Blogg-Ed Indetermination

My new best friend, Robert Evans, author of The Human Side of School Change, suggests that given the difficulty in creating change (see previous three posts), it take a lot of pressure to help people take that first mental step. One must reach a point where it is too painful to stay with the present situation than it is to try something new. But people have incredible faith in things that don’t work.

Not So Fond Memories

As some of you know, I grew up in the Midwest: Michigan, North Dakota and Minnesota. I know winter. And I know the faith that drives people to keep trying the same old thing in hopes it will get better. If you’ve ever seen someone stuck in a snowbank, spinning their tires trying to get out, you know what I mean. You watch them as they dig their tires deeper and deeper into the snow, convinced that the squeal of the tires means they will break free, any…. second…. now…..

I now  live in California, and I never go to the mountains to see the snow, so I don’t get to see such a vivid and humorous reminder of the faith in things that don’t work. (I suppose the same thing happens when people drive on the beach or in the mud.)

But I digress. Back to change.

How do we get teachers to change? Why not try a little guilt, with a dash of anxiety to boot? To quote from Evans, “”One must usually raise people’s guilt by noting that their performance violates a shared ideal… or raise their anxiety by noting how their performance violates a shared goal or threatens their well-being.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. A plan that really resonates with my Roman Catholic upbringing.

Teachers, by and large, love children and they love their job. They want what is best for their students, and they want to be able to stay in their profession, their “calling,” if you will. So challenging teachers by demonstrating that a current practice is detrimental to children gets their attention, if not their action. And once you have their attention, you can move to other stages of change. But having fostered some guilt and anxiety, you need to deal with it before you move to other stages in the change process. You have to let teachers know that “I value you as people, and I will help to get where we need to go.”

Evans calls this step “unfreezing,” the first of five “tasks of change” that must be accomplished within the school to move forward.

Reducing the anxiety around trying something new is not easy, particularly in schools with high expectations for its faculty, staff, and students. Saying that you want people to take risks, and celebrating the failures as well as the successes that result from risks taken, is not something most schools do well. How do we change THAT?

Every school has awards days. How about an award for the biggest flop by a teacher? A flop so spectacular that it resulted in real learning for the teacher, her students, and her colleagues?

What if all teachers would take risks like this one:

As any science fiction fan can tell you, the Borg are relentless foes, conquerors of thousands of civilizations, a persistent nemesis that won’t take no for an answer. “Resistance is futile.”

Well, the Borg never met an American teacher.

My review of Robert Evans’ The Human Side of School Change continues with an examination of school culture, a culture that is resistance to change at the most fundamental, sub-conscious level. Evans calls such conservative forces “invisible, and nearly invincible.”

…”one of the chief benefits people seek in the organizational affiliations is protection from change.” In this short phrase, Evans sums up why one must understand the culture of a school before attempting to change its practices. Agents of change must earn their admittance to the school culture, which does not “admit newcomers freely, especially those who challenges its values and practices.” Evans cites a portion of the American Declaration of Independence that I had completely forgotten. (My apologies to Mr. Montgomery, my junior high history teacher).

All experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Cultural changes take time, often a generation or more. Evans ends his chapter on “The Culture of Resistance” with a rhetorical question: “Is there any hope for rapid culture change in school?—the answer is no!”

What a downer!

I never thought I’d want to be a Borg, but those of us who favor change in schools can learn from their persistence, their single minded (or hive-minded) striving toward a goal. If you want to change schools you better commit yourself to the long haul.  But nothing is more important than our children. If that’s not enough of a motive to persevere, I don’t know what is.