Previously, we have a membership if you don't know where we offer lesson plans every month and webinars to our membership. Now it's a really low cost membership option and it saves dozens of hours per month for our people and it has been absolutely amazing. A lot of the people who joined two years ago at the start of the pandemic, when we first started this, are still in it today. And they're still able to go into the library and look up whatever lesson plans they want, get inspired, feel ready for new lessons or be able to pivot at the drop of a hat. And with this huge teacher shortage, I really knew that we needed to expand our offer to not just O and M, but all areas of the ECC.

So we hire these TVIs. And we asked them to write lesson plans, and oh, my goodness. The quality of these lesson plans and the expertise that these contributors are bringing to the table, I could not have imagined anything better. And we had high expectations, you can ask them, we have high expectations of the quality of these lesson plans and the ease of use as well because they have to be something that you can literally log in, look up what you want, download it, edit the lesson plan, however you want to, edit the materials however you want to or need to, and it's all digital, and do so in five minutes or less. And they bought it. The quality of the lesson plans, the quality of the materials, you can literally open up your computer, download these things, and literally teach right from them. And know that you're making a significant impact.

I am so excited and so proud of this offer and of being able to help you guys. Being able to support you is one of the greatest joys of my life, even more so than the fact that nobody talks to me on a daily basis besides Diane, our customer service and operations person. Because it's gonna save so much time. We're about to walk into a situation where our case loads are going to be expanded, just because there aren't enough teachers to do our jobs with us. And if we can save you that much time, and energy and effort, you get to live a balanced life and make a significant impact in the lives of your learners. And like, that's exactly what we're here for.

But in order to do that, I've realized that we have to figure out where we stand on the matrix of VI specialist archetypes. I'm in a great position where I have this eagle view of so many different people in our field. And I get to talk to superintendents, University personnel, and us, the teachers. And I get to talk to secretaries and I get to talk to different students all around the world. And what I've noticed throughout my 15 years of doing this job, and then the past five years of having these amazing worldwide connections, is that we all basically fall into four different archetypes. Now we can move through the archetypes and we can make that change if we so choose and that is such, such a beautiful thing.

So there's a balance between how impactful are we as teachers? And how much do we actually get to enjoy our lives, because we could fall anywhere on the four quadrants between being impactful and enjoying your life; or being impactful, not so much enjoying your personal life; or not really being non impactful. And most of the time, that person doesn't really know it, and having a great life, or not really being impactful and not really enjoying your life.

• Burnt-Out-Baileys

So let's break those four down. And we'll start really from the “bottom up” and understanding that really, it's just a quadrant style matrix. So the bottom, we have the burnt-out-Bailey now the burnt-out-Bailey is often very jaded. We don't get into teaching to suck at it. We get into teaching to do an amazing job to make a difference. And it gets really hard to do that when maybe you're taught how to teach, or you're taught O and M, or you're taught Braille, or you're taught how to teach the areas of the ECC, but you're not taught how to be a leader in this field. And without those systems in place, oftentimes, we end up spinning our wheels. And a lot of us are leaving school and university, not knowing how to do basic things, like how to take a cord out of a cane. And so when we are not set up for success, our teaching suffers. And not only that, but because we're spinning our wheels, so much trying to get our teaching up to par, our personal lives also suffer.

Now, it can always happen that something dramatic or drastic happens in your personal life, and then it affects your teaching. And if you have systems in place, to be able to consistently teach creative lessons, your whole world can crumble and fall apart. And you can still show up and teach creative lessons and help your learners continue along their path. But when both of those are not working, it can feel like you're running on a hamster wheel. And then a lot of times, we have two options in that mode, we can either get super jaded, and do things like, and I'm saying this because I've been there, we can take work home with us, and then work extra. And then when we get to work, not be focused, and not do our work correctly. Or we can just give up and not care. Neither one of those options are very good. The only option that we have is to rise up above out of that archetype.

• Summertime-Stevie

Now after burnt-out-Bailey , we have summertime-Stevie. And these are all names that we voted on Instagram. And like the fact that they actually have names, we tried to make them as non binary as possible. But, you know, we have to have some sort of alliteration. So bear with us on the names here.

Summertime-Stevie, that's probably not that many of us. This is the type of teacher and you know, this type of teacher that really shows up to teaching for the breaks. They're the ones who saw teaching as a way to have summers and Christmas break and Spring Break completely off. And they do, they turn totally off. And while that is great, their students are suffering. But they can't see that their students are suffering, like we see it. Because we have learners making more progress faster, but they may not be able to see it. I'm thinking I had a few teachers like this in high school where they were like the baseball coach, right? Or they were like a great friend type mentor to the students. And that was all great and dandy. But the baseball coach was teaching to be a baseball coach, they didn't want to teach, they wanted to be a baseball coach, and they were a great baseball coach, I'm sure I have no idea really.

