Teachers in Transition – Episode 211: Learning about Project Management with Tamara McLemore

Episode 211: Learning about Project Management: with Tamara McLemore 

In this episode, Vanessa welcomes a guest to the pod!  Tamara McLemore talks about project management and why teachers are such a natural fit for the position.  

Check out her webpage!  And connect with Tamara on LinkedIn

Here’s the written steps for the Transcription Hack 

1.     Record whatever you want to your voice app (give it a name)

2.     Email that recording to yourself. 

3.     You’ll download your recording to your laptop 

4.     Use the Dictation tool in MS Word.  There’s ^ sign. Click on Transcribe. 

5.     Upload your recording into Word.  It transcribes it. 

6.     Choose:  Just Text when answering how you want it inserted into the document.  Trust me. Only use speakers if more than one person is on the recording.

7.     Copy the everything transcribed. 

8.     Head over to ChatGPT.  Use the prompt below, paste in your transcription and voila. 

9.     Copy and paste where you need it to be (and review it. Because ChaptGPT still need human review.)

ChatGPT prompt: 

“Take this block of text and fix the grammar” 
 
 

A link to our Facebook Page! Join the conversation.

And remember to send your comments, stories, and random thoughts to me at TeachersinTransitionCoaching@gmail.com!  I look forward to reading them.  Would you like to hear a specific topic on the pod?  Send those questions to me and I’ll answer them. Feel free to connect with Vanessa on LinkedIn!

If you’d like to sign up with Vanessa for a Complimentary Discovery Call, head over to her calendar and sign up for a time that is convenient for you.  

The transcript of this podcast can be found on the podcasts’ homepage at Buzzsprout. 

Transcript

Are you a teacher who is feeling stressed out and overwhelmed? do you worry that you're feeling symptoms of burnout - or are you sure you've already gotten there? Have you started to dream of doing something different or a new job or perhaps pursuing an entirely different career - but you don't know what else you're qualified to do? You don't know how to start a job search and you just feel stuck. If that sounds like you, I promise you are not alone. my name is Vanessa Jackson; and I am a career transition and job search coach and I specialize in helping burnt out teachers just like you deal with the overwhelmingly stressful nature of your day-to-day job and to consider what other careers might be out there waiting for you. You might ask yourself, What tools do I need to find a new career?  Are my skills valuable outside the classroom?  How and where do I even get started?  These are all questions you deserve answers to, and I can help you find them.  I’m Vanessa Jackson. Come and join me for Teachers in Transition.  

***Hi!  And Welcome back to another episode of Teachers in Transition. I am your host, Vanessa Jackson – I’m a career transition and job search coach specializing in teachers. I am here to help you navigate the journey from stressed, under-appreciated, and burnt-out teacher to a new career that allows you margins in your life.  If you are frustrated with your current teaching position, if you are stressed, overwhelmed, and burned out you are in the right place – Welcome! Today We have a very special guest Tamara McLemore. Tamara is an expert in Project Management, and she is going to talk to us about why a teacher would make a good project manager. 

But before we get to that, I want to take a quick moment and update a tip I shared in episode: 199.  In this tip that I stole from Matthew Mcconnaughy and improved upon for folks without staff, I have streamlined this process even further!
 
 As a reminder, He was talking about how he wrote most of his book – he dictated it into his phone in the car. And I realized “Hey! I have all my best ideas in the car too!  And I don’t get to write them down, and I lose them!” 

In this hack, you dictate into the voice app on your phone when you don’t have time to write. This could include lesson plan ideas, your personal journaling when you are deep diving into your self-inventory, your grocery list – it goes on. At this point you may be starting on that biography of your life or that Great American Novel. 
 
 I also suggested emailing yourself the file and dropping the audio into a Word Doc under that Dictation tab (only for Word 365).  Use the transcribe function to change it from audio to written word. The limitation in the hack was that you have to go back through and fix all the grammar because every pause was a new sentence, and so many other issues. 
 
 Here's the update:
 Copy that awkwardly rendered transcription. Go over to ChatGPT and start with the prompt: “Take this block of text and fix the grammar.”  Then paste in the transcription.  
 Of course you have to go back through and scan what ChatGPT does, but it does a very good job overall.  

