Taking to a New Way of Doing Things

Taking to a New Way of Doing Things

My wife was an elementary school teacher for 35 years. During that time, most of her role was spent as a Bi-Lingual tutor for children whose native language was not English. Since leaving the school system she has continued to tutor, be it adults in English as a 2nd language courses, seminarians in Spanish (which is my wife’s native language), or most recently children again who need help with their elementary school studies. I am sure she has no idea how many tutoring sessions she has done, but I do know this. All of her tutoring sessions were done in person until March 18, 2020.

The COV19 virus impacted life in so many ways for so many people. At first, my wife, (and I further for that matter), figured we would meet our clients still in person, whether it be for tutoring or in my case coaching. However, then the warnings became more serious. In particular, my wife has 2 brothers who are doctors. And, in no uncertain terms they outlined not only the necessity for “social distancing,” but more than that the potential impacts for individual people and society in general. We both got the message. No in person meetings with clients.

For me, that is not that unusual. A number of my clients have worked with me over the telephone for a long time. I have even also met with clients who have wanted “face to face” but were too far away to meet, via online tools, such as Skype, and in more recent time Zoom. However, while my wife was vaguely familiar with Skype, (she had seen it work as a way to connect her 98 year old mother with her Mom’s 96 year old brother about 7 years ago), she had not used it since. When I would say Zoom to my wife she would think “that would be what would happen when you were in the car, stepped on the gas pedal, and the car went real fast.” She had no idea of it being a “meeting platform” that one could use on their computer or mobile device.

At first, my wife figured that perhaps the non-face-to-face meetings meant a pause in her tutoring for a while. However, one of the parents who was looking for tutoring for their child, and the franchise owner of the tutoring company for which she sub-contracts, asked her would she be willing to tutor virtually. My wife and I discussed the request. I indicated to her that I did feel that she could do it. I did have some familiarity with the concept through my coaching sessions. Plus, I explained, while it might be learn as you go for a while, that I expected she was going to find an approach that would work for her and her students.

The session that she did on March 18, 2020 was done via Skype. I could tell within 5 minutes she was in her element. All signs of being timid disappeared from her voice. She was quickly engaged with her student, a 6th grade student with whom she was helping with writing assignments. To pass writing samples, they used email accounts. When the session was over, she was fully pumped from the experience. I told her how proud I was of her in terms of doing something with which she was familiar in an unfamiliar way.

Since that time, we have set up a Zoom account for my wife. She will continue with the same student, and is open to using Zoom with other students if feasible. Even the tutoring sessions in Spanish with the seminarians is a possibility.

I too, have made myself open to doing things differently, especially during this time of unusual need in our society. To this point, any presentations I have done on job search have been done in person. I have not done any remote presentations in 7 to 8 years, and even then, the ones I originally did, did not go well. By the same token, some of the tools available in today’s environment were not as widely available even that short a time ago.

I am in the process of preparing for my first Zoom virtual presentation for April 15, 2020. In addition, I realize with my schedule somewhat changed, (not being able to travel, pretty much homebound), this is a good time for me to become more familiar with technologies I use only on a “surface” level or others that I may have “avoided” in the past that are used by many others in my field.

“Necessity is the mother of invention” is an old English proverb. However, in our very modern world of 2020, a world-wide pandemic that is impacting the entire planet has put all of us, big and small, powerful or “every-day Joe’s” being faced with the prospect of doing things in ways which are unfamiliar to us. Are you up to the challenge?