I Am a Teacher

It's official... I am a teacher. It's something I've known about myself for most of my adult life, but couldn't rightfully claim that title until just a couple months ago. Now I can't deny it... I've been there and done that.

I've just finished a stint as the instructor of a seven-week course at Vancouver Film School on the subject of Social Responsibility in Entertainment & Media. When I took it on, I feared I'd be a complete failure at it. Even though I "knew" a teacher waited inside of me for her chance to get out, and even though many of my friends and family encouraged me through the years, suggesting that I'd be a natural at it, I didn't completely trust any of those voices. But the time came for the Universe to hand me this test, and the time came for me to accept the challenge.

I landed this job the way I usually do, through someone I know. In this case, it was someone I'd known for all of ten minutes. Someone had given me tickets to a Women in Film screening and reception at District 319, and I started chatting with a long-haired guy about my age standing next to me before the film started. Turns out we both used to work in the music industry back in the day (the long hair on a guy my age was a dead giveaway), so we started comparing notes. When I mentioned that I'd been working in socially responsible business for the last few years, I swear I saw a light bulb go on over his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his business card. Turns out he's part of the team running the new Entertainment Business Management program at VFS, and he was looking for someone to teach this course that was starting in early September... might that be something I was interested in? AbsoLUTEly.

I've been looking for a way into teaching for as long as I can remember, but never felt that I had enough expertise in any subject to be any good at it. This time, though, I felt like I actually had the credentials that would make me feel confident enough to give it a shot. I gave him a call the next day, we talked about it, I said it sounded great, and the next thing you know, I was a VFS instructor.

I had about a month to prepare for the course, and I delved into the curriculum with more gusto than a cat in a can of tuna (okay, maybe that's not possible, but you catch my drift). Another instructor had developed and taught the curriculum a couple times before, so a plethora of materials were at my disposal. However, as I looked through them, I realized that most of the articles and powerpoint decks focused more on the negative side of social responsibility - that is, what the entertainment industry is doing wrong, the negative impacts of media on society, the lines that shouldn't be crossed, the legal sand traps, and so on. Yuch. Boring AND depressing. I mean, if I came out of a class where all we talked about was violence in gaming, I'd just be bummed out.

Fortunately, my Vancouver contacts include a lot of amazing people who are involved with efforts like Media That Matters, and so I was able to tap into that network and bring a lot of really positive examples to the students of ways that they can use their positions of power in the entertainment industry to create a better world.

At the end of the day, I felt great about the information I was able to share with these future leaders in the entertainment industry, who might not otherwise have thought about the power they have to make a positive difference in the world (since the rest of their classes are teaching them how to make a ton of money in the business!). I made a connection. I might have made a difference. I am a teacher.