Cassie Patt - My Blog

My Journey from Aspiring Educator to Sales Consultant

I recently had someone ask me about my choice to leave the classroom and go to work for Kinko's back in 2001. They asked if I liked the sales "gig" better than working with the students in the classroom. The answer is more complicated than just a yes or no, so, I thought that I would go over the decisions that I have made that have led me to where I am today. To begin, I knew that I wanted to be a teacher as long as I can remember. Even as a child, I was always "teaching" others (sometimes, whether they wanted me to or not). I remember setting up gymnastics lessons in my front yard and forcing the neighborhood kids to take my "classes." During school, I always felt like more of a peer to the teachers than to some of the students (ironically, later, when I became a teacher, I felt more a peer to my students than the other teachers). Upon graduating from High School, I went straight through college to receive my BA in History and my MA in Secondary Education. I hit my first year teaching with all of the enthusiasm and idealism that a 25 year old can have. My first year, I taught in a low SES Middle School. I loved it! I could see my kid's responding to my enthusiasm and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. The following year, I was recruited to the district's brand new high school. I coached cheerleading and tennis and once again found my classes full of students who really seemed to respond to my teaching. Unfortunately, I forgot that I was not 18 anyore, and tore both of my ACL's working out with the cheerleaders. I spent the next 3 years going through 4 knee surgeries, rehab and in and out of a wheelchair. As a single mother, I decided to move closer to my parents during this difficult time. For the next 2 years, I taught middle and high school Social Studies at a private school. I found that these high SES students had their own unique set of challenges, keeping me motivated. However, as a faced the economic challenges of buying a house for my son and I, I came to realize that it was going to be extremely difficult to make ends meet on a teacing salary.So, I threw my idealism out the window and became a corporate trainer for Kinko's (a friend of mine was the director of training there and had suggested the position to me). Things were going pretty well, although when August came around, my heart ached for my classroom! Then, a few weeks after school started, September 11th happened and Kinko's decided to cut our training team. Lucky me!!! :(At that point, Kinko's was expanding their outside Commercial Sales Department. Having worked retail since I was 14 (my father was a VP for a Retail Chain, and I had always worked in his stores), I decided to apply. While I was quite new to the corporate sales arena, I had a wonderful mentor and manager who had a similar learning style to mine. As a result, he was constantly suggesting books for us to read to improve our sales skills, enrolling us in sales workshops and modeling strategic sales techniques for us. Thanks to his guidance and my persistance, I was able to crush my quota every year. Having been an athlete/competitor all of my life (gymnastics, cheerleading, soccer, track, debate team, etc), I was extremely motivated by the "friendly" competitive challenge of "outselling" my colleagues. However, I was still missing the classroom. Therefore, when FedEx bought Kinko's and lowered our commissions, my old idealism sprang up and I quit. By this time, I was married with a stepson, my own son, a new baby and another baby on the way, with a husband who had just been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder (you can read more on this in my other blog). This was obviously not the best time for my "idealism" to spring its head, but, luckily for me, I found an incredible opportunity to work in Education Sales with an incredible mentor and boss at Pearson. I found that working in Education Sales allowed me to keep in touch with my first love, the classroom.I absolutely loved my work at Pearson, and would have loved to work there for the rest of my career. However, Scantron, my division's largest competitor, bought my division of Pearson. So, after returning from our President's Club trip, I was told that due to duplicate sales forces and my short tenure, I was being let go. I was in full panic mode! Keep in mind that my husband's health was deteriorating quickly and he was about to face a bone marrow transplant. In fact the transplant was scheduled for 1 month after I was let go.As a result, I took a position with Atomic Learning. Although I absolutley loved their products and still recommend them enthusiatically, this was a huge reduction in pay (half of my old pay). Therefor, when my former manager from Pearson offered me a sales position at TeleParent, back in my former payscale and with a fantastic product, I had to take him up on it. After several postponements, my husband finally had his bone marrow transplant in February. During the worst part of the transplant, when he was hanging on for his life, I was informed by TeleParent that, due to the economic times, they could only keep the sales team on as a consultants, rather than a full time employees. I am grateful that they are willing to try to work with us during these difficult times and in some ways, I appreciate the independence this has provided me to truly evaluate my options and look at the big picture.

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Is Teamwork Socialism? Where Do We Draw the Line?

I was reading an interesting blog entry about how our country is drifting toward socialism. The blogger used a story to illustrate the problems with this. "An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a
single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. That class
had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no
one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we
will have an experiment in this class on socialism.
All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same
grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the
first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students
who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were
happy.
But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied
little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they
wanted a free ride too; so they studied little. The second test average
was a D! No one was happy.
When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.
The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all
resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of
anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor
told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the
reward is great, the effort to succeed is great; but when government
takes all the reward away; no one will try or want to succeed."'Most of the readers agreed with the bloggers interpretation. Being a diehard Capitalist, I was ready to jump in and agree. However, one respondent had a different take on the lesson. He felt that the story was more of an illustration of a failure of the group to work together. This interpretation made me pause. I know that as a "top" student myself, I hated it when other's received credit for my work. However, I found that as a teacher, it was important to teach students to both excel independently and in teams. I personally think that it would have been more revealing if the students were given another chance to earn a combined grade. This time, after receiving some guidance in teamwork. In the "real world", there are certainly times when we must be prepared to work as a team. Sometimes, even with people we don't necessarily like. So how do teachers and parents prepare their students/children for this ambiguity?

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Blogging with Students: To Link, or Not to Link?

I was reading this great thread on the Classroom 2.0 forum started by a classroom teacher who is really getting her students involved in her class through the use of a class blog, Beyond Keyboarding. This brings up the predicament that teachers have always faced, but even more so today in the "transparent" culture of the internet, and that is where do we draw the line between ourselves and our students. I know that especially as a young teacher teaching high school, those boundaries were very blurry! It didn't help that I was the cheerleading coach and closer in age to my senior studens than to most of my colleagues. Back then, I had students emailing me all of the time because I had given out my email so they could clarify homework, projects, etc. It seems that at least with the blogs, it is a more public forum (kind of like the difference in closing and opening the classroom door when speaking to a student one-on-one). I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this.

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Help, my thread was hijaked!

As I have been reading through various blogs, forums, Tweets, etc. about education, I have noticed something interesting and somewhat frustrating. A great conversation is going along with people offering great insights, and out of nowhere, someone diverts into their own topic. In some cases, the conversation simply takes a turn and people go with it. In other cases, the original poster or someone else in the conversation tries to gently redirect the conversation back to its original intent. In some cases, I have seen things get pretty ugly when the "highjacker" refuses to back down. Just to clarify, I don't mean they are "highjaking" to "sell" a product or service. They simply use the platform/audience to spread their own agenda.What is teh best way to deal with these people?

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Classroom 2.0

The social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in education.

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