When I was preparing the transcription for this podcast, I ran the transcript of the upcoming interview through Chat GPT and gave it some formatting instructions too.  That worked. And what used to take me an easy hour and a half to two hours (or more on a day full of distractions) and whittled that chore down to 15 minutes or less. 

I look forward to hearing you share all the ways you can use this upgraded tip to save yourself time during the school year. 
 
 
 

Vanessa
And now I'm very excited to introduce Tamara McLemore as a guest on our podcast today. She has been a speaker for the Women of Project Management Conference in 2022, 2023, and 2024. She was a speaker at the Wonder Women in Tech in 2023. She is a top voice for project management on LinkedIn and an international speaker. Her project management experience goes all the way back to 1999, and over her career, she has collectively overseen well over $1 billion in budget and managed global teams. So welcome to Teachers and Transition, Tamara. I'm so happy you're here.

Tamara
Thank you, Vanessa. I appreciate you having me, and what an introduction. I feel like I just dated myself with Y2K 99, but that is where I got my start. So thank you for that warm introduction.

Vanessa
So you did projects to carry over the Y2K mess?

Tamara
Absolutely. That's where I really got my teeth into everything. It was all hands on deck at that time, so they didn't care if you didn't have tech experience. It was all hands on deck.

Vanessa
A little bit of a baptism by fire, right? So what does a project manager do exactly?

Tamara
OK, the easier answer would be what don't we do? Project managers do everything. So, I'm going to start with a boring definition: in project management, we manage a project from beginning to end, a unique product or service. That is the textbook PMI definition. What the heck does that mean? That means that we develop, we manage, we implement, we herd cattle, we do everything to get a project from beginning to end and complete. You know we're all about having these checklists and wanting to check things off that checklist. That's what project managers do. We have the tools in place so that we can say this is complete, done, finished, and we can move on to the next project, task, or initiative. So that's project management in a nutshell.

Vanessa
I love a good checklist. I like to put at the top of my checklist: make a checklist, so that I have something to check off.

Tamara
I'm sorry, I have to interrupt you. Are you one of those people that, if you forget to put something on your checklist, you go back and put it on the checklist and check it for extra credit?

Vanessa
I do because then that turns into a TADA list so I can feel like I have not ruined my day because a lot of times, yeah, you divert from your main task. But look at all the side quests you get done.

Tamara
Absolutely. So I had a mentor early on who asked me if I did that because, before imposter syndrome was really a thing, she asked me that. And I'm like, yeah. She's like, you're a project manager, girl, like, get over yourself. You're getting tasks done. You're doing a lot more than you really think you're doing. So, you're a project manager. I just wanted to state that to your audience: if you are doing checklists and checking things off, more than likely you're a project manager.

Vanessa
So aside from the checklist, what are some important qualities of a project manager?

Tamara
You know what? The laundry list is so long. PMI, the Project Management Institute, has about 12 knowledge areas that range from some of the hard characteristics to the soft, and I know we're not calling them soft anymore, we're calling them power skills. There's a wide range. You can be technical, meaning schedule, cost, implementation, things like that. On the other hand, you could be proficient in communications. What some people don't know is that 90% of project management is communications, and you don't have to be a talker. An extrovert, introverts are some mean communicators as well. They just communicate in their own way. Communications, procurement, quality—whatever your strength is, project management has a characteristic for you. So it is very, very difficult to say what a particular characteristic is because I have had every industry in my boot camps and I've coached every industry. To me, everybody's a project manager.

Vanessa
Ohh, I like that. Let's explore why a teacher can be such a natural fit for project management.

Tamara
Think about what a project is. The basic definition of a project: it has a beginning and end. Let's start there. Most of my family grew up in education. My mom worked for the school system; she wasn't a teacher, but she worked for the school system. Every summer, our summer vacation got cut short because school was starting. Guess what? That is an imposed date and she had to start training the principals, the teachers, the secretaries on how to document the students in order to get paid by the state. That was her job. I had principals and administrators in my family. The reason why I'm stating that is you already inherently have a date that is not changing from year to year. Every year, how do you do your back to school? How do you ramp up to hire teachers? The curriculum? Education is inherent of a project every year. What makes it different is the school year. What makes it different are the constraints of your budget, their finances, the teachers. So it is a project every year.

