Elevators

Elisha Otis invented the safety elevator in 1852, prior to the start of the Civil War.  Rumor is that Mr. Otis enjoyed this uplifting experience.  Side note – this Otis is no relation to Otis Campbell from The Andy Griffith Show, who could not stay vertical.  Interesting enough, the elevator shaft was introduced four years prior to this. That intrigues me.  It’s true – the shaft designer was confident that someone would come along and put a great device in the shaft. That’s a heck of a vision! I wonder how the investors felt about that line of thought.  You have undoubtedly ridden in several elevators over your lifetime. Most are pretty pedestrian with the standard buttons and some sort of veneer walls. The top of the line is the hoity-toity elevator where some guy dressed in the same suit that Mr. Ned wore on The Bozo Show pushes the buttons for you and announces the floor upon arrival.Here’s my question – what do you do to occupy your time on the elevator?  Your choices are quite limited… or are they?  You can make personal calls on the emergency phone.  You can be like Will Ferrell from Elf and push all of the buttons to create a Christmas tree.  You can hum “It’s a Small World” incessantly.  You can ask another passenger what gauge of cable is used to hold the carriage up and then watch them lose eye contact. The possibilities are endless.

There are many articles you can read on giving your elevator speech – you know, the speech you give when you have to sum something up by pointing out all of the big ideas in a very  limited time frame…kind of like the old, “Answer in 25 words or less” test question that was common when I was a kid. Imagine, if you will, that you had to describe what you do while riding in an elevator.  What would your presentation be like if you were going from the ground floor to the 110^th floor?  How about from the ground floor to the 55^thfloor?  Or how about from the ground floor to the 27^th floor?  Finally, how about from the ground floor to the 2^nd floor?  Would your speech change in each of these scenarios?  Sure, every educator could talk about where they teach.  They can talk about what they teach.  They can talk about who they teach?  They can talk about how long they have been a teacher?  Those are all valid answers.  Here’s the most impactful one in describing what you do – “I make a difference!”  Isn’t that what it really comes down to?  We can spend a whole bunch of time at a school building and present a whole bunch of concepts.  But, in your time, are you making the difference that you had hoped for; the difference you dreamed about, maybe even romanticized about when deciding on a teaching career? In time, you will have to give that elevator speech about what you do.  What will your answer be?