So I am here with Elizabeth and she reached out to me after my interview
with Alex the engineer talking about his experience and wanted to share some of
her experiences as a teacher both what that's like gets an ENFP and I think
even more so as a teacher like about looking at students and about personal
growth and what you've learned there as well
take it away super interested interview with Alex where he was working in
academia and had not come across too many other EP types especially enfps and
I am in a similar situation most of the people that I work with are either aging
or IJ types and definitely don't work with any any enfps although I do see
them in the classroom and so it's been an interesting experience learning how
to bridge both the language gap in students and other adults why do you
think that is because in theory teaching is wonderful for enfps in terms of we
love to learn new things gather information
we love the sound of our own voices so teaching others is a natural is a
natural way to go I've done a video before about how teaching might not be a
good fit for enfps from the point of view of the organization's and the
structure why do you think there's not so many of us I think the first part is
what you've identified the bureaucratic portion of teaching is really difficult
the deadlines and then things you have to get discussed and approved by five
people before you can implement them and that definitely stifles creativity
stifles desire to follow through on projects so learning how to do that I
work in a non-traditional public school so I'm at a charter school and in the
United States charter schools although publicly funded get to do whatever
they've decided in terms of mission and vision and so I'm not a classical
education school when I emailed you I think they compared it to Harvard
so we're divided inside houses and it's definitely a school for people who love
ideas and so that's why that works for me and initially had less oversight when
I got hired the words of the last person in the interview were make magic happen
and so that's what I've done for most of my time there and that has shifted a bit
and I am struggling a little bit with some of the bureaucratic portions of
things and so I've had to learn to put systems in place that doesn't shut down
what I love doing make sense so systems in terms of the organization and
deadlines side of things yes so the organization piece of things I think is
always a bit of a struggle but once you've got some formats in place
learning to check that off I don't like standardized testing even
though it is a good measure of what students learn they don't like
formulating they enjoy because I want to read and discuss ideas with students and
we use a lot of Socratic discussion I'm at my school and so it's a conversation
of ideas quite often but I've had to if I want that I have to do the formula
portion of things and so a section of time for myself in order to plan that
and recognize that if I want to continue to do a good job of my students I have
to provide that information for my boss
what what are your thoughts in general on enfps getting into teaching if
there's someone watching who's you know 16 18 20 thinking about it should they
do it and if they should what would be your tips on how to do it well because
obviously like you said there's many different types of schools I think
that I most didn't eat enough peas need to live first
I started out stripes from our end of high school which ends at 18 in grade 12
and went straight into college fact that I wanted to go into psychology and ended
up needing to really just take a couple of years and travel some more and have
more experiences and came back to that ready to be serious and so I would
recommend that we do something called take a gap year meet other people travel
work at some jobs that are less maybe academically inclined and so that you
have some perspective on how important that might be for the rest of the things
that you want to enjoy in your life and then I wouldn't recommend getting a
straight degree in education I didn't my degree started out as English and
history when I went back to school and that's been fun reversible for me if I
choose to leave education at some points and there are all kinds of things I can
do with that so depending on what country you're in if your country offers
routes to teacher certification that are not just through a college degree that's
the route that I would recommend going so that you get more than one thing and
has a variety of options available to you I think that's a good point on you
know eight I don't know if there's a right answer in terms of taking a break
after high school or not I think about it with myself and I didn't take a break
but you know I wonder like if I did would I have went back could I've got
distracted or what just happened to people but then on the flip side
especially where school costs a lot more um you know you jump into something and
you're 200 grand in debt when you're just like making a decision when you're
17 like how is that possible you have much responsibility I think for that
reason you know something to tell my students and I think this is true of
myself as well there's a Latin phrase notes they say it's um know thyself if
you are going to go straight into school straight into anything you have to know
you have to know your strengths from your weaknesses and be willing to
acknowledge those and surround yourself with people who can speak truth to you
and that you'll listen to if you know yourself well you'll know whether or not
something is a good fit and I think a lot of times that takes the maturity and
that can come through yours or experience yeah I guess keeping your
