Category: school reform

What are you resisting?  Is it a change in curriculum?  A change in staffing? A new assessment?

Whatever it is, your resistance is you being swept away by your own thinking and fears.  When you look at the formidable wall of resistance it’s easy to rely on your default tactics.  A default tactic is your personal position and when your emotions run high you subconsciously revert to one of these.  It could be the use of power to get your way, manipulation of others, applying the force of your reasoning to build a wall, ignoring what you don’t want, making a deal to get support for your position or killing the messenger.

Unfortunately all these tactics do is to sometimes create a win for you that turns out not to worth the cost. 

So how do you approach resistance without caving into your own fears?  First it’s important to recognize that all resistance is a natural part of change.   Before you can move beyond what is fearful you first have to recognize it.  Have a dialogue with yourself about what you are afraid of, is it failure, is it the adjustment of something new, or is it just moving out of your comfort zone?

Once you have clarified your feelings maintain a clear focus on the changes ahead.  Ask questions about the proposed changes, respect the other point of view, and remember that in a school everyone should have a shared mission and goals.   Keep in mind both a long and a short view of the changes to come.  Think about your present position and work and imagine how the changes will impact the future.  What is the desired future outcome; can you see the possibility of this?  And have patience, nothing happens successfully for any organization without the quality of perseverance which requires you not to quit or lose heart when things seem not to be working. 

Change can be a dynamic time, a time to embrace new ideas and to explore your own inquiry into your schools values and vision.  As you do this you will be able to embrace the commitment to continuous improvement.  No learning community can successfully survive without a commitment to the discipline of self-assessment and self-improvement. 

The best part about surviving these changes and shifts in your professional life is the ability to adapt to be flexible will become part of your personal relationships.  One side will constantly benefit the other.  You will find yourself being a better teacher and enriching all the other roles you have outside of the classroom. 

Ornithologists have observed that flocks of birds have no leaders.  The synchronization of bird flocks appears to be a complex interaction of movement and communication.  Within the flock is constant communication between individuals.  The key to this sophisticated system is shared goals.  Each individual must survive, but the group must also prosper if any individual is to improve their chances as well.  Thus feeding, safety, repositioning to  new areas – all of these are shared goals to help achieve the success of the group. 

So what is the relevance of this information for teachers? 

Complex systems in the natural world are based on a just a few simple rules.  The key element of these rules is this:  every small act is individual but it’s taken from the perspective of the whole. Sticking together each individual might increase his or her own chances of success. 

The success of any school is a human endeavor.  It’s also based on many small acts.  It’s not possible to see the immediate result of every small act but understanding this interconnectedness brings new awareness to what you do every day.

When teachers see themselves not just as individuals but rather as part of a group they will begin to enhance the capacity for student learning.  They can work on building a collaborative school culture.  As a group teachers can implement curriculum, instruction, and assessment. 

In this colloraborative culture teachers create a resource of shared knowledge.  By building shared knowledge all teachers have access to the same pool of information thus increasing the likelihood that they will arrive at the same conclusions. 

Some of the advantages of teachers working in collaborative teams are:

• Gains in student achievement
• Higher quality solutions to problems
• Increased confidence among all staff
• Teachers able to support one another’s strengths and accommodate weaknesses
• Ability to test new ideas
• More support for new teachers
• Expanded pool of ideas, materials and methods.

It’s possible that big things can be accomplished by small acts.  The behavior of birds in the natural world demonstrates this.  We are all connected to this same complex system.   Our future success depends on the ability to recognize that sometimes we is more important than me.

Does artistic talent come naturally?  Are some students born with special innate talents or can talent be cultivated?

In Venezuela the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra believes talent can be cultivated.  This amazing system of education is called “El Sistema.”   This thirty-year-old program has made classical musicians out of a million and a half young Venezuelans, and transformed the lives of these underprivileged and at risk youths in the process.  Almost every major orchestra around the world has members who began in El Sistema. 

