Teachers: Authentic Influencers

Remember the teachers who had a significant influence on you and that you still remember how they changed your life—hopefully, those memories are positive influences. I remember well several teachers in my childhood that challenged me to achieve more than I thought I could and built my confidence with timely compliments. Those teachers influenced my life, and I am thankful.

The term influencers is popular today. However, influencers is currently used more often to describe people who have thousands of online groupies who tune in regularly for the latest selfies, mini-videos, and tweets. These influencers do change people’s lives but in ways that are very different from those memorable teachers. Often today’s influencers are inauthentic, using enhanced images, rehearsed videos, and sponsored products to display. Online influence efforts are just a powerful form of visual marketing. Social media influence does sell products and feeds to the ego and bank account of the influencers, but it is a significantly different type of influence that teachers have.

The following chart identifies some of the contrasts between authentic and inauthentic influencers:

As the term influencer becomes linked to social media, it is fitting to add the adjectives such as marketing, celebrity, or ego-hungry to describe the true self-centered focus of social media influencers. Teachers, however, should continue to hold the title of authentic influencers who change students’ lives with positive influence in the two-way communication of listening and caring. Teachers are authentic influencers inspiring students to shape their future based on their aspirations rather than mimicking the inauthentic lives of others.

CTE Teachers: Check Your Networks

The request to “Check Your Networks” could mean to check your Internet network. We all depend on internet connectivity, and an interruption from a storm or equipment failure is frustrating. But I am referring to people networks, not digital networks. Developing and maintaining human networks are essential in any profession. They are necessary for all education professionals but critical for Career and Technical Education (CTE)teachers. Compared to other teachers, CTE teachers have more and different networks. All educators can benefit from mentors and school peers to rely on for advice and negotiate the organization’s culture.

Effective CTE teachers need four additional types of human networks. It is important to periodically reflect on how strong these relationships are and decide if the time is right to devote energy to expanding networks. These four networks are Industry Associations/Vendors, Local Employers, CTE Professionals, and Student Pathway Professionals.

Industry Associations/Vendors represent the technical skill area you teach, such as Construction or Automotive. Most of these skill areas have Not-For-Profit Associations, Unions, and Companies as part of the large industry community. CTE teachers stay current with the technology and needs of the industry through relationships and frequent communication with industry professionals. Some teachers may obtain certification in these technical fields when available and devote time in training programs from companies and vendors. Strong networks keep your skills current.

The second network may overlap with industry-related groups, and that is local employers. These employers may have employees with many different skills area, and working with peer teachers may be a strategy. These local employers can help host work-based learning sites, contribute content to instruction, and employ future graduates.

The third network category is your CTE Professional Association which includes the umbrella professional association ACTE for all CTE professionals. There are associations for program areas at the national, state, and regional levels. These associations provide professional growth and advocacy for growth and improvement in the wider education community. Parallel to the professional association is the network of adult volunteers who lead student leadership organizations, such as Skills USA and FFA. Your commitment of ideas, active membership, and volunteer leadership benefit the wider profession and the next generation of CTE teachers and students.

The final network is what I call Student Pathway Professionals. This includes teachers, counselors, and admissions officers in the educational institutions where your graduates may go on to further education and school grade levels where students might choose to enroll in your program. Consider this the network for student recruitment and placement. CTE is not an isolated program, nor is it a required program. Students working with education professionals decide to enroll in a CTE program and also decide whether to continue learning at a higher level. Developing relationships with teachers at middle schools and earlier high school grades help with recruitment. Relationship with technical program teachers in higher education helps with placement and creating an environment of a strong pathway to a career. Conversations with this network help to build an articulated and relevant curriculum.

Take time to reflect on your professional networks. If it needs expansion or refreshing, reach out to meet new people, and join new groups if necessary. While these networks help you and your students in the program, initiate new relationships by describing what you do and asking how your work might help them. Avoid starting a new relationship with a request to help you. Other professionals are busy, too, and welcome anyone offering something to assist them in reaching their goals. Industry Associations want to expand their brand recognition. Local Employers want to give back to the community. Professional organizations need volunteer leaders. Student Pathways Professionals want to help students find their passion. Check your people networks for greater benefit to your students and you as an education professional.

Write, Reflect, and Improve

“Tell me about your writing experience?” That was the question that was asked of me during a job interview early in my education career. I had been a successful teacher and was considering a job in the private sector. I was confident describing my teaching but stumbled when asked about my writing experiences. As a college graduate, I had completed all of the required essays and papers, and there were some writing expectations as a teacher. However, once confronted by this question during the interview, I recognized that my writing skills were woefully weak. Teachers do a lot of talking but little writing. Later when I entered my graduate program, I made a point of minoring in communications and taking several writing courses. Over the years, I think I have gradually improved my writing skills. The fact that I have published 14 books indicates that I can fashion a few complete sentences and some logical paragraphs.

Writing is a powerful and essential communication skill that is becoming even more challenging when we look at the multiple forms of writing that use technology, including text messaging, emails, tweets, and blogs. Effective educators today must not only have good pedagogical skills but examine their skills in the area of writing. As someone who has engaged in writing for some 50 years, I now recognize that writing is more than just a process of putting words on paper or a computer screen.

