We all have a reputation, whether we build it intentionally or not. One of my son’s favorite assignments from middle school was when a teacher asked him to draw a coat of arms. It included what he liked, what mattered to him, and what characteristics he wanted to portray. He was figuring out who he was. Who would even put the word “brand” with an activity like that? However, there are times we may want to take the approach of “building a personal brand.”
Whatever angle you want to take, Elisabeth Bostwick talks about authentic learning. Now, for those of us who automatically associate personal branding with social media, this doesn’t mean that students have to post on social media at all. Students can start with their strengths and interests and select brand colors as well. Elisabeth has done this with high school entrepreneurship students as well as fourth graders. For today’s Fab Idea Friday, think about activities that help students think through how they want to be viewed.
I think it is important to help students understand that there are professional networks online since that is how many people find new jobs. Here’s an activity that Elisabeth suggests. You can also create Linked In templates as well.
Pull up three real, public LinkedIn profiles on your screen. Elisabeth used current college students and a few young professionals — and she deliberately included one that wasn’t polished. Then take them apart together: Why does this one work? What are its strengths? Why might this one not work? When her high schoolers said the unpolished one looked “not as professional,” that was the opening, not the end of the conversation — the profile belonged to someone showcasing graphic design, so the whole visual feel was doing a job. Nothing to buy, nothing to get approved, and not one student has to post anything.
Notice what she is not doing. She is not asking teens to build an audience. She is teaching them to read an audience. These days I’ve had my students only share privately, she has students: build it in Google Sites or Canva, keep it private, and link it out later if and when they choose to.
Elisabeth Bostwick, founder of Inspire Innovation, LLC, is a multi-award-winning educator passionate about creating the conditions to spark curiosity and unleash creativity to empower learning.
As an Education Innovation Consultant and Canva for Education Learning Consultant supporting K-12 educators, Elisabeth works alongside teachers to create innovative classroom cultures where every learner thrives.
With her passion for creating a long-lasting, positive impact on education, Elisabeth supports others in identifying how to cultivate systemic change and develop essential success skills to ignite a movement of inspired, confident learners.
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This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki
Vicki Davis (00:00): When people think of you, what do they think about? That’s part of our reputation. Some people call this a personal brand. And today we’re going to talk about helping students develop a personal brand. Now, if you don’t like the word brand, that is perfectly okay. There’s a proverb that says even a child is known by his deeds, whether what he does is good and right. We all have a reputation. What does our name mean?
What do people think when they think about us? These are good questions to ask. One of the greatest assignments one of my son’s teachers had him do was to create a coat of arms for himself in terms of what he liked and what was important to him and what characteristics were important. There are a lot of ways to do this, and one way is what some people call personal branding, and that’s what we’re learning about today.
Announcer (00:55): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.
Vicki Davis (00:59): So today we’re talking with Elisabeth Bostwick, keynote speaker extraordinaire. She’s got a book, Take the L.E.A.P., about school culture and so many other things. But today, Liz, we’re going to talk about a really cool topic, which is authentic learning, as well as helping kids to develop their personal brand. So could you start with telling us, like, how did you get interested in this work and how is it looking with kids?
Elisabeth Bostwick (01:28): Well, with most of my work, it really does come from just my own experiences of having my own two kids. It’s my 20-year-old in particular who I was able to really see the things he was doing to create his own brand in some of the work that he’s doing, but also as he was heading off to college. I also could recognize some gaps that were needed within my own kiddos, but then just high school students in general — just understanding how they can leverage social media for their own personal brand.
Vicki Davis (01:56): That’s a really interesting topic. But, you know, there’s some people who would say, hey, Liz, those kids are on social media enough, and you’re going to do it in school?
Elisabeth Bostwick (02:05): A lot of this doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re putting our kids more on social media. So if we were to break this down into bite-sized steps, we’d really be stepping back and beginning with helping our kids understand what are their strengths, what are their passions, what are their interests, what do they want them to walk away with, what perception do they want to create that’s authentic and meaningful to them.
It’s not necessarily placing our kids on social media more. It’s more about helping them to identify who they are as an individual and essentially how they want to communicate that to the world, whether it is college admissions. It could be even if they’re going into college sports or professional sports, even just careers in the workforce.
Vicki Davis (02:45): I do an app project every semester with my ninth graders where they develop an app. And used to, I had them turn in a — quote — team report. I said, you’re going to create a TikTok-like or a Reel-like video report for me every day to kind of let me know what your team is doing.
And I had better reports, more engagement, more fun, more excitement on that project because I was letting them communicate in a way that they understood. And they were developing real-world skills. So even though over half of my kids are not on social media today, using that method helped them.
So what are some of the things you’re doing with kids?
Elisabeth Bostwick (03:22): So this does connect to my book of Take the L.E.A.P.: Ignite a Culture of Innovation, because we’re really thinking about how do we create authentic and meaningful learning experiences, just like you’re talking about. So even if we’re not in school saying, hey, use the social media platform, this can look like taking a tool such as Canva. And there are other tools, too, that you can use. One thing that I really like that I do for myself is I do create websites in Canva. They’re very simple. They function similarly to creating a presentation.
Kids can go in, they can develop, like, what do they want their brand colors? What colors represent the work that you’re doing? Are you engaging in sports, music, clubs in school? And now how do you put that together in a way that you can showcase that visually?
It’s very much similar to like a digital portfolio, but it could also incorporate academics, but really thinking about who the person is as a whole.
Vicki Davis (04:15): So tell me a story about helping a child develop their personal brand, or a student developing their personal brand, and just sort of that journey that the student went on.