The concept for El Sistema looks at talent in a different way, it doesn’t take those from the gifted pool and gives them enrichment, enrichment is for everyone.  In this brilliantly conceived system music is literacy, it is a daily devotion that is filled with joy.   Exposure to music is not the low standard ad hoc program that most US schools currently have.  El Sistema takes everything students learn and rolls it all into one endeavor.  Music is rhythm, it’s motion, it’s coordination, it’s balance, it’s counting, it’s reading, it’s a social system and it’s a physics experiment.   The concept recognizes that talent exists in everyone, but it must be cultivated and nurtured to blossom.

If this simple philosophy were used as the standard in all schools imagine the possibility for achievement.  The children in the Venezuelan orchestra believe in their own ability to become great musicians, even given the improbable circumstances of their poverty.  If all students grew in the belief that they are capable to learn and master difficult concepts and skills schools would be challenged not with how to teach low achievers but with how to provide more enrichment.

This might sound like the ravings of some wild-eyed optimist but remember who the members of this orchestra are, they are children used to running bare-footed and dirty, they are children who come to school hungry.    Schools must increase their stock in optimists, in those who find joy in teaching and recognize children’s ability to greatness.

Anyone who has ever planted a garden knows the single most important ingredient is the soil, cultivating and enriching the soil gives many rewards.   A rich soil can withstand extremes of temperature and compensate for what’s lacking.   This same principle applies to everything.  Begin the journey in education early by enriching the mind.  Start with pre-school  give children music and art in abundance.  Continue this and  give children a chance to find joy and see their work not as boring drills and practices but a devotion to becoming better.  

Almost every student will have heard of the character of Indiana Jones. This swashbuckling adventurer is fiction but in real life there is an Indiana Jones of science, his name is Stephen Hawking.  Unfortunately most students have never heard of him.   He wrote a popular science bestseller, “A Brief History of Time” in it he takes the reader along on one of the greatest adventure stories ever, the creation of the universe.  His book compels the reader to ask questions and challenges beliefs.  

Every child begins their life as budding scientists.  Most every parent will attest to the uninhibited and unabashed curiosity of their children, they want to know what things are and how they work.  Unfortunately by the time they have a chance to begin science in school this curiosity is replaced with boredom.  Science does not seem to relate to everyday life.  

Many studies have focused on this problem.  Recommendations range from increasing the level of training for science teachers to curriculum reforms.   But most of these studies fail in one important area.   The teaching of science fails to reveal the breathtaking vistas of the universe. The focus is on the need to first gain competency with details instead of engaging students with the big picture.  The big picture captures the drama and it’s a drama that’s been unfolding for thousands of years. 

Just to get a sense of the raw material available, in physics the most revolutionary of advances have occurred in the last one hundred years.  More recently the last ten years have witnessed an upheaval in the understanding of the composition of the universe, a whole new picture of the cosmos.  Unfortunately it is rare to see a mention of these paradigm-shaking developments in a middle school or high school science class.  And it’s the same for biology, chemistry and math. 

The root of the problem is a firm belief in the approach that you must master A before moving onto B.  But science is so much more than it’s details.   Our greatest scientists had the curiosity and the insights to move ahead of solving problems and reciting facts.  They were transported. 

Science needs to be taught young and in a way that captures the imagination.  It needs to be placed alongside of literature, art and music, as an indispensable part of an interesting life. 

Teachers can begin by becoming more curious and paying attention.  There’s a lot to bring attention to and engage students of all ages in the conversation of what things are and how they work.  The more this can be done the more students will want to know.  It is the birthright of every student to look into the sky and marvel at the creation of the universe. 

Schools in America are in crisis.   Is this a system failure or a response to the overall moral failure of our culture?

