To help encourage conversations about the process of change and innovation, the topic/question of the week is...
Wholesale Change
(A look at what it would mean to you to change the things you do now at work)
Do you think you can go all in on wholesale change?
- Yes
- No
- Maybe
- not knowing if the risk justifies the reward
- not not knowing if the content will lose out too much to the process
- not knowing if there will be enough time to really do it right, under the current system
- not knowing if enough students will benefit from such a paradigm shift
- not knowing if this will improve the chances that students will establish a proficient independent learner profile
As I look at the calendar and see that we have passed the midpoint of November, it sure feels as though time is moving quicker than ever! I hope that the past weekend allowed some time for everyone to regroup a bit. After the MCPE Trivia fundraiser Friday evening, we enjoyed some soccer games and the continued yard work of the season. We enjoyed watching the Pats game as a family Sunday afternoon before we 'buckled up' for the week ahead.
In an effort to try and slow down the pace a bit, I am sharing two posts this week that I read Friday afternoon after all of the students had left for the weekend. I was catching up on the posts I had 'favorited/liked' from the week on Twitter and thinking about some of the conversations/meetings I had over the past week and looking at the schedule that awaited me on Monday. This is part of my weekly routine - looking back/forward at the same time (as best I can) in an effort to keep a continuous/thematic line in the day-to-day work. As a tangential note, my son Owen asked me the other night what my day is like - 'What do you do during the day? It seems like you have a lot of meetings.' It was fun and enlightening to get his perspective as a third grader and to talk through my days as well. When I think about what constitutes most of my work and what is most important, it seems to always come back to the 'conversations' that take place. These conversations take many forms (meetings, phone calls, quick chats, longer discussions, individual, group) and are with students, parents, teachers, colleagues, and parents. I like challenges and am a problem solver (or at least like to think of myself as one), and I often have to remind myself to slow down and be sure to listen more during these interactions and conversations. The posts below that I am sharing in different ways emphasize the importance of getting to better understand your 'audience' and be sure to be open to hear/understand other perspectives...
Principal Note to Self: Thought Bubble Compassion
by Seth Berg (@BergsEyeView)
Berg's open and honest reflection serves as a great reminder that everyone carries 'something' into a conversation, and the more we better understand and recognize those 'somethings' and name them will help lead to understanding and progress. I like the idea of bringing compassion into each of our interactions with students, parents, and one another.
What I do know is that just like me everyone I know is complicated and significant. In fact, I’m quite sure that the ones I don’t know are too. Knowing this along with having significant limitations in the area of mind reading makes compassion an amazingly effective leadership tool for me. When I successfully access my capacity for compassion things seem to work out well (with regard to relationship building and positive progress). When I don’t, they tend not to (with regard to the same).
Simply put, everyone has stuff…specifically and often times uniquely important to him or her. Sometimes we don’t talk about that stuff. In fact, I would venture a guess that most of the time we don’t talk about that stuff. Some of it is pretty personal. Some of it seems beside the point in professional context. Many people decide to work through their own stuff while trying hard not to let it impact their professional lives; a legitimate practice. Regardless, it’s there.
Compassionate leadership doesn’t require knowing the content of the thought bubbles belonging to those you serve and those you partner with, but I would argue that consistently remembering that those thought bubbles exist is important. I would further argue (much like many who’ve considered leadership and learning from a theory-to-application paradigm before me) that when we’re thoughtful about individuals’ situations and world views we’re better equipped to communicate information and focus on solutions while avoiding the potential relationship and organizational hazards of challenge or ego-based messaging.
Remember that we’re each as complicated and significant as one another. Understand that while everything is not a crisis, some things are. Realize that we don’t get to know every detail driving the energy of those we serve and partner with. Consider that simply framing our individual and internal thoughts in a context of “important stuff” might be useful in the areas of leadership and learning.
Innovation Often Means Teaching Against the Grain
by Paul Moss (@EDmerger)
Innovation is a buzzword in education right now and it is one that I often use (I have to admit) when thinking about goals we have for our students, one another, and our school. I appreciate Moss's intent with this brief post to remind all of us to be pragmatic and embrace the messiness of innovation. Recognize some of the inherent challenges, but continue forward.
Going against the grain can be a lonely experience at times, and whilst sound theory and instinct act as a nice warm blanket against the cold, one could well do with a practical survival guide to assist in implementing new practice. Teachers need to be prepared for the reality of what lies ahead of them to assist in the reshaping of their classrooms, and to ultimately strengthen their resolve in maintaining the chosen epistemology.
...let’s cut to the chase here, implementing such pedagogy is very messy, requires enormous patience, a degree of pragmatism, and most importantly, needs a teacher of great skill who can de-school their students to engage with it.
These two posts in some ways could be read as they are opposing in nature - taking time to understand other perspectives but forging ahead to 'go against the grain'. We need to make sure that we bridge that gap and wed the ideas that Berg and Moss share, as we work to 'better understand the grain'. One of my 'unofficial' personal and professional goals this year is to ask more questions to better understand, even if the questions are not always shared aloud. Framing my interactions and 'problem solving' intent with a few questions in mind opens up my own framework of learning/understanding, and I do believe this practice of questioning is one we want for our students as well. And, as a problem solver, this has been a mindset that I have had to work hard to embrace - but, I have found that the questions will get to a more sustainable and effective direction (at focus groups, meetings, presentations, and conferences) - even the monthly Twitter chats via #MedfieldPS have helped by asking five questions to get perspectives from each of the schools will increase an understanding as well. It is a challenge to bridge these ideas and to practice them as well. With this in mind, though, I often come back to one of the anonymous quotes that hangs on a wall in my office - 'It's hard work, but it's the right work to be doing.' .
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Take care.
Nat Vaughn