Beyond Fear

A superintendent in a small school district gave a talk at the Texas Association of School Administrators (TASA) Midwinter's Conference a few years ago. She moved her hands quickly in the air, her hands almost blurring, parallel to each other. "This is the kind of change we need in schools," she exclaimed. "But this," and she moved her hands ever so slowly, " is the change we're getting. We need this change [moving her hands quickly] because our children can't wait."

I was impressed with her talk...and I wasn't alone. "You know," I said to the tech director in that district, "I wouldn't mind working with her to achieve that vision she articulated." At last, an administrator who gets it. A superintendent who will bring about change.

Less than a year later, she had been ousted from her perch and the community had mobilized against her. Whether she was bought off, resigned, it didn't matter. Everyone wanted her gone. Riding the coat-tails of her defeat, the very people she cited as the problems rose to power. The balance swung in the opposite direction. What she had hoped to accomplish was laudable, but how she went about it scarred the District, not to mention her career.

When I stub my toe on the "rocks" that block the way to successful change in school districts, I remember the story of the Superintendent mentioned in the story above. Change is necessary. Who we serve, not change itself, requires us to move quickly. As I get older, I notice that I get increasingly impatient with the slow pace of change in K-12 education. Yet, change has occurred. My son, on the way home from school, answered the mobile phone. "We're on highway 604," he told her. I was shocked...he had never shown an awareness of where he was by street name or the name of the highway. "He's growing up," I said to myself. Then, I heard him say, "No one told me it was 604." He was acknowledging that he had grown up enough to know where he was. That's how change occurs.

But, it can also be an auto wreck, like the one that left a Putlitzer Prize writer suddenly, unexpectedly, dead. Which is better? I've seen both in education, and been grateful for both. In one district, upper administration was cleaned out as if by a plague. Prayers, some say, were answered and change happened. Other times, change is a dawning realization. Nature allows for both sudden and gradual changes...shouldn't we?

I've worked side by side with teachers, campus, and district level administrators. At every level, I have found much to be enthused about, but also, come to see that there is always someone who opposes change for no rational reason. That reason is fear-based. Rather than face their fears, they act from fear to block change, to prevent that which would require them to overcome that fear.

My dad, who died a few short months ago, always encouraged me but cautioned me never to cheat. "Better to try honestly and fail," he'd say, "than cheat, even if you're not caught." Those words taught me the meaning of honor and integrity. Better that we brand our educational leadership efforts failures. Yes, better that than fail to acknowledge we hold our children back when we fear disruptive technologies and the change they bring.

Comments

[Kelly Christopherson]

I really appreciate the idea of being honest. One thing that I am trying to get parents and students to see is that my office, the office of the principal, shouldn't be a scary place where punishment is doled out for crimes committed but, instead, a place where we work at finding solutions and learn to make better choices. Without making mistakes, we don't learn. As an administrator, I try to lead by example, admitting that, yes, I've made a mistake but I'll learn from it and work at not doing it again. The one thing I would appreciate more than anything is for a student to come in, admit the mistake, take responsibility for it and then, instead of me dealing out a consequence, us working together to build on this learning experience. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. Human nature I guess. I don't know. But, I continue to hope that, by being willing to admit that I, as leader of the school, can admit my mistakes, that others will see this not as a weakness but as a way of growing stronger through change. Besides, I tried being perfect but that fell apart just after I got out of bed and it was too hard to start over;)