The history of civilization shows that every golden age is followed by a descent.  Throughout time this descent has taken on different withering forms: susperstition, prejudice, greed.  Perhaps our descent is apathy.  Too many children are at risk.  Neglected in the kind of nurturing that gives them the ability to believe in their own innate goodness.  Every child has the potential to be amazing.  The problem is our definition of amazing is limited.  Amazing has an infinite number of possibilities.  Amazing is not what we do but who we are.   Our children have not been given the right paradigm.   If one generation of children were taught loving kindness, first to love themselves and then to share it the larger problems we face would disappear.   Practicing this would diminish the attraction of competing and comparing because the only measurement needed would be: am I better than I used to be and not am I better than you.

The blame cannot be placed only on schools.  The blame has to be shared by all of us, all of us who have embraced the culture of materialism.   The demands of this culture are huge.  Children are vulnerable to the ideas of looking a certain way, dressing a certain way and having certain things.  The attachment to all of this diminishes our collective goodness.  Instead of cultivating what’s already there, we seek what’s outside of us.

Schools could become the leaders in changing this thinking because what children see and hear everyday shapes them.  Everyday the message in schools can be one of loving-kindness and like a drop in a bucket these drops will eventually fill the minds of our children. 

The challenge is not in doing this but in convincing everyone who is associated with schools to embrace this thinking.   It’s easy to mandate a program what’s harder is to grow it.   Schools are a human endeavor.  There is no product except in evolving the thinking minds of children. This is the ultimate product anyone can hope to be part of. 

So how can this be accomplished? 

Simple  - one day at a time.  Schools can begin by cultivating the spirit of gratitude  Establish daily goals for everyone.  Begin with the law of giving.   It is important to give something to everyone you come into contact with during the day.  This gift does not have to be material; it can be a smile, a kind word, encouragement, understanding, or friendship.  The beauty is this plan includes everyone, adults and students both.   And it is contagious.  The more it is practiced the easier it becomes.

It’s easy to become optimistic about our future by looking at the possibilities.   History shows us that we can find ourselves, in a new renaissance and a new enlightenment that can become a profound shift for a better world.

Human birth is an astonishing natural phenomenon.  There are approximately 130,000,000 births around the world every year.  Despite all the measures modern medicine has acquired some percentage of these births are destined to end badly.   In the 1950’s one in thirty newborns died at birth, the same odds as a century before.    Then a doctor named Virginia Apgar  had a simple idea that transformed childbirth.  She developed a score that has become universally known as the Apgar score.  This score allows nurses to rate the condition of newborns on a scale of one to ten and intervene accordingly.   Over the years this rating system has had hundreds of adjustments and has produced dramatic results improving infant mortality rates.

Virginia Apgar is a positive deviant.   Her work made a worthy difference in the world.   Virginia Apgar had no authority to challenge the medical system so  she took a less direct approach and broke away from the norm.   She looked at the situation for infants and made up her own system to improve things.  

To become a positive deviant you have to change how you think.  When you do this new ideas emerge and you discover new ways to solve problems.  To create this paradigm shift it’s necessary to practice new habits by doing several key things.

1. Improve relationships.  Be a model of respect and kindness for your students.  Know your students; ask questions, listen and work to be a light instead of a judge.
2. Stop complaining.  When you gather with co-workers fight the natural pull of the conversational gravity to complain. Complaining doesn’t solve problems. It sets you up to be in a permanent state of against, this thinking will also contaminate other areas of your life.   Ideas and innovations come from interesting informative conversations.
3. Count something.  Become a researcher in your own classroom.  Keep your own statistics about student learning.   You will discover information that can improve your own teaching.
4. Write something.   Share your thoughts with others, keep a blog or a  journal about you observations.  Don’t underestimate the contribution you can make to improve things.
5. Change.   Become an adopter.  Don’t be attached to any one method, seek out the best solutions and be willing to recognize your own inadequacies.

Doing this makes you  a powerful proactive agent.   Instead of feeling like a clog in the machinery you become a person of influence.  Ultimately it’s those who influence who lead and make something better!