Putting the I in change

To often I hear educators make remarks about change. Either about that it's too much, too fast, too often, or the more famous one, "Here we go again."

For some reason, some educators do not see the I in change. The school can change, teaching can change, students can change, as long as I don't have to change.

How do we put the I in change?

Should we even be trying?

Change is difficult, change is uncomfortable and honestly we, as humans, don't like change!

But we are in the change business. We change minds, we change knowledge, we change attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. If we are in the change business why are we as a profession so unwilling to change?

Change our teaching, change our thinking, change our outlook. Why as a profession (not all but still the majority) of educators do we have a hard time putting I in change?

Do we need more PD time? Do we need to make reflection a priority? How do we put the I in change?

The issue I'm having with this of course is that we say students need to have the skill of learn, unlearn and relearn. Are we teaching our teachers to do the same?

Do our teacher know how to learn? I know we hope they do...but remember when we were in school we were never taught to unlearn and relearn. We were taught to learn.....period!

We're good at learning, we're not so good at unlearning and relearning.

We grew up in a era when you just learned how to do something and that was it....you went off and did it your whole life. No need to change, everything stays the same. Case in point...how many of you have only ever worked in education? Professionally I mean, not that summer job you did in high school. I mean a real professional job that you lived off of. (I never have. I only know education...but someday I hope I can be a professional in another field)

I've been thinking about this after talking to some teachers who wanted to know when the next release of Mac's OSX was coming out.

"I don't want to waste my time to learn something that I just have to relearn anyway."

The problem is you still have to learn it, and some of those skills will be transferable. But yes, you will have to unlearn and relearn. We want to just learn how to do something and then not have to do it again.

That's not the way it works in the 21st Century. You can't buy the same cell phone, the same TV and remote, the same DVD player because they go out of date. You cannot rely on data you gathered three years ago without researching to see if there is updated more accurate data out there.

We live in a time of constant learning and if you are not constantly learning you are becoming extinct.

Find a way to help those around you put the I in change.