Teaching is the New Marketing
Billy tunes out during discussion. Sally would rather pass notes about boys than read an assignment. As teachers, it’s our job to engage our students and to teach them to learn, to be excited and curious about the world around them. To feel that the subject matter in our classes is relevant and important to their lives. We serve as examples of what a life of intellectual curiosity can yield. In the end, we’re all salesmen. Selling a way of life, selling the thirst for information, selling our students on the benefits of knowledge.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You’re not in the business of entertaining your students. Kids who don’t want to learn don’t deserve your time. Your effort is better spent on the students in your class who actually want to learn. I understand where you’re coming from if you feel this way and I’ve certainly had these thoughts. However, if we think of ourselves as marketers in addition to being educators we get a whole new perspective on hesitant or resistant students.
Marketers focus in on a potential audience who they believe would benefit from purchasing their product just as we focus on tailoring our teaching for the students in our classes (or at least we should). Often a marketer creates different marketing schemes for different potential demographics just as adjust our teaching depending on where we teach, when we teach, and who our students are. Marketers don’t give up when their sales figures are disappointing. They don’t dismiss potential customers who don’t respond to advertising. They seek another way to reach those customers. Educators should do the same.
We should at least be as dedicated to reaching our customers students as the marketers who sell them their sneakers and their cell phones. Our product is much more important to their lives.
April 17th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Well said!
April 18th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
I’ve always thought this but perhaps did not say it so well. It is all the more important today because our kids live in a tornado of media. We should be comfortable with the thought that we are not promoting technology only for its bells and whistles. Information and communication tools not only promote constructivist learning experiences and collaboration, they meet students on their own media ground. Anything in black ink on a piece of paper just doesn’t work when you can use a colorful online page with good images and interesting design. School should not be the media “dead zone” of their lives.