Education Resignation Conversation: Your Wellness or Your Career? Webinar

Education Resignation Conversation: Your Wellness or Your Career? Webinar

Being an educator has always been challenging. A career as a K–12 teacher or administrator, or a college/university faculty/staff member has always been one where rewards came from the work, not a substantial bank account. The impactful rewards in the lives of our students and even the fabric of our institutions was enough to attract and retain professionals in the work. 2020 turned much of that on its ear, and today educators are leaving or contemplating leaving their life’s work. This “contemplation of resignation” is happening for many reasons and is often as personal a decision in the heart and mind of educators as it was to choose the profession in the first place. This national conversation brings together a panel of K–12 teachers, administrators, and higher education faculty and staff for a robust conversation, led by thought leaders Adam A. Smith and Heather C. Lou, around what has become a Great Education Resignation.

In this webinar, you will learn about:

• The reason(s) why colleagues are leaving.
• Opportunities to remain in education, but do it on your terms.
• Managing political influences on classroom content and curricula.
• The role that virtual learning and remote work played.
• Tuning out the noise that does not allow you to see your students as themselves and provide space where all students belong.
• Managing residual trauma as an educator of color who had to return to a PWI post-pandemic.

About the Presenters

Adam A. Smith is a first-generation college graduate who has dedicated his almost three-decade career to ensuring college access and success for all Americans. He currently works at the University of Kentucky as Executive Director of University Academic Advising and has a vibrant public speaking and educational consulting firm, Adam A. Smith & Associates. Smith has led coalitions and innovations that have had a dramatic impact on student success at Metropolitan State University (MN), the University of Alabama, the University of Akron City of Rockford (IL), and Rock Valley College.

heather c. lou (she/her/hers) is an angry gemini earth dragon, multiracial, asian, queer, cisgender, disabled, survivor/surviving, anxious, and depressed womxn of color artist and educator based in st. paul, minnesota, which is the hxstorical occupied land of the Dakota and Anishinaabe peoples. find out more about hclou at: hclouart.com or instagram.com/hclou