But for me, I'd be like, how many book reports do I have to do? Like you're literally sitting there watching baseball during like class. I don't need to do another book report. But okay, I guess that's what we're doing today. You know, that type of teacher. And maybe there have been times where you have been that type of teacher. Again, the key here is to keep the balance, keep your personal life awesome, keep that zest and that drive for teaching awesome. But also, then you have to find ways to increase your learner's skills. And as itinerant teachers, we get to make it up. So who's to say?

And if we decide that we want to make the IEP a little less difficult, because oh, we're expecting a longer rainy season; or, oh, I'm not sure if this learner is gonna actually be able to do X, Y, and Z. And I don't want to put us in a situation where we have to really push for it later. Or we have to tell the parents that no, they didn't accomplish their IEP is because honestly, nobody wants to be in that situation. To tell an admin, to tell a parent that oh, this learner did not accomplish their IEPs. So I completely get that part. But there is a balance between the area where the learners are not making the progress that they need to be making or that they deserve to be making and pushing and actually working and really going for their goals? So that's summertime-Stevie.

• Die-Hard-Dean

Now the next one is where I think most of us are going to be in the people who have taken our VI specialist archetype quiz, which I'll give you that link in just a little bit. Most people have been in this one, I just I'm curious as to which one you're going to be in? Well, we've got a lot of die-hard-Dean's in our community. Now die-hard-Dean, this is also what we were gonna call hustling Henry or hustling Henrietta, basically, because you're hustling. You're a great teacher, because you work really hard at being a great teacher. Maybe you're listening to a work podcast. There's nothing wrong with this. This is amazing. Your learner's are making a lot of progress. And maybe if you're like extroverted, maybe you get a lot of recognition at work, maybe you stay late, and people see how hard you're working. And in our culture, working hard equals good person. Think about that. Hard worker = good person, person who stays until 7pm equals great employee, you don't know what their life is like outside of that.

I remember my first year teaching, I was getting my master's degree, at the same time as I was teaching. And typically when you get your master's degree, you write this 10 page paper and then you write a 20 page paper. And you basically just add the 10 pages on to the other one. I did things so backwards, just like I have my entire career. And I had to write my 20 page paper without the skills of writing this 10 page paper. So I worked. And I would work until 7pm. or later. A lot of that came from the fact that I didn't have a personal life. And I knew that when I went home, I was gonna have to sit down and work more, but I would just be by myself.

At the very beginning, when you're first starting out, and you don't have your wings underneath you, I think it's one thing to really put in the work your first five years, as long as you're also balancing it out with a solid, healthy, personal life. But what a lot of us do, is we get out of college, we go straight into teaching. And we don't know when enough is enough. So we start putting in these 14 hour work days. And that continues, and that becomes our norm.

And then the systems that we develop around our teaching, you know the things that support our teaching, like how fast does it take you to do an assessment? How long is it taking you to write progress reports? How often do you talk to parents? And what's your relationship like with them? What are your admin tasks like? How are you doing those? We aren't taught how to systematize that stuff. And so we end up doing things like writing IEP goals that are off the mark. And then we spend more time trying to spin our wheels trying to get the learner to where they need to be, or even to get to those IEP goals that we wrote. But they're just, they're not correct, or they're not the right ones for that learner. Or we write things like we'll cross the street with 70% accuracy, and then spend half an hour trying to remember what it, what does that even look like when we sit down to write progress reports.

Now the thing here is, we don't balance it out. That becomes our norm. And then when we want to actually have a personal life at some point, then things become off balance. And we might become more of like, this summertime Stevie or that's when a lot of us get burnt out. We become a burnt out Bailey, because our systems were never there to support us in the first place. And nobody cares, because as long as you're staying later than the boss, you're a good person. You're a good worker, and that is not healthy.

I was in this die-hard-Dean space, I would say up until almost up until I got married. And what ended up happening was I went from die-hard-Dean, my first I would say five years, to then I became very burnt out. And luckily nobody else really has this. Luckily for me at that time, I had a coworker who watched my lessons because we shared an office and she was like, You're not mentally here as much as you need to be.

And when she shared that piece of information with me, it clicked like, yes. I'm not. Why? What's going on with me? It was because I was taking so much work home, I was working on the weekend so much that when I got to work, I was like, Oh, my gosh, I'm so exhausted. And then I tried having a personal life. It was kinda like, it was kind of like I put whipped cream on top of garbage. And I tried to live a balanced life and it just was not working. And then I got married and quickly had two children in 19 months. And it was so tough. I was a die-hard-Dean falling all over myself. And on the verge of burnt-out-Bailey. 

