What is a Good Teacher? (10/20/14)
How do you judge the quality of a teacher? My friend Robin moved down to Florida from Grand Blanc, Michigan a few years back so she gave her old Toastmasters club a call to facilitate an introduction for me while I was in town on the book tour. It was great! I had the opportunity to speak, but more importantly I got to connect with a group of new people I may have otherwise never have met. I sold a couple of copies of Average Joe’s Story: Quest for Confidence, and I got a change of scenery from my hotel room that was somewhere just outside of Detroit.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the fact that I would get a little bit of free press in the local media. When I got up the next morning I had an email in my inbox from Robin. After I attended the Grand Blanc Area Toastmasters Club the club’s Vice President of Public Relations used the opportunity of having a guest speaker, and author from out of town to get their name out to the local media. The club and I both got some free press, but I was tickled pink because they did all the work.
I have listened to Robin talk to people about PR all the time on both a personal and professional level. Without fail the two points she will always bring up are never waste an opportunity and your PR initiative is a continuous campaign. Three years later Grand Blanc Area Toastmasters still adheres to Robin’s words of wisdom. They had a guest from out of town pop in from out of the blue so they used that unexpected event as a part of their ongoing PR campaign.
I see Robin as an example of what a good teacher looks like. A good teacher is someone that teaches a lesson, and the lesson catches hold. The lesson of a good teacher doesn’t fade away once the teacher is out of sight, out of mind. When a good teacher enters your life a little piece of them remains with you with every lesson they teach. Undoubtedly Robin taught many a lesson to her old club back in Michigan, and based on the actions taken by the club in her absence, she was a good teacher.
I bring this up because so far in my travels I have come to see the importance that good teachers have not just on people, but communities. They make a difference of not simply in the lives of the people they teach, but by extension anyone those people come into contact with. So if you have something to share with the world, are you sharing it? If not…why not?