Vanessa
Oh wow, that's a really interesting way to think about that. I know a lot of teachers get very creative because they have little to no budget. Is that whole creativity, problem-solving, a valuable project management skill?

Tamara
You better believe it because a lot of times they expect us to pull a rabbit out of a hat. The downfall of that is when you do it one time, you have to do it again and again. So I do teach my project managers, don't do that all the time because they're going to say, well, you did all of this with nothing. Surely if we give you a little budget, you can do XYZ. Absolutely. The school year is a great introduction to project management. I have one person in particular that I'm coaching now, and some of her last projects were the curriculum. She's like, well, that's not a project. I said I beg to differ. You had to go out and research what curriculum companies you potentially wanted to use. Let's say you started with 10 and then the top five are the ones you had conversations with. Then you got their textbooks. You may have chosen three to actually implement to maybe one or two schools and see how those students' reading went up, their math scores. Once you had concrete data that this is good curriculum, then you deployed it to the rest of the school district. Guess what? Not only is that a project, that's being Agile.

Vanessa
Oh yeah, Agile is the preferred method right now for businesses.

Tamara
Absolutely. Because Waterfall is the traditional method, doing the same thing over and over. Agile is doing releases, learning from the first iteration, and then improving as you go. So, like I said, not only did she realize she's doing project management, she's doing the new methodology, Agile. She was super excited to learn it. Super excited.

Vanessa
We have heard in the past that teachers are very good at building a plane while they fly it. I can see that. 

Tamara
Absolutely.
 
 Vanessa
OK. So if a teacher wanted to move into project management, this may be a two-part question here. I wanted to talk about the path that one might need to take to become a project manager. You know, the prerequisites, any sort of testing. But then I also want to know if that is something that could be done, say, on top of a school year. Say the teacher's going to continue working because salary is great, and then they wanted to take that and then move out.

Tamara
Let's see, the first thing is the mindset. A lot of teachers have to understand that they are project managers, or at least they're doing projects. Once they look at it a little differently, they will start seeing, oh.  I am in charge of the after-school activity, let's say band. Let's say the PTA. That is a project from the beginning of the school year to the end. It is a project. Your stakeholders are your parents, the other teachers, the superintendent has to approve it, the students. You have a budget you have to agree upon a time. That is a project, and once they have the mindset, projects are going to pop up everywhere. Once they realize that they're qualified, they begin to fill out their application. I help with that, but the biggest thing is the mindset to understand that you do projects all day, every day.

Vanessa
Does one just take the project management test or is there something that has to come first?

Tamara
Oh, absolutely. I tell everybody to start: if you're really transitioning from a non-traditional project management industry, it is really good to take a fundamentals, a foundation class because this helps with the terminology, the examples, getting your mindset. I firmly believe you don't need it, but it is a comfort zone that I see a lot of people transitioning. They feel more comfortable taking a basic fundamentals class, and they come back and say, Tamara, that class was so easy. I recognize everything that I do day-to-day is in project management. I'm like, OK, mission accomplished. That's what I wanted them to say. Then they take a boot camp or a more structured class to pass the PMP certification, but I like to get the confidence. I like a quick win so that they really have their confidence level up, that swagger to say that I'm really a project manager.

Vanessa
OK, you have a two-week intensive. You have a boot camp. Tell me about that.

Tamara
The non-traditional boot camp and some teachers give me pushback on this because it is very non-traditional. When people from the education field get in there, some are like, Tamara, we have to read a book. It has to be like this. It has to be like that. But the difference with my boot camp and other boot camps is that it's two weeks, but it's very interactive because we are adults, we are adult learners, and we learn differently. It needs to be very interactive. We need audio, we need visuals, we need examples, we need real-life case studies, not those traditional textbook scenarios here in the textbooks. Do I veer off from what is the norm? Absolutely. In addition to that, I'm very big on self-awareness and paying attention to how you learn. There's been some time away from the classroom. Yes, we do our continued education. But when was the last time we sat for an exam? So we have to exercise that muscle. So yes, I make my educators go to the library. I make them go to Barnes and Noble, go to Starbucks, their mom-and-pop coffee shops is what I prefer. That way, you're away from your family, from the job, from your household, and you can really entrench yourself in the learning like you would tell a student. It is really, really funny to see how I'm telling educators how to study, and I can see their comprehension go through the roof when they actually do things a little differently as far as studying.

