I help exhausted educators turn into excited entrepreneurs through my online course Educator2Entrepreneur, and private business coaching.Teacher burnout is real. Any teacher that doesn't want to be in the classroom isn't serving her students, the parents, the administrator, and certainly not herself.I teach educators how to take their transferrable skills and start an online business coaching and creating courses in subjects they love. Some examples of businesses my clients have gone on to transition into entrepreneurship are KateBenner.com, transformwithintent.com, and many others who've gone on to create a business and a life they love!My private coaching clients have paid clients after 3 months of working with me and taking my flagship business 101 course, Educator2Entrepreneur. This course is an MBA level business course, minus the statistics, probability and other unnecessary courses for today's online, digital business. The course has 9 modules that can be explained in 4 main pillars: *What's My Big Why & Who Do I Want to Serve?*Shifting from Employee to Entrepreneur Mindset*Profit Pathways*Messaging+Branding“Suzanne, you are a God sent. I have always known that fear has been my biggest hindrance to my success but how to conquer it was my greatest challenge. I’m really enjoying the coaching and I feel enlighten, encouraged and empowered. Fear is not in charge, I am!”--Francesca Abebe, E2E client in Nairobi, Africa “Before this course and her coaching sessions, I did not know how to create a business. I would have been taking so much time to try to figure it out on my own and I know that this would not have gone as smoothly as it has with her being my mentor. She has helped me learn how to create my avatar, make sure that I’m pricing correctly and I know how to market my business. She has been encouraging and so inspirational that I surely am grateful to say that she is my business coach.”--Stephanie Mills, High School Business Teacher

WritingSteps is a K-5 Common Core standards-based curriculum that provides systematic daily writing and grammar instruction. Fusing best practices, this comprehensive program gives teachers and students everything they need to develop their craft with confidence. A company I can proudly say helped ten thousand elementary teachers and over 350,000 students while growing sales to 10 million in 10 years. In October 2017, I sold WriteSteps to Time4Learning and VSS Private Equity NYC firm. WriteSteps was rebranded to WritingCity and now sits under Cambium Learning's portfolio of companies.“When I received the WriteSteps program, I was really excited. I had the feeling I was connected to the person who put this program together, because it felt like a teacher talking to me.”~Elizabeth Williams, 3rd grade teacher (Michigan)“Our teachers are so happy with everything so far. They are seeing growth they cannot believe. One first grade teacher says she has seen more growth in the last month than she saw last year overall. Wow!”~Piper Bognar, Elementary Turnaround Director (Michigan)“I just wanted to tell you THANK YOU for your support during our professional development session and for providing a framework for the remainder of the year…When we are finished, I would love to share some of my students’ writing with you.”~Deanna Hull, 4th grade teacher,(Oregon)

I'm not going to lie, this was one of the toughest, but most rewarding employment opportunities I've ever had. Basically, in a nutshell, I was tasked to increase positive teacher behaviors and decrease negative teacher behaviors with all K-12 teachers with emphasis on Special Education teachers. This role was in a school district that was taken over by the State of Michigan for underperformance, financial mismanagement, noncompliance, and safety in schools. (Just a not so fun fact: Inkster has a crime rate that is higher than 94% of the Michigan’s cities and towns of all sizes).First step, earn trust, show respect, and empathy to the teachers. One of the many ways I did this was by organizing a district wide teacher appreciation days, and coaching in non evaluative ways.As a coach addressing the vulnerability and building trust between the teachers by showing consideration for teachers’ feelings and needs as well as by acting in ways that support teachers. When teachers trust their coaches, they are more likely to consider their coaches’ advice and take steps toward self-improvement.Second task in the coaching process is for the teacher to conduct a self-audit. This self-audit consists of four steps: (1) completing a profile, (2) selecting growth goals, (3) verifying the teacher''s selections, and (4) writing growth goals.Data were collected during three phases: baseline, treatment, and post treatment. Arguably the most important aspect of coaching is providing feedback. Coaches can provide helpful feedback by focusing on specific behaviors that teachers can improve emphasizing opportunities for growth and learning.The end result: respect was gained, coaching sessions were effective and teachers had improved their classroom management with less behavior write-ups and craft of instruction improved increasing test scores, including the 3 Special Ed teachers.

I was recruited to become a National Presenter in the area of teaching writing for BER's sister company, Institute for Educators. The thought of traveling all over the United States and getting to see new, bright and shiny cities sounded very glamorous and exciting. I loved being able to teach my craft to thousands of teachers in great cities like Boston and Seattle. The shininess quickly faded after traveling daily, setting up, tearing down and presenting long full days, with the only thing I was seeing was airplanes and hotel walls. I knew I could still make the impact I wanted to make, but closer to home. Read on see how I made this happen in my next position.

I knew I wanted to be the teacher I never had, the one that loved it all, the students, the subjects and the supervisors.And this was true for many years. I loved teaching the children, creating a Title 1 Literacy Program for Learning Disability students, thematic units, going on field trips so the children could have real-world learning experiences, and I even loved classroom management (I would be given the "tough cases"). It wasn't until my seventh year teaching when I applied and was accepted to speak at the Michigan Reading Association's conference and my session on the "importance of teaching writing" was packed, standing room only, did I feel the rush of presenting to adults. It was there and then that I really started to feel that I was made for more, that I wanted to make a larger impact than just the 25 students a year. That if I could impact tens of thousands of teachers by teaching them how to teach writing, then that would have a ripple effect and help hundreds of thousands of children become better communicators, which would serve them very well not only in the classroom, but in their life. That's when things started really changing for me--onwards and upwards; as you'll read in my next position.