I’m on a mission to help people make and use videos for learning purposes. As a teacher, I was on a mission to make the world a better place by helping improve education from the inside. Married life changed me. Now, I’m using my skills as a teacher along with new ones I’ve learned to help improve organizations from the inside. This post is about the beginning of my journey from teacher to instructional designer.
Let’s go!
What is an Instructional Designer?
If you are like me, you never heard the word instructional designer before someone told you what it was when you said, “A what?” It was the day I dropped into Cinecraft Productions on a college assignment. I was assigned to research 5 potential companies I may want to work for after graduation. At the time, I was working on my entrepreneurial art degree in digital media.
It was 2009. The economy just bottomed out and I returned to academia to retool my skills and pursue a life in video production. My number one goal was to earn an Academy Award. Lofty, I know, but a goal so unlike saving public education from years of institutionalized racism that I latched on with my overachieving heart and inched my nose to the grindstone. I digress.
Cine WAS the Place for Me
The five companies I was researching all made videos. I did not want to work in corporate learning, I didn’t even know what that meant. As I talked with Maria, the owner of Cinecraft, she talked about what they did and how they did it. I was captivated by their longstanding history in Cleveland. I left there that afternoon thinking it would be a cool place to work because it would give me a chance to connect to a city that I only ever drove in and out of, but never really worked to improve. They had the stage, equipment, and experience to offer me a chance to become an Academy hopeful.
I did go to four other places and all of them were great in their own way, but I knew “Cine” could be my home when I read a job description on their website. It was for an Instructional Designer. I’ve often said over the years since then, the term sounds made up. It was and is an overly complicated corporate term for a teacher.
I mean really!
Instructional Designers are Teachers
Teacher’s design instruction. Teacher’s write objectives, lesson plans, create curriculum, analyze data, evaluate progress, work with teams of diverse learners, manage complicated relationships with parents and administrators, and of course, understand the importance of the subject matter expert.
If you were already familiar with the term Instructional Designer, then the previous list sounds like a definition for an instructional designer. If this is the first you’ve read about the term, then the teacher and the instructional designer are the same people in a different costume.
So, how did I become an instructional designer? Well, I did what I did whenever I was presented with something I knew nothing about: I applied my learning process.
My Learning Process
- Ask everyone I know about the topic.
- Research the topic in books, magazines, associations, and company websites.
- Read everything I can find on the topic.
- Find interactive activities that challenge my new knowledge.
- Take a class.
- Practice my new knowledge until it becomes a skill.
- And finally, teach it to someone.
Opportunity
Of course, I could not have become an instructional designer had Maria not believed in me. She gave me the chance to show that I could be a designer. She believed in my credentials, confidence, and my ability to articulate my abilities in writing and through spoken words. I will be forever grateful for her belief in me. For several years after being hired, I told myself I would work in the instructional design role until I could earn the right to manage video productions. I did. I did that award-winningly well. Life pulled me.
What I Learned Early On
What I learned is that you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of the teacher. Now, I teach the people who work for me, while I prepare my curriculum to teach others how to meld instruction with dynamic video productions. I’m not actively chasing the Academy Award anymore. That goal seems a bit hollow now even though I know my privilege as a “white-looking” male could help me strive for that goal. I digress once more. What I learned is simple. I was already an instructional designer.
Fiction Becomes Reality
So now, I’m an instructional designer. Well, I still think the term sounds fictional, but I’ve accepted it as reality like several other things.
- I didn’t know there were other white anti-racist educators out there before I wrote about them for my Master’s degree.
- I didn’t know any Cleveland sport could win a championship before Lebron put the city on his back and showed me one man can change an entire city!
- And, I didn’t know that a pandemic would alter my life forever causing me to share my personal journey from teacher to instructional designer.
So here I am, a teacher and an instructional designer and a video maker!
Helpful Links
What is an Instructional Designer? – VIDEO