Vanessa
Oh, how fun. Now I want to be in your class.

Tamara
The good thing is people learn. They pass the PMP very quickly and they're able to transition positions and industries. But getting there, sometimes we're our worst enemy and we like to do things the way that we know. But sometimes we gotta think outside the box.

Vanessa
What I hear is that you have a big belief in the people that take your program and you're not going to let them fail, even if it's a little uncomfortable for the two of you.

Tamara
Absolutely. It's going to be very uncomfortable and I tell everybody I was never diagnosed with a learning disorder. I'm saying that to say that when you're going through the curriculum once again, I have people pay attention to themselves. Growing up, I stayed in the principal's office. I stayed in trouble. But bear with me on the reason, because I would look at the table of contents or the index and I would go get the curriculum that the teacher said I needed. But then I'm labeled disruptive, not paying attention. But you taught me how to read a book, didn't you? And go get what I need. So that's what I'm doing. But now I'm disruptive. That's why my boot camp is different because we don't need to read the book from A-Z. Go get what you need, and retest and then pass the real exam.

Vanessa
That's a fascinating concept because when I thought I wanted to get my project management certificate, I got the book and I was plowing through it, beginning to end, and I didn't finish it.

Tamara
There you go, because all that other stuff was either repetitive, boring, you did not need it, it did not speak to you, and you put it down.

Vanessa
And I passed that book on to somebody that was going to use it. So I hear exactly what you're talking about in that. OK. So if people who listen to my podcast wanted to sign up for your intensive, how would they do that?

Tamara
They would go to iwantmypmp.com. I'll state that again: iwantmypmp.com. I have tools on there that will let you take a free quiz to see if you're qualified. A free quiz—who doesn't like free?

Vanessa
I love a quiz.

Tamara
I love a quiz. I have a couple of cheat sheets, I have a basic introduction class, and more importantly, I have my scheduler where you can schedule a free consult, a one-on-one, so that we can actually go through the projects or the initiatives or those other duties as assigned to see if you actually qualify for the PMP certification. Once you've realized that you've been doing projects all along, then you register for the boot camp. I just have to say this: the PMP certification for educators is not just to leave education. I have a ton of people that want to do their job better in education. You can use the PMP certification to actually stay within the school or within the school system. So you don't have to leave education as a whole. You can do your job more effectively and efficiently and stay in education because guess what? We need teachers. Teachers and educators are leaving in vast numbers, so we really don't want you to leave. We want you to be happy, productive, and make more money.

Vanessa
That's what teachers want, too. I want to thank you so much for your time today. This has been fun. This has been amazing and I appreciate that you took the time to come on the podcast.

Tamara
Thank you for having me on this podcast, Vanessa. I am super excited for your listeners.

Thank you, Tamara for being such a wonderful guest.  I will make sure that there is a link in the show notes to Tamara’s website and her LinkedIn Page.  If you are interested in Project Management, make sure to follow her! 

As you go back into the classroom this summer, make sure to check in with yourself. are  Try to make the promise to yourself that you are worth good sleep, good food, and time to rest, if not because it is the right thing to do, then do it because it helps you be what you need to be for others.  However if you’re finding that you are stressed at just the thought of going back to school or if the thought of one more Blood-Borne Pathogens training makes you want to run screaming for the hills, it might be time to think about something else. If you need me, all you have to do is schedule a Discovery call to see how I can help you. I have a link to my calendar in the show notes too. 
 
 You can also connect with other teachers in the Teachers in Transition Podcast club, or peruse the website at Teachers in Transition dot com.  
 
 Remember: The best time to start working on your transition plan was about six months ago.  The next best time is now!  

That’s the podcast for today! If you liked this podcast, tell a friend, and don’t forget to rate and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Tune in weekly to Teachers in Transition where we discuss Job Search strategies as well as stress management techniques.  And I want to hear from you!  Please reach out and leave me a message at Teacher in transition coaching at gmail dot com.  You can also leave a voicemail or text at 512-640-9099. 

I’ll see you here again next week and remember – YOU are amazing!