Nearly every workplace experiences conflict, but some places interact so closely with individuals and groups in crisis that mediation is a skill used daily. Even if your workplace is generally pleasant, your best bet for maintaining calm at work is to feel fully equipped to handle conflict that occurs.

So much of the market for housing in Portland is rentals. With so many people moving to the city, these newcomers prefer the flexibility of renting over purchasing a home. As a result, there is a significant demand for property managers to work with renters and owners to make the rental process go smoothly. Whether you're opening doors to a career as a professional property manager or want to be able to DIY your management as a housing investor, it's a great idea to learn the background necessary.  

Learning to obtain a property manager license in Oregon is also incredibly achievable and affordable. Becoming a property manager in Portland is an exciting, varied field with lots of room for growth and entrepreneurship once you gain experience. 

The workplace is constantly evolving, and many find that just keeping the status quo is a way to fall behind. You're gaining experience and skills on the job, but after a few years or even decades, new technology, techniques, or company direction can mean that you need additional training. The good news is that Portland Community College partners with ED2GO, a national online class provider, with busy career professionals in mind. The programs are focused on getting you the best, most helpful information without additional commute time and on your timeline. 

Careers in real estate don't have to be full-time jobs. Real estate is structured on a commission basis, meaning you can often remain a real estate agent whether you sell one or two houses a year or 100. When you decide you want to learn how to become a real estate agent Portland needs, you may first balk at the idea of leaving your current work or spending a lot of time in school to prepare for a career.

However, there are ways to make your preparation seamless without losing your current income stream before you scale up to your real estate agent goals.

Nearly every field in the twenty-first century has room to develop, with new techniques, research, or resources becoming constantly available. Many professional organizations require continuing education because industries don't stay the same. Many of the best practitioners are the ones who learned in their initial training or degree, then kept building that knowledge, whether they were required to do formal education or not.

If you need to earn continuing education credits or want to stay at the front edge of your field and the modern aspects of the work, these continuing education opportunities are a great idea.

When managing a collaborative team, you'll occasionally mediate between team members experiencing conflict. Even collaborative team members can sometimes butt heads and disagree in ways that stall communication and your work. It's the manager's job to fairly evaluate what has gone wrong, assist in group reconciliation, and find a path forward that accommodates everyone.

That is harder than it sounds, and it still sounds pretty difficult! Many managers opt to train in specific strategies for mediation rather than assuming they'll just muddle through it. As a result, their teams can grow confident that their managers can handle and resolve conflict actively, rather than leaving everyone to fend for themselves. Actively resolving conflict helps teams work together better by not leaving tensions unspoken, where they could fester and damage working relationships or become a bigger issue later. These are just some of the benefits of mediation training for managers, with bigger boosts in confidence and effectiveness that can come down the road.

Perhaps you're interested in exploring property management roles and how they fit into the broader real estate landscape. A reasonable question is whether you'll benefit from working as a property manager since the rent goes to the landlord or owner of the property. On the other hand, you might worry that you can't get into real estate because you don't have the capital to invest in property right now.

In either case, you should take heart that property managers can build thriving businesses without investing in property themselves. Real estate is a very stable place to earn your income since everyone needs a place to live. Real estate and property management is a business like any other, and working for a management company isn't very different than working at any company.

Real estate brokers have a lot of opportunities in the Portland market. You may be more familiar with the generic term real estate agent, but in Oregon, to be officially licensed to sell and buy homes as an agent for the sellers and buyers, you must pass the exam to become an official real estate broker. That career is exciting since much of your income comes from your hustle and the networks you can build. Even when markets are in flux, great real estate brokers make their business connections, shift from working with lots of sellers to working with more buyers and find creative ways to grow their reach.

Once you've found success in this field, there are many opportunities to use your experience to start your team and lead other real estate brokers as a Principal Broker. It allows you to combine your leadership skills with the work you have developed a strong ability to do.

Teachers have been improving how they differentiate students' abilities for many decades. Most teachers now recognize that different students have different strengths and benefit from different approaches and perspectives on learning. Teachers take professional development coursework to continue learning how other educators implement differentiation in their classrooms, helping more students have positive outcomes from the schooling process.

Let's look at what equitable grading is and what it can contribute to efforts to improve equity and inclusion in the classroom.

One of the top careers in real estate that people think of quickly is that of agents who are selling or buying homes. While there are good ways to learn how to become a real estate agent, Portland offers way more opportunities than agent work. Real estate is a booming business with various ways to join this popular career path, often without spending many years in school or going into extensive student loan debt.

Here are some of the common careers you can consider.