What I Do

One of the things that I didn't like about being a teacher was that everybody already knew what a teacher was, and everybody also had pretty clear notions about what it meant to be a teacher, most of which were wrong. Things like

• You get to go home every day at 3:00.
• You don't work in June, July, or August.
• You're incompetent. No really, that's an opinion people have about teachers, as evidenced by the well known quotation, "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

So there were bad things about being a teacher, true, but the good thing was that when people asked me what I did for a living, I always gave the same answer: "I'm a teacher." And people immediately understood what I did.

But with my current job, that's not so easy. My official title is Chief Information Officer. But if people ask me what I do for a living and I tell them that, since most people have never heard of that title, I haven't really told them much of anything (though that doesn't stop me from using that title when I'm trying to impress someone, 'cause you gotta admit: it sounds pretty cool). The old title for my job was District Technology Coordinator, which was pretty descriptive, but the state changed that title because in a school typically a "coordinator" is a part-time job, something that a school employee does in addition to his or her regular job, and it also implies that the DTC only deals with keeping the district technology running, and not with any kind of long term planning. So I don't use that title. Sometimes I just tell people I'm an "educator," and occasionally that's enough for people (though I assume those people think I'm a classroom teacher), but often it just leads people to ask more questions: What kind of educator? At what level--elementary, high school, or college? Are you in the classroom or a principal? Huh?

So for everyone who asks, here is what I do for a living.