{"id":420,"date":"2020-06-24T00:00:01","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T00:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/?p=420"},"modified":"2022-09-19T15:49:37","modified_gmt":"2022-09-19T15:49:37","slug":"teacher-or-glorified-pizzaboy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/?p=420","title":{"rendered":"Teacher or Glorified PizzaBoy? THAT, is (still) the (scary) question\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

I wrote an earlier version of this article on <\/span>LinkedIn, back in 2016<\/span><\/a>, but I thought it might be worth a moment to revisit an epiphany that I believe continues to affect and shape the way I think about both teaching and learning.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>

WARNING WARNING WARNING – I am about to unleash some fairly uncomfortable (personal) truths here. <\/span><\/h3><\/div>

Back then I was taking a postgraduate class, listening to an online lecture delivered by a rather distinguished (pompous) and prestigious (arrogant) gent with a doctorate from an even more prestigious (possibly over-rated?) university.\u00a0 Bear in mind this was before the advent of \u201cvideo for all\u201d, and he approached the 80+ folks listening online as he might a freshman class in the dignified and hallowed halls he was used to teaching in:<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words, he spent a solid 30 minutes brow-beating us about how he was \u201cnot about to waste his valuable time\u2026\u201d and \u201cwe had best prove ourselves worthy\u2026\u201d of the knowledge he was about to \u201cgift us\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Having a bit of my own share of arrogance, a masters degree, and many, many years teaching technical students, I felt a bit peed upon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now mind you, this was a super bright guy.\u00a0 Had done some truly inspired research. But he had the value chain completely backwards.\u00a0 I was paying him, and not the other way around. He was providing a service: Delivery of Knowledge in an area that<\/span> I <\/i><\/b>had chosen from a catalog (or menu). In essence, I realized: he was my pizza boy.<\/span><\/p>\n

This changed the way<\/span> I <\/i><\/b>teach and train in <\/span>my own<\/i><\/b> classes – I hope for the better.<\/span><\/p>\n

My professor from that class was working with an outdated model – that knowledge was rare and precious, and doled out sparingly only to the most privileged. This worked in days past.\u00a0 But, today?\u00a0 YouTube it, dude.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though I had this revelation almost a decade ago, it seems so much more evident today:\u00a0 Knowledge has become more democratized than ever.\u00a0 A commodity rather than a rare material.\u00a0 More and more companies are looking for the ability to learn, and to <\/span>acquire learning on their own<\/span><\/i>, not through some prestigious degree or course by some esteemed professor.\u00a0 In fact, <\/span>NPR recently posted a story on companies looking to diversify their workforces no longer requiring degrees.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0 More than ever, when it comes to more advanced skills, it\u2019s the teacher that is lucky to have an audience, not the students lucky to have a teacher.\u00a0 And this requires a bit of a mind-shift on the part of the person delivering:<\/span><\/p>\n

Teachers \/ Trainers \/ Pedagogues – deliver a service. At the end of the day, I like to hope it\u2019s more valuable than pizza delivery, but still – a service.\u00a0 And today, like pizza delivery, it\u2019s often more of a convenience than a necessity.\u00a0 If it becomes too difficult, you can just go pick up your pizza (or your knowledge) yourself.<\/span><\/p>\n

So how can this be helpful for us as teachers, trainers, etc?\u00a0 We can approach our students and classes from the perspective of a service provider.<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe instructors can better frame their classes, and the service they provide as <\/span>facilitators<\/b>, helping their participants better understand how to make a class more collaborative by their participation. I believe instructors (<\/span>facilitators<\/b>) can guide their students to better find the right knowledge resources to continue growing beyond the class while those resources are, er, well, still hot.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the next post I\u2019ll include how I try to frame this.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>

\n

Nulla in tristique nibh. Phasellus porttitor leo id risus commodo cursus. Aliquam tincidunt rutrum ante, eu vestibulum elit pharetra in.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote an earlier version of this article on LinkedIn, back in 2016, but I thought it might be worth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-on-teaching-training-facilitation-engaging-and-presenting","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=420"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2887,"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420\/revisions\/2887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katalystnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}