There was a time when I had kids, when I still have kids. But if you've ever had a little kids, there's a point in time where you're basically making three dinners, where like, they need to have milk, and they need to have food, and you need to have food. And none of these are the same food or thing. And we didn't do purees or anything like that. So I thought we were just doing so good. But I knew that if I left work, even 15 minutes after, when I was supposed to leave work, 15 minutes, okay, 15 minutes, that's it. I would not get to eat dinner. And it happened for weeks, for months, three days a week, I just would not get the dinner because I had three meals to make between me and one of my kids, and then a full other meal to make for my other kid. And at that time, I had an administrator in a staff meeting, specifically say you are expected to stay until all meetings are done. But they would schedule meetings, right at the end of my day. And so my choice was, stay and be a good employee, and then not eat dinner, and go to bed, malnourished, upset, crying, so hungry, or am I going to be the obstinate bad employee.

And unfortunately, a lot of us down here in the bottom are in positions like that. And it's really hard to balance that out. So I have a lot of respect for the die-hard-Dean era, in my life and in your life. And this is where I come in. Because we can set up those systems in place. And we can figure out more innovative strategies to get things done faster. And that's exactly what I want to do.

• Impactful Irene

Because when we master those, then we can become the impactful-Irene. Now, this archetype, I want to call them impactful AF. This is like the epitome. This is where you want to be at all times in your career. And when you can get there. It's amazing. But it's also a little bit more of a mindset thing. There isn't one specific, hurray, hurrah, celebration, and then you're here. You know, it's not like you walk through some gates and then you're like, cool. I'm never going back to burnt-out-Bailey, because that's not true. You have to keep it up.

Now impactful-Irene is the teacher whose learners are making incredible progress. This teacher shows up every day, so happy to be at work. And they have a great personal life. And sometimes you're like, how do you do that? What is your secret? Tell me all the things. I'll tell you. They're things they have mastered their systems. They show up and are able to consistently teach creative, impactful lessons consistently. And they can do so without having to stay late every day to plan or to make materials or to stay late to call parents because they have set up their own guidelines. They know exactly where they are. Say it's like a football game, right? They know exactly how they're going to take that ball all the way to the goal every single day. And they know their boundaries, and they stick to them and they live within their boundaries.

Now some of us are going to have different amounts of time available for work that we consider it a “balanced life”. It's all going to be different per person. The key here is that they have systems in place, they have their boundaries in place, and they stick within them. And they maximize the 1% of time that they have with their learners. If you are teaching Braille, you're up to 2%. Hallelujah, good for you. Most of us are down at the 1% range. We get 1% of our learners, waking lives with them and yet we are responsible for creating independent people. Kind of seems like an impossible task but it's not. We just have to know exactly what to focus on and do so on a daily basis. So that way, we're not showing up to the student on the day of saying, okay, get in my car, get in my van. And when they say what are we doing today, say? And then you make up a lesson plan right on the spot. We don't want that.

Two Offers for you

There are ways around it. And I have two offers for you. The first is to go take the VI specialist archetype quiz. It's five or six questions, and it will help you to see which archetype you are currently in and really what questions to help guide you to where you want to be. You can find that alliedindependenceonline.com/quiz, alliedindependenceonline.com/quiz. And that will take you to a little bit longer of a link where you can take the quiz itself. 

Then two, on August 4th, 5th and August 8th, I'm going to be teaching a live training, sharing the areas of the IEP that you can upgrade. When your IEP has come around, this training will show you how to teach creative lessons without having to stay late to plan. It's all in systematizing your IEP processes to help set your learners up so that their assessments create a domino effect on your day to day actions. I'm basically going to teach you how to backward chain your lesson plans. And we're going to do so using the lessons that I've learned throughout my many years and the lessons from other people as well.

I know that that was a lot to take in. Let's quickly review and then let you get… let you get you on your way. All right, so we have four different archetypes that VI specialists can fall under. burnt-out-Bailey, summertime-Stevie, die-hard-Dean, and impactful-Irene. If you want to know what your archetype is, go to alliedindependenceonline.com/quiz. And if you want to join us for the live training that will help you consistently teach creative lessons without having to stay late to plan. Be on the lookout for that link. That live training is happening August 4th, 5th, and 8th. And we will share all of that information with you starting, I believe next week in our podcast episode. All right until then, your task is to take one idea and use that to take a step forward.