TL;DR:
- Jeff ran workshops at an Arkansas conference on podcasting and social media.
- He emphasized the value of educators sharing their stories and impact.
- He unexpectedly influenced a teacher to change her teaching approach by encouraging students to share their value and stories with each other.
Sometimes Your Impact Isn’t What You Intended
A while back, I had the pleasure of running a couple of workshops and breakout sessions at a conference in Arkansas. Because my primary role with the team is in operations, I don’t travel or train as much as I used to. So any time I get to be in front of a room of people, I love it. This conference was no exception. Along with running 2 awesome workshops on podcasting with your students and starting a podcast as an educator (both with the rockstar Joshua Stamper), I got to run two sessions on a couple of my favorite things: social media and sharing your story!
It’s always fulfilling to share things and have people tell you they took value away from what you spoke about or trained on. But, for me, what is really special is when you accidentally impact someone in a way you hadn’t necessarily intended.
I truly believe that everyone has something of value to share with others. Click To TweetIt wasn’t the goal, but I will take it!
One of the things I speak on is increasing your impact through sharing your story. I truly believe that everyone has something of value to share with others. Maybe big, maybe small. Maybe of value to millions. Or maybe of value to just a handful. But we all have something to share. My goal with this session is to get educators to just CONSIDER sharing their awesomeness with others. Not for them to write a book or start a podcast or whatever. Just to consider the fact that they have value to share.
We tend to think that nothing we do is special or unique. That what we do is probably what everyone does. Often, though, it’s the little things—the way you start a lesson, the way you phrase things, that simple bellringer—that have the potential to have a big impact on someone else.
So I have them do a simple exercise where I challenge them to think of just one thing they do that they believe positively impacts kids, and then we took some time and they shared that with others in the room. The goal is simply to get them to think of the little things they do. And I always love just listening to how passionately educators speak about those little things.
Anyway, we wrapped up the session and everyone headed out, but one teacher stayed after and told me how the session had impacted her. It just wasn’t the impact I THOUGHT I would have. Several of the attendees mentioned that they were considering starting a blog or sharing on social media more, and one even said they were going to write a book. But this teacher said something different…
“This has completely changed the way I am going to teach my students from now on.”
Wait, what? How you teach your students? I didn’t say anything about that. We didn’t discuss pedagogy at all.
She went on to tell me that, until she was in that room sharing and gaining value with her peers, she never realized how much power there is in having students share value with each other.
She has always been so focused on her being the one who holds the value that needs to be shared with students. From here on, though, she was going to harness the power of her students. She was going to give them the opportunity to increase their impact by sharing their stories.
I have spoken on that subject and run that same session several times before, and I have never considered the potential of impacting the way someone teaches. That’s the point here: Sometimes you impact someone in a way you don’t even realize is possible, that you didn’t even consider, that you didn’t even plan for.
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“For every problem we see in a classroom, there is a solution somewhere in another classroom. We just haven’t shared it yet.” – Chad Ostrowski
Just like educators often downplay the impact of sharing that “little thing” they do in their classroom, I downplayed the value I had to offer. I thought I was there to get some teachers inspired to share their stories, but ended up changing the way one of them thinks about teaching by sharing mine.
Imagine what impact you could have by sharing yours.
About Jeff Gargas
Jeff is the COO/Co-founder of the Teach Better Team and co-author of “Teach Better.” He works with educators to increase student engagement and improve student success. Jeff previously owned an online marketing firm, where he worked with entrepreneurs and small businesses. He is also a former adjunctive professor at Kent State University and spent 10+ years in the music industry.
