Here is an interesting post I ran across about a woman who feels she learned more about her work by becoming a design instructor.
My students have taught me this: we can’t simply move on. In order to prevent becoming stale as designers—and it’s happened to all of us—we have to keep our eyes open and our minds inquisitive. Keep asking questions. Keep learning. It can be so easy to get into a professional rut, and assume that our real world experiences teach us everything we need to know.
I’ve heard the phrase “Those who can’t do, teach” but I find it to way off when it comes to design instructors. I myself began teaching over 10 years ago and I learned more in my first year of teaching than I did in the previous 10 years of professional work. Bottom line, if you are hitting a wall with your design skills or wish for a better job I challenge you to try teaching a class in some aspect of your passion. You will never regret it. You might even learn something too ; )
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The whole "Those who can't do, teach" mentality has always pissed me off. That may be true for a few, but in any industry you'll find the occasional working dud. Programmers who can't code a while loop, designers who don't know the difference between serif and sans-serif, cops who are a little too tazer happy, or whatever.
I would love to teach. In part because I think education in web design is important (if slow to adapt) and as a working professional a few months away from a masters degree I've got a shot at breaking through the red tape. But ultimately I want to teach for selfish reasons. I think teaching makes you better in *any* subject. Didn't Einstein say something along the lines of "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"? That's the sort of thing teaching requires. Anyone can wow a client with BS and buzzwords. That won't fly in the classroom (and it probably won't fly with the same client twice if you don't have the chops to back it up, but for some people, that's the business model).
Ultimately, teaching is the easiest way for me to scratch my own "life long learning" itch.
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