Passion Project Week 9: I. AM. TEACHER. HEAR. ME. ROAR.

Slade teaching dance at OSU KidSpirit circa 2010

Before we start, yes, I used to have hair. But besides that, you know what I've always had, even when I didn't know I had it? A desire to teach.

I often say that I was teaching kids when I was a kid. One of my first jobs was teaching dance and theatre at Children's Educational Theatre in Salem, Or. My second job was working at an eye clinic, but that's besides the point.

This week as I wrestled with the beast of marketing and sales, I stopped what I was doing and I said out loud:

I am a teacher, not a salesperson.

After that, writing posts and engaging with the community was suddenly easier. I realized that am not writing a post so that I can tell everyone how wonderful my work is, I'm addressing the issues I see with insights and invitations for change.

Now, maybe you are saying, "That was the point the whole time," but when you are hungry and when you have invested a significant amount of time and money into something, you NEED that thing to work. So, if you have to sing and dance (and shout) to get it sold, you might actually go about doing all those things and lose track of your purpose.

When I'm teaching, I know my purpose. I can authentically lead with love. I can lead with humility. Because, as a teacher, I know I don't know everything. Excellent teachers aren't necessarily content masters, they are masters at challenging thinking and inviting us as students to work harder and go deeper to master the content ourselves. BTW, I'm not sure I would say I'm an excellent teacher, but I'm working really hard to become one.

When I'm teaching, the goal is clear. I'm here to help you get from point A to point B and to develop the muscle and grit necessary to rise about the challenges between those points.

When I'm teaching, I feel as though I'm fulfilling one of the reasons God put me on Earth at this time. I feel grounded and like the world makes sense.

When I'm teaching I laugh more. I cry more. Emotions flow more easily because I'm the closest to who I really want to be.

Many years ago, someone said to me, "Slade, you like teaching because you like to perform." There was a time when performance was my goal. My self-esteem needed the praise because my self talk was not healthy. But that perspective never sat well with me. I didn't teach choir for free for four years at 7:00 am everyday because I wanted people to notice me. I taught because I wanted those kids to have something that otherwise would have gone by the wayside. I don't study for hours on end to understand a specific diagnosis because I want the client to listen to how smart I am. I don't spend hours developing curriculum because I need people to take my course.

I teach because it is my song. There is the old saying, a song bird doesn't sing to be heard, it sings because it has a song. Teaching is my song. It is the way I communicate with the world and make sense of everything we are all experiencing together. If I can teach it, I can understand it. If I can understand it, then maybe I can help someone who needs help understanding, too.

That is why I'm here each week. I'm here to teach. I'm here to teach AND I live in a technological age in which teaching happens online and is promoted in such a way that you need to share and talk about it. Otherwise, I would be on the prairie ringing the school bell in the morning and opening the world for a group of kids who have chores to do and fields to plow. I doesn't matter where I teach, but that is what I will be doing until the day I die.

A quick metrics update: I joined the world of Google Ads. I'm trying it out. I praised God this morning for my 1 click! It is a beginning and it means that there are two more eyeballs seeing the opportunity and a brain thinking how this course could help them.

Till next week,

Slade