What do you call yourself?
I once read a CV by someone who had been inventive with a job title.
He said that when he was 14 he was a ‘Media Distribution Officer’. This was a young lad with very little work experience but he wanted to “make himself more professional”.
Of course, this sounds so much better than ‘paperboy’ and why not? Is there anything wrong with dressing-up a job title?
Here are some more:
- Colour Distribution Technician – painter and decorator
- Information Adviser – library assistant
- Field Nourishment Consultant – waiter/waitress
- Education Centre Nourishment Consultant – dinner lady
- Highway Environmental Hygienist – road sweeper
- Customer Experience Enhancement Consultant – shop sales assistant
- Transparency Enhancement Facilitator – window cleaner (also known as Vision Clearance Engineer)
- Sandwich Architect – someone who works at Subway bunging bits of food onto a roll
- Space Consultant – estate agent
- Petroleum Transfer Engineer – petrol station attendant behind the till who pushes the button to give you petrol
- Head of Verbal Communications – receptionist (also known as Director of First Impressions)
Learning Designers
And that brings is onto teachers and what we call ourselves.
Some teachers give themselves daft names like ‘learning managers’ when in fact what they mean is ‘teacher’.
They will say we are ‘learning facilitators’ when in fact they mean ‘teacher’.
They might even say ‘learning coordinator’ or learning planner or learning director’ which all translate to…….you guessed it – ‘teacher’.
One education academic who has lost the plot wants teachers to rename themselves as ‘learning designers’.
Professor Guy Claxton, emeritus professor at the University of Winchester, thinks we need a new term because ‘teaching’ is too closely related to ‘telling’. As reported in The Age he says,
I think we are learning designers now because the kinds of things that develop those characteristics…those non-cognitive skills, 21st-century skills…people are looking for ways in regular schools, with regular kids, that we can design that medium.
Just take a deep breath everyone and count to 10.
If you think you are a ‘knowledge navigator’ then think again….you are a teacher and always will be.