500-Word Mission Statement & My Personal Creative Credo

One of my favorite past times is flipping through magazines.  From fashion, to home, to cooking... the theme of the magazine doesn't matter.  What gets me are the pretty pictures, the aesthetically pleasing designs, and oh, those glossy pages.  I find myself engrossed and engaged with the content with each flip of the page.

There is no denying that we live in a very visual world; simply put, images speak to us and we speak through our images.  From the proliferation of social media like Instagram and Tumblr to the bombarding of our daily psyche with advertising campaigns; images and visual design deeply engage us in our environment.

For years I have dabbled in graphic design as a hobby, always dreaming up new businesses just so I could create a logo or building websites to quench my graphic design fix.  But I did not make the connection between my classroom and graphic design until very recently.  Hitting me like a brick, I realized that my students were disengaged simply because my instructional tools did not hold a candle to the gazillion other beautifully designed and highly visual distractions they consume every day.

How sad is this slide from one of my past PowerPoint lectures?
Yes, this is a critical period in our teaching.  It is the 21st Century and no person
on the face of this planet would ever be engaged by this!

Why would a student want to pay attention to a PowerPoint lecture that is mostly bullet points and words?  Why would a student want to submit a project that was so glaringly ill-planned and poorly executed?  Because I was presenting my content to them every day through poorly designed teaching and learning tools.  No wonder their natural response was to begin daydreaming, doodling, or sneaking peaks at their fantasy football league on their phones.

Although I enjoyed graphic design as a hobby, I began to look for ways to incorporate it into my classroom.  Re-adjusting the fonts on a worksheet, presenting a concept via a graphic organizer,  adding more images than text to my presentations...These were all simple ways I improved my teaching tools and the rewards were almost immediate.  I observed my students tuning in more to my lectures, taking more care on the worksheets, and connecting more to the content presented graphically.

Same slide from above after my visual epiphany.  I only made small changes and worked within PowerPoint but the results are huge.  You do not have to be a graphic design whiz to make these small changes in your teaching!

I don't know why it took me so long, but once I started I couldn't stop.  I was beginning to use the same visual foundation and graphic elements that magazine editors, publishers, and advertising uses to get millions of people to buy their products... and it was working!  I was selling ideas, content, history and my students were engaged... they were buying it.

There is a lot of brain-based research to support the notion that students need visuals to learn better, research that I will explore throughout this blog.  But for today, I wanted to share with you my heart for engaging students in our classrooms through the implementation of graphic design.  No, you don't have to be a creative-soul like me.  In fact, you don't have to have a creative bone in your body.  I am dedicated to task of bringing easy graphic solutions to your busy classroom.  Our students are bright, but they are bored.  I am on a mission to change that!   I hope you join me.

Please allow me to introduce myself...

My name is Cricket and I was born to teach.  Sometimes I wish I was born to do something else—like be a stay-at-home mom, a member of the Rockettes, or even a greeting card author.  I know that being a stay-at-home mom is a very demanding job, but my summer months off are proof that I would not do well being at home day after day after day.  I dread the monotonous dog days of summer that I always seem to find myself in, even when I meticulously plan outings for me and my daughter.  

And then there are the demands of being a Rockette or a greeting card author—I mean at my age I just can’t get those kicks to the same height as I used to and I am most certain my greeting card messages would begin to mimic one another as I fall into the inevitable writer’s block.

No, teaching is what I was born to do and a calling that I almost walked away from last October.  It was in my depth of teacher depression that I felt betrayed by my one true calling—the classroom.  How could the place that I once felt so connected to feel so far away?  Nine years of pouring my heart and soul into my profession and in one quick moment every ounce of happiness I once felt toward my calling slipped away.  Nine years I invested all of my blood, sweat, and tears into my classroom and I found myself lost and disconnected.  I was prepared to walk away and I began to seriously grieve my calling.

I frantically considered all of my options.  I mean, I can’t just quit; financially that was not possible-- and I’ve already mentioned that I am not the stay-at-home type.  Maybe I could teach online?  No, I would still be too cooped up at home.  Maybe I could teach part-time online and do something on the side; like an antique booth?  That would be fun!  I could fulfill my calling and do something creative.  But after a three month run of the antique booth, I found my garage full of junk, my wallet empty from buying all of the junk, and my husband unhappy that I was not making a profit.  In fact, after doing all the math I realized that I was paying rent to the shop and paying other people to take my “vintiques” home.  Not exactly what I envisioned.

By February I found myself deeper in my teacher depression and then it happened; an opening at the small private school that my daughter attends preschool.  I interviewed for the position the day after I sent in my resume and it was the change of scenery that I was searching for.  I found a bounce in my step again as I began dreaming of a teaching life on the “other side” of the public-private divide.  I took the position to teach High School Social Studies and began to pull myself out of the despair that had become of my calling.

It’s been over a year since I almost walked away from the teaching profession, about 12 months since I decided to leave public schools, and only 6 months into the world of private education.  But I am excited about teaching again and am even more excited to begin this journey of reflection and of sharing my classroom with you.  I am not excited about the vulnerability I feel at this moment, in fact I’d probably feel less vulnerable auditioning for the Rockettes. But, I have a peculiar feeling that the risk of putting myself and my ideas out there for all will reap much reward, personally and professionally.

So here I find myself, on a Sunday afternoon, in between loads of laundry and fine tuning lesson plans.  Here I find myself embarking on a new horizon of my calling—and I couldn’t be more thrilled.  My name is Cricket and I was born to teach.