How you teach is how you do everything – part 8: heeding the call to teach
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Training & development
‘How you teach is how you do everything’ is the title of a recent blog post written by Jen Louden and Michele Lisenbury Christensen, the queens of TeachNow. The essence of the post is an 8 point outline of what it does and doesn’t mean to teach with heart and soul.
I liked their post so much I’ve written a post for each point. You can read the first seven posts here:
- About ‘needy students sucking you dry’ here
- Being brave and bold
- Humble pie – there’s power in humility
- Bears? Fireplace in the way? No heat? No problem!
- Spontaneity via improvising
- Five ways to deal with ‘difficult’ students
- An end to learning
Point #8
Some don’t teach even though they’ve heard the call, for one or more of the above reasons. They haven’t found their way to the teacher’s seat.
Others seek the support, inspiration, and tools to create satisfying teaching experiences even while they’re still imperfectly perfect.
My take on heeding the call to teach
I have two kids who are going about the business of growing up and growing into themselves. When talk winds round to work I say to them, I wish for you three things: work that makes a contribution to the world, work that sustains the type of lifestyle you choose and work that you’re passionate about.
I’ve taught more than 10,000 participants in hundreds of organizations and two common themes I see are: 1) people who are doing work that doesn’t lift their hearts and 2) people who prefer the status quo instead of breaking out and making a change.
So if teaching is calling your name, if you’ve even a kernel of desire to ignite learning, to share what you’ve discovered and learn much more along the way, to create space for question marks that dance around participant’s heads to turn into exclamation marks of oh I get it, I never thought about things like that, wow, now I can…, who knew!!! …. then do it.
Please, for all our sakes, do it. Start small if that feels right. Dip your little toe in. Have a party and teach your friends something new. Or jump in with your whole self and contact your local college to see what courses you could teach through their continuing education department.
Just do it. The world needs more great teachers.
To find out more about the TeachNow series with Jen Louden and Michele Lisenbury Christensen (including an interview with yours truly) click here.
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