Have you heard of the saying “Those who can do, those who can’t do, teach”? I’m not sure where this came from and who originally said it but in my opinion, it is at best short-sighted and at worst totally inaccurate.
Where would any of us be now if it weren’t for those patient souls who turned up at school or college day after day to try to impart some knowledge into us kids (and let’s face it some of us didn’t exactly make their teaching easy for them, did we?!).
In the Middle Ages, knowledge was viewed as a gift of God, and was seen as wrong to charge for it. As a result of this view, teachers at many institutions were not paid for their work. They had to rely on the gifts and charity of appreciative students. That’s where the saying (and quite possibly the giving) of an apple for the teacher sprang up…students giving them food so that they wouldn’t actually starve!
Obviously today teachers are more respected but you know…mud sticks and sometimes they are perhaps seen as ‘not quite up to the standard of people in industry’. Extremely disrespectful I appreciate but unfortunately this perception still exists.
So what about us event management training lecturers? We work
AND teach! The team of highly skilled event professionals at
Event Academy are involved in a massive variety of event disciplines such as:
- conference production
- product launches
- wedding planning
- VIP, celebrity and sporting event
- charity fundraising events
- exhibition management
- Festival organisation
- health and safety
Their skills base is wide and covers areas such as:
- Technical production (this is my main expertise!)
- Event planning and co-ordination
- PR and event communication
Being really honest, the pay for teaching compared with being an event executive isn’t ever going to set the world on fire and I certainly couldn’t afford to give up my day job to lecture in event management training full-time. Nor would I want to.
The reason I teach is because I am so passionate about what I do – I firmly believe that event planning and event management cannot or should not be taught as a stand-alone academic subject. It is practical, hands-on and needs more than theory training to be really digested and understood by students.
Don’t get me wrong. Teaching can sometimes be tough and challenging. There is a certainly knack that you need to posses to be able to impart knowledge. It’s not a case of just standing up in front of a class and reeling off what you know…instead it is having the ability to bring a subject like event production to life and instilling the
‘WOW
’ factor into what you are conveying – much the same as organising an event, don’t you think?!
Let me know who inspired you at school and why?
