As we have all heard many times, change is hard, basically that is what this chapter is talking about. Teachers that I have known are particularly hard to change, they like things the way they are and always have been. Think about the teacher who has been in the same grade perhaps even the same room for 20 years or more!! If this person is one of the exceptional teachers in the building then you can assume that they have figured out what works best for them and their students and that is way things are taught, forget about all the new techniques and strategies. Now assume that someone in authority has decided to bring about systemic change to the school district. I'm sure you can see the resistance coming from the veteran teacher.
It was interesting reading about the amount of preparation and planning needed to institute a major change in a school system. I am in a very small district and could not imagine that that much planning would go into a change that was planned for my district. It sounded like a lot of talk and not a lot of substance, but then I started to relate it to the change that we did implement this school year. Our high school decided to go to trimesters this year. The reasons for this change were many but the most important one was that trimesters would allow our failing students the opportunity to pass and continue their education in compliance with the new state requirements. So last school year when it was time to start scheduling the students into classes a decision had to be made as to weather the classes would be semesters or trimesters. The decision from the top was trimesters. Kids were scheduled, teachers were given their assignments and the school year started in Sept. This was a much different approach than what is described in our text. Missing from our approach was the setting up of the framework, the discussions with stakeholders ( parents, teachers, staff ) as to how this would work and was it the best education for our kids. Also the teachers were given no time to learn and prepare for a new school day. The result is that we are now seeing cracks in the system and fixing the cracks will be band aid variety at best. Teachers are grappling the re aligning their curriculum to the new time frame, trying to figure out how all that teaching will fit into the new set of minutes per class. What needs to be cut out, what can be looked at more in depth. Looking back, which is always with 20/20 vision we probably should have talked about this change for another whole school year, and implemented it starting in Sept. 2009. My guess is the transition would have been much smoother.
3 comments:
I like that you noted the amount of resistence that can arise when "established" teachers are confronted with attempts at change in school systems. That's definately an issue in areas where unfortunately, some teachers methods are "less than par," but they are quite resistant to being open to new ideas. As such, I think there are many situations that could benefit from communication consultations that teach superiors in academic settings how they can present new ideas to the teachers that they expect to accept new methods, as it appears, some times, that the acceptance of new initiatives is all in how they are presented.
Although I think that K-12 is among the hardest to "change" - I can also see the very same thing happening in Higher education. It seems that with "academic freedom" and such with professors that are set in their ways, pretty much allows them to fight change, and continue teaching without regard for potential change.
The resistance to change for older staff, at least in my experience seems to come form the us verses them mentality. There is this strange, though I can sometimes see it, attitude that administration is out for themselves and do not consider or even worry about how change will effect teachers. This seems to create a lot of the problems I see at least in my district. I think that change would be more widely excepted if administration allowed testers to express their fears and if teacher were given input.
Post a Comment