Elisabeth Bostwick (04:24): We did some of this at a different level, even with fourth grade students. This is a student who didn’t necessarily shine within reading or math or your classic academic topics in school. At that time, she could come in and, without very much guidance at all, she would be able to connect the dots of how to build everything, how to make those connections. Also really took to coding, video creation.
And what was really neat about that is that other students noticed the strengths in her. So not only did this engage her and hook her in from some of the off-task behaviors that she’d do to avoid engaging in reading or writing or math because it wasn’t what she felt was her strong suit — but not only was she more engaged, but her peers recognized her strengths, and that really helped her confidence take off. So we can apply that across the board to any student. When we create the culture for that in our classrooms, we really set our students up for success.
Vicki Davis (05:20): I’ve seen students who are good at graphic design and maybe not as great in other subjects. But when they start shining in graphic design, you can just feel how much pride they have as their peers start saying, what do you think about this design? And where do I need to move this? And how can I make this look better?
And they’re constantly almost like being a consultant to their classmates, because this is a different type of skill. I mean, this is real world. I do want to talk about your entrepreneurs and your business students. Do you have a story from that work you’re doing right now?
Elisabeth Bostwick (05:52): I will say a lot of them haven’t considered how they’re showcasing who they are in social media. So that was kind of a big topic. I saw a lot of chuckles around the room when we started. I had a question up on the screen that said, think about a social media post that you may have seen somebody within your high school make that you saw and you’re thinking that probably never should have gone out there.
So, of course, these are 16, 17, 18-year-olds, and some of them are making eye contact. Like, they know that certain things shouldn’t be out there. However, I will say students — and the same can apply to adults — don’t always think about how they’re communicating about who they are on social media. And so a lot of this comes back to authentic storytelling.
How do we, staying authentic to who we are, create a story that other people can look back on and be able to connect the dots to — this is where somebody started, this is where they’re growing, this is where they’re developing, and you can kind of see the development of that person. So, again, coming back to sharing experiences, volunteer work, projects, lessons that they might have learned, especially being able to share their reflections on anything that they’ve done. I think really can show just personal values, too.
Vicki Davis (07:06): So we do a Shark Tank with our app project, and the kids create just these fantastic apps that meet all different kinds of needs. It’s a very social entrepreneurship type thing. And it really is transformational when students do real-world work. And is it one of their big questions? Why does this matter? Isn’t that part of authentic learning?
Elisabeth Bostwick (07:29): Absolutely. These are skill sets that they’re going to use beyond the classroom, from video creation to — and we even talk about like not just sharing photos on social media, but how do you bring it into a template and add elements and apply your brand color? Things don’t have to feel polished all of the time, because sometimes scrappy can also showcase a brand as well. So it just depends on what you’re communicating.
We’ve taken different LinkedIn pages. Some have been current college students. And then I did find a couple of adults that might appear like they are close to being in college age still. They’re young enough. It was really neat to break down why does this LinkedIn profile, why does this work, and what are the strengths of it, and even like why might something not work. So we tried to find various examples.
Like LinkedIn — that’s really where a lot of college kids are beginning to understand the importance of networking and building your digital portfolio there. It was neat to be able to take a couple that weren’t as polished and professional looking, because the brand might be showcasing graphic design. It’s got a completely different visual feel to it. And some of the kids were like, well, that one’s not as professional. So we got to break down, well, what are they trying to communicate? What are they telling a story about who they are and the work?
Vicki Davis (08:41): So as we finish up, Liz, talk to all the students out here who are listening to you thinking, huh, is my personal brand important? And when do I start building it?
Elisabeth Bostwick (08:51): Well, I think there is never a wrong time to get started. I think you can get started anytime. And again, you can start small. I know that some colleges will look at — colleges, workforce will look people up on social media. So it doesn’t mean that we can’t share things about our dog or family. I sure do. But at the same time, we can get started by thinking about the things that we do in school, whether it’s an activity, something you’re volunteering, a project you’re a part of, any sports that you’re involved in, music — and begin sharing pictures and just keeping simple captions.
If you’re not comfortable sharing quite yet on social media, create it in a Google site or a Canvas site or anything similar where you can put together that digital portfolio, because that can also be linked at any point to any social media channel, or you can add a social media profile link in your bio section, or you can take any of those images or videos that you create and later upload those. So you can kind of begin capturing things anywhere and then deciding how you’re most comfortable sharing.
Vicki Davis (09:52): A lot of college applications now have a hyperlink box where you can put the hyperlink, and my students will take their web pages from eighth grade, update them for being a senior and hit publish. And they’ve got it there. You know, they’ve got all the structure, the skeletal part, and then they just add a little bit to it.
Having that brand is important. But students also have to remember, it’s not like they can just have a nice little polished LinkedIn, because companies, they have whole departments for investigating potential employees and looking at all the social media of people. So being wise about your personal brand everywhere you share is just so important.
Where do you recommend students go, the resources to help them as they develop their personal brand?
Elisabeth Bostwick (10:34): There are all kinds of resources that you can find out there. I actually have a couple on my website, so you can always go there. I’ve also found things on Common Sense Media. My website is elisabethbostwick.com. It is Elisabeth with an S, not a Z.
Vicki Davis (10:48): Thank you, Liz, for the many times you’ve answered the call to come on the show. I just appreciate that you’re working with kids. I think one of the most important things I look for in educational leaders is that their passion to teach remains and that they continue to work with students, because students have changed a lot in the last few years. So thanks, Liz.
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