Educated by Design. Michael Cohen
is about people. Dieter Rams once said (not quite) that “you cannot understand good teaching if you don’t understand people,” because each one relies on the other to establish value and meaning. In the end, I became committed to putting the student and their needs first. This would ensure that I would support the best learning for them and not for myself.
I hope you can appreciate that moment. Very few professions overlap in such an interesting way as teaching and design. I tried it with marketing, nonprofit management, and sales, all three areas in which I have a professional background. There is something genuine about good design, and I see the very same thing in good teaching.
Whether it is in the process of design, the experience of design for others, or the moment where you become the gap between an idea and its implementation, I believe that educators can gain a great deal from incorporating some aspect of design into their ways of thinking and classroom practices.
The approach above is nothing new in education. You would be hard-pressed to find a school that would not promote itself as student-first or student-centered. In practice there are so many factors that influence, impact, and impede our ability to support our students at that level. Does that mean that design is the magical recipe for student success? It might not work for every teacher and every student in every classroom? No. Still, I believe that most of my success as an educator and an administrator supporting educators is due to my understanding of good design.
In June of 2017, I was fortunate to be one of the keynote speakers for the ISTE conference. It was a definitive moment for me. While speaking to a room that held 10,000 people felt like an incredible validation of years of hard work as an educator, speaker, and entrepreneur, I was still scared to stand on that stage. I have spoken to crowds in the thousands, and I love speaking. I love storytelling and being able to craft a message that takes an audience on a journey. I leverage my gift of art to creative slides that help amplify that journey, many of them contained in this book, but I was scared. I wasn’t scared of the crowd size. I wasn’t scared I would fumble a line or miss an important idea. I was scared that I would stand on that stage and share my message of creative courage and capacity, and the incredible educators in the audience would think the five most horrible words possible:
He’s right! But not me.
As I finished the talk and soaked up for a moment the applause and cheers, I went backstage and slumped down on the couch. I opened Twitter and saw the responses. I saw educators in the thousands take photos of my slides and build on the message. I saw them express gratitude, thanks, excitement, and confidence, but most importantly, I saw that they believed. They believed that they could create and that their students could express their creativity if just given the chance. It took hours to run through all the messages, and as I tried to engage with each and every one, I, too, believed that the audience, these amazing educators, were not just thinking but saying:
“He’s right! I can do this!”
I didn’t know where to put this story in the book. It’s here because we as educators, mentors, and advisors have to understand that we are gifted, we are talented, we are skilled, but that is what G-d gave us. At the end of the day, I am a Rabbi, so for me, it’s G-d Almighty. Each one of us has to come to terms with our own higher power, something that is bigger than ourselves. When you have that, you have something to fall back on as you continue to embark on a selfless calling of being a teacher, a trainer, and a torch that will help guide those precious souls in your classroom. Humility can only exist when you’re doing something great and providing value for others. It’s how you’re changed after realizing your greatness and knowing how to value those that you engage with over why they look to you.
I won’t lie; the 300 or so selfies I took after that keynote speech were a mixture of discomfort and awesomeness. What it showed me was when you provide value for others, when you give of yourself to see others succeed, you will achieve greatness, but you have to always remember:
Never stop creating.
Let’s collaborate together as we all embark on this creative journey. Create, capture, and curate your experiences on Twitter and Instagram by using the hashtag #EducatedByDesign and tagging me @TheTechRabbi.
FIND THE LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS BOOK, ALONG WITH EVEN MORE RESOURCES, TIPS, AND INSPIRATION AT THETECHRABBI.COM/EBDTHEBOOK
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