options somewhat open like you mentioned you didn't do an education degree I
think is probably a good move you know I did psychology from my degree and did
not know the route I would go down but if I I mean who knows what I was
thinking but if I can protect pretend to remember what I was thinking it was that
hey I could go marketing I could go into psychology obviously I could I think
Mark Zuckerberg degree with psychology and a minor in programming I remember
you know like you can go different ways I was like okay I'm learning about
people I can probably apply that to business if I want to later do an MBA on
a psych degree I'm sure that would work fine and so and even things like
engineering which are more specific I know a lot of engineers who don't go
into engineering but it trains them how to think how to sort of process things
and structure your thoughts and then you can go on and do a lot of other things
I'm sure versus some of the degrees that are very narrow and then just like
that's all you can do yeah yeah I think especially we need options every season
of your life looks a little bit different and even now I'm close to 40
but I don't I like I love teaching but I don't know that I'll stay here forever
I'm in process I'm finishing at my MFA and started a business and so yeah I
think that's the new normal the good new normal is the you know every I don't
know what it is if it's seven years five years but I think that's pretty probably
pretty healthy for growth as well to be changing direction
because you tend to grow more with the new challenge and something yeah with
some novelty yeah agreed for someone who so I couldn't quite tell
was that a polite answer to say rethink teaching like take some time before you
jump in right you get to I love I get to be around people all day long every day
and really every year are different because you have a new set of students
that are coming in so that part of things is amazing I am definitely not
geared toward elementary kids I don't do that level and I think it's amazing that
people can do that I love high school they're transitioning into adulthood and
and questioning ideas and who they are and that process of figuring that out
and it's such a cool thing to stand next to some of those students and and watch
them change over the years I again I work in a small school so I
get to see their full transition from freshman into graduation and so I think
if you enjoyed those kinds of things it's a good environment but again
options open and life constantly changes I know right I this is not what I signed
up to do to teach in front of a computer and so that's fair and so I'm getting
that for if someone is going into teaching really like the learning about
the I guess the district the school what's involved specifically what your
freedoms are what the style like things like standardized testing to really
because I don't this might be a human thing as definitely an ENFP thing but
you know I watch the the practice I don't know if you've seen that show your
show and I was like I want to be a lawyer this is great you just like think
of a really creative semi legal way to get your clients off of it and then just
hang out and do nothing it's great no no paperwork and I'm sure there's enfps
you've seen like dangerous mind or whatever the newest version of
dangerous mind is and it's like yeah well just like change lives and
challenges and you probably want to get a sense of what the reality is good or
bad right it might be honest it would be a bad thing but what is like real day to
day work look like yeah I think and then knowing what makes you tick right you
know peace we love people but what part of people do like the Dangerous Minds
example are you good at bridging the gap socioeconomically and authoritative lis
we're students who have come from hard places or do you need to be helping
refined students who've got a great ideas already in a really strong support
background and you like working with families so those pieces of things and I
think yeah that takes to you to evolve interior see what's happening talk to
other teachers I was fortunate in that my best friends choose an ENFJ already
worked at this full she's one third of the English department I'm another third
and so that was attractive to me because she kept talking about all of these
amazing things that she got to teach I knew a little bit about how the system
works so when I started volunteering there and then eventually did my student
teaching there I had a very good idea of what I was getting involved with the
other thing I would say for teaching for Edith peas that our piece that our
reading going into that I think sometimes we struggle a lot with
boundaries as human beings because we are willing to everything's exciting
right it's all I want to be involved in this project or that project and until
you learn to say no the education system can consume all of your time and if I
wanted to work 16 hour days seven days a week and all summer long I that would I
would still not have Maine entire job done and so you have to be pretty firm
with that and I think that takes again time and practice and up to each
individual but if you can't draw those four boundaries that it's not because
you never end up with that downtime to process how you feel
life or the things you're coming through awesome awesome
I like that what we'll do let's I'm gonna break this up actually I
think we'll do it as two videos so for anyone watching this now we're going to
end the video and in a few days or maybe a few days ago you can catch the second
part where we're going to talk more about development as ENFPs and lots of
lessons from there.