The inadvertent ambassador
Once a teacher…
My favorite item on a popular list of “you know you’re a teacher when” lines is that you correct strangers’ children’s behavior in the grocery checkout line. We take teaching with us into the community every day, whether we intend to or not. We find ourselves paying attention to how people learn (or don’t) everywhere we go. We even analyze the pedagogy of our puppies. There is more to this than grounds for a giggle. We have expertise that extends beyond our schools and classrooms.
I am an officer in our property owners association. We find that our members often do not understand the role of the POA or how/why their money is collected and spent. The teacher in me realizes that handing people a bunch of rules and regs is no different with adults than it is with our students. They have no motivation to read them. As teachers, we can contribute far more to our communities than our taxes and occasional volunteer days. We can share about how people learn. No lectures, no insidious agendas, just use what we know about learning to help our communities. We are ambassadors for and about learning.
As I have mentioned, I have been working a lot with infographics lately — especially as I get ready for ISTE 2012. I love the way an infographic can SHOW instead of TELL. So my latest experiment is to try using infographics to SHOW my community how our POA works and what it does. In today’s manic, visual world, our neighbors might stop long enough to look and learn. And infographics are a lot more interesting than a packets of rules and regs.
As I share these graphics with my fellow board members, I realize that they have never thought about how people learn. Most have never thought about how they learn themselves. I am sharing an expertise that is so much a part of me I do not realize everyone else does not have it. I am an inadvertent ambassador for learning. I guess that’s not a bad role. It’s certainly less intrusive than talking to misbehaving tots in the checkout line.
I have to share this. Last night I presented the financial infographics to our POA membership at a meeting. Infographics work. Best response of the night from one of the members: “the pictures explained it so even my mother would understand!” Made my day.
Comment by Candace Hackett Shively — March 17, 2012 @ 7:21 am