A Visual Diary

“Those who can’t do, teach….”

The cliche that “those who can’t do, teach” has always bothered me. It severely discredits how difficult teaching is. I grew up in a family of teachers. My mother, father, all three of my aunts… all teachers. I used to joke that I too would inevitably become a teacher at some point in my life. I got a taste of teaching this weekend, and I have to say I’m not entirely sure I’ve got what it takes. 

Saturday, I taught a six-hour InDesign workshop sponsored by the South Carolina Scholastic Press Association (SCSPA). I was very involved in South Carolina and southeastern scholastic press in high school, and when they asked me if I’d be able to teach a class in InDesign, I was very flattered. It took all of five minutes after I said yes to process what I’d just agreed to and for panic-mode to set in. 

I’ve never taught InDesign formally by myself before. I usually am a director’s assistant at the Carolina Journalism Institute over the summer, but that usually involves more trouble shooting than anything else. The majority of the instruction is left up to the professionals. 

I laid out my “lesson plan” of what I thought would be most relevant to the seven high schoolers and two advisors who signed up for my workshop and even created a powerpoint. We blew through most of the information I wanted to cover in about two hours. There wasn’t really enough time to go into too much detail about good design, although we did learn about the five principles of design and looked at a lot of different examples from magazines. Besides it takes a while to cultivate an opinion about good design; you have to observe many different examples before you find things that really appeal to you and the publication you are designing for. During longer workshops like the Carolina Journalism Institute, there is much more time to go in depth about what constitutes good design and more time to apply the skills you are learning. 

I tried to teach them as much as possible in the allotted time, without overloading them or piling on irrelevant things they wouldn’t care about or use. All in all, it was an eye-opening experience. I got great, formal experience in teaching Adobe InDesign and now know how I might do so differently in the future. I didn’t feel like I was a great teacher, but the people signing my check seemed pleased and impressed with my “students” progress. The workshop participants said they felt like they learned a lot of new and useful skills, so I guess that’s all that really matters.