Writing, including the process of preparing and revising text, is a powerful thinking process. Writing plays an important role in continually improving individuals in the profession and education as a whole. All educators should be encouraged to write, not simply to have good communication skills and share their ideas, but as a reflective improvement process critical to professional learning. Noted, 20th-century educator John Dewey made a comment, “We do not learn from experience; we learn from reflecting on experience.” As teachers and administrators engage in experiences in their profession, those can become powerful learning experiences by reflecting on those experiences. What better way to reflect on those experiences than through writing? Even if you never published that great novel or completed a dissertation adding writing to your daily responsibilities will help you improve within the profession.

Technology today offers many tools to check spelling and grammar and even artificial intelligence to compose text around your ideas. These tools will help you write well and give instant feedback to learn and improve. Technology also enables us to have multiple forms of writing in simpler ways to publish our work and thereby share the results of our writing. A personal journal is a good form of reflection but doesn’t hold the same accountability because it’s not published. A personal journal reflects on experiences by putting thoughts into words. But writing that involves publishing and sharing those thoughts with others creates greater accountability, heightening the level of reflection.

Educators should consider writing blogs, Twitter, journal articles, book chapters, grant applications, and even graduate degree writing to improve in the profession.

Blogs

Blogs are an incredibly easy way to publish thoughts and share experiences. Blogs are less than 500 words, and there are many opportunities to publish as personal, professional organizations, or school communities with short thoughts and ideas. Try establishing a routine of touching on important topics in a blog format to continually focus on the best practices and reflect on how those might be improved. Podcasts are becoming a more popular narrative form of communicating ideas. The best podcasts have writing behind them with a detailed outline or even a complete written script.

Twitter

Twitter is a short form of blogging. It is an incredibly easy and quick way to publish your thoughts in a tweet. It is considered microblogging because you are limited to 280 characters. This is a real challenge in writing to take and summarize an idea in a short form. You begin to question if this idea is worth sharing and how to. adequately describe it in just a few characters. Maintaining a regular Twitter feed constantly has you thinking about those items of new information that will be valuable to your work and interesting to your followers. Twitter has recently gotten a bad rap in the political realm, where pundits post insults and personal attacks, yet there is much valuable information sharing within Twitter.

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

A well-known expectation of higher education professors is that they must publish their work. These same expectations do not fall upon K-12 educators however, taking advantage of the opportunity to publish an effective practice in one of the many journals as an article is a great experience to reflect on the essence of what makes a practice effective. Thinking through that experience and describing it enables you to reflect on that practice and begin to replicate how those good educational practices might be replicated in other experiences. Look for opportunities to write articles and tackle a book for a chapter in a book. When I started teaching, I had no idea I would ever write a book, but looking back, it was some of my most rewarding educational experiences.

Grant Applications

There are many government and not-for-profits that fund education initiatives. This is a special form of writing targeting the priorities of the funding source. But meeting the challenge of describing your program’s success and focused goals is a powerful reflective experience, even if you don’t receive the funding.

Graduate Degree Writing

Many educators complete graduate degrees for added prestige, opportunities to pursue new positions, or increased salaries. Dissertations often required in these programs require research and scholarly writing. I have enjoyed working with many educators over the last several years in my adjunct teaching at Lynn University. The structure of completing a dissertation is a rich learning opportunity to probe deeply into an issue your feel passionate about. It also provides feedback from other scholars in improving your logical thinking and writing.

In summary, do not consider writing as just a communication process. It is also a process that drives thinking and reflection, which leads to improvement. Taking advantage of opportunities to write helps move you further on a journey of continuing to learn and grow in the profession.

Failure to Communicate: Overloaded Education Bandwagons

The discussion on Critical Race Theory (CRT) in education reminds me of the famous old movie line in Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate!” CTE is the latest controversial phrase among the education community and parents. Vocal advocates support and oppose CRT, while many schools jump on board this newest bandwagon. Will CRT reduce racism or isolate feuding races? Will the CRT ideas finally close learning gaps? Does CRT focus erode instruction and decrease learning results? Some experts attempt to answer these questions. However, no one knows fully what is included under the CRT umbrella or the potential impacts.

In my 50 years in education, I have heard this refrain before, not about race but multiple other topics. Each of these started as sound ideas to improve student learning. However, once it became a popular notion in education, everyone with their agenda jumped aboard under this common banner. Historically educators can describe the verbal wars over initiatives such as “open schools,” “new math,” or “Common Core.” Each of these initiatives has elements of good pedagogical practice. Still, once they had a label and became pervasive in schools, the good ideas became bloated, and resistors of change could find aspects to criticize and oppose the whole initiative.

As an example open schools tried to break the rigid mold of 25 students in a classroom by creating flexible school rooms which could be adapted to different student work. But, when schools were built with no walls as the popular design, teachers became frustrated with noisy classrooms. Open classrooms became an anathema. In terms of Common Core, having standards for learning is beneficial, but when the list of standards became ridiculously long and tied to recall tests, the initiative died of its own weight, and the phrase is now close to a swear word. Labels lead to misunderstanding, I remember an insightful education colleague starting, “Be innovative in schools to serve students better, but don’t give it a name.”

My advice to parents, educators, and government leaders is to abandon a broad name and be specific about the practices you advocate or criticize. There are elements in CRT that are beneficial and other extremes that are not. CRT, as a whole, should not be a battleground. The label CRT has become too difficult to define at this point. Discuss the specific knowledge we want students to acquire and the specific behaviors we want them to demonstrate. There is common ground to focus on the needs of children and let talented educators determine how to develop that knowedge and bahavior in the school..