Can what works for "me" scale to "we"?
Chapter 11: a consideration of what it takes for broader, successful change
Here we are at the penultimate chapter (!!!) of our book study of Becoming an Everyday Changemaker by . I have to say, too, that it feels a bit surreal to be in the closing stretch of this journey over the past months.
So far: eleven weeks, eleven chapters, eleven reflections between and myself (counting today!):
Chapter 1: Messy Scares Me (And That Might Be a Problem as a Teacher)
Chapter 2: I'm exhausted!
Chapter 3: When SMART Goals Aren't That Smart
Chapter 4: What if?
Chapter 5: A Space Between Fear and Hope
Chapter 6: Ripples to Create Change
Chapter 7: Why Slowing Down as a Teacher is So Ridiculously Hard
Chapter 8: One Plus One Equals Three
Chapter 10: Being Human Together
In what will be my last written reflection for this journey, I’m going to take what has been meaningful for me individually in navigating change over my career and, perhaps a bit ambitiously, consider how those values could apply to a broader scale.
As Venet notes in Chapter 11, there are the changes we are intending to work towards and then there are the changes that arrive on our doorstep unexpected—and, in either case, it is important to reflect on how ready you are to navigate successfully.
Not just as an individual, but also more broadly.
The only lens I can take authentically is through what has worked for me on my own personal journey as a teacher and, leaping from there, what might be needed to take those values and apply them at scale.
But first, a summary of this second-to-last chapter of Becoming an Everyday Changemaker:
Chapter 11 Summary: in the penultimate chapter of the book, Venet presents somewhat of a curveball in shifting to a consideration of unexpected change—and, more importantly, what structures and practices can be established within a school community to be prepared to respond to changes and crises with authentic resiliency.
Venet offers three structures as examples in this chapter: morning meetings, learning communities, and Harbor Days—”a semi-regular scheduled day in the school calendar to do this same kind of ‘basic maintenance’ before sailing back out into the next academic term” (221). Along with reflecting on how each of these structures can be impactful in response to change, Venet notes how principles such as predictability and connection are important lenses to consider with any structure that an individual or building would implement.
As far as my individual journey as a teacher, there has been plenty of change.
My career started with me knocking on doors in the small town of Fordyce, Arkansas as I tried to find a place to rent—having just flown across the country with two suitcases to begin my new career.
While in Arkansas I worked in three quite-different schools across my first eight years, culminating in schools shutting down right after we had decided as a family to move to Oregon, which meant my goodbye to students ended up being a poorly-edited YouTube video I sent out in my final weekly email to our remote classes as that school year came to a quiet, unheralded close.
Leading to the next one: me at a new school of 2000 students, teaching via computer from an empty classroom for several months as “the new guy from Arkansas” until students finally came back into the classroom the following spring.
And that was just Decade 1 as a teacher.
I have to admit, though: It was a good decade! Reading Venet’s latest chapter in my thirteenth year in the classroom, I felt both affirmed in how I’ve been able to navigate changes in my own life and career but also curious: how much can individual strategies for success with change translate to broader school communities and systems overall?
My goal today in this reflection, then, is to consider three ingredients that I believe have been critical to my own personal journey throughout myriad changes as a teacher—and to wonder what those values would look like scaled to a broader context?
⓵ A Context of Support
I often speak about how one of the motivations behind The Broken Copier for me is to pay forward the strategies and generosities that were afforded to me in my earlier years of teaching. So many folks offered so much of their time and wisdom, from my first across-the-hallway teaching pal Mrs. Hall (who basically kicked me out of the school the Friday evening of my first week) to my college professor George Erving (who kept pouring ideas into me for the classroom long after I graduated) to my own mentor, Samantha Murphy, who has been a cornerstone in my own professional journey through the example she continues to set in her own.
Really, I could list hundreds of folks who shared resources, invested time in conversations, and made me feel welcome and supported from Day 1 of teaching. (Also: that’s not even mentioning the networks I’ve been able to lean on in recent years through online connections, including with The Broken Copier!)
It is clear to me at this point that the examples set as well as the resources provided by so many around me have been core to who I am as a teacher and especially how I’ve been able to navigate change in my career. The classroom can feel like an island, it has been observed, but it can be even more alienating to step beyond it into whatever “new” arrives for a teacher—which is when I’ve found it most important to lean on the supports around me.
So what does this look like at scale?
When it comes to providing effective models and resources to a group of teachers, or even an entire school community, the difficulty of the task is considerably heightened.
To make any given strategy or support broadly applicable, at least some of the precision and authenticity may be forfeited; the delivery is often less personal, too, as the power of a 1-on-1 conversation is one of the most challenging things to successfully scale.
Regardless, I do think the first step for any school community would be to assess what connections each individual teacher has—within the walls of the building and beyond them. Spending time building those connections within the school community is essential, of course, but so is empowering teachers to find external networks that meet their individual needs and aspirations. That means walking alongside teachers in that network-building, too, and protecting time for teachers to do this work rather than expecting them to do it solely on their own time beyond those hours.
As I’ve experienced in my own career, connected teachers are supported teachers, especially in times of change and crisis. Preparing for successful change, then, means prioritizing those connections not just with words but also actions.
⓶ A Culture of Agency
When schools shut down in spring of 2020, many teachers found themselves in a similar situation: with very little guidance of what to do and how to do it, particularly in those initial months of online teaching.
One of the best decisions I made in that stretch was to continue to pursue my own learning by signing up for a free online course on Modern and Contemporary poetry. Times of change can easily become times of fixed, rigid thinking—and in hindsight I realize that the disruption presented by temporarily becoming an online instructor was an opportunity for me to reimagine my own practices.
For me, it wasn’t just about the learnings within that course—though, if you have the time, I could not recommend this still-free course more!—but more importantly the needed reminder that as a teacher I am at my best when I am challenging myself to explore new ideas and pedagogies. The context of change can be an intimidating space to explore, yes, but simultaneously an opportune one, I’ve learned in my own journey.
So what does this look like at scale?
A starting point, I believe, would be to consider how much agency teachers are afforded within their context and community. Do teachers have a sense of ownership about their curriculum? Are teachers confined within a set of strict expectations, or is their classroom given space to innovate? When teachers take thoughtful, intentional risks with their practice and pedagogy, are they likely to share it with those around them—or are they instead keeping fingers crossed that no one notices?
If a given school community has a culture of agency amongst their teachers, then in times of change that agency can be an incredible asset, especially if there is also an active community of sharing and peer-to-peer learning amongst colleagues. Think of a football team that, instead of being required to repeatedly run a limited set of plays, is empowered to make audibles frequently and experiment throughout the season. That experimentation and the value of agency underlying it could likely be the difference when the team comes up against a moment of crisis where even the best-laid plans are not adequate to the moment. At that point? I’d much rather bet on the team that has a culture of developing and trusting their own instincts.
(It should be noted, too, that valuing teacher agency also means providing teachers time to live out that value, both in stable times as well as times of change.)
⓷ A Sense of Purpose
At the end of the day, I think what has been most important for my own journey navigating various changes as a teacher has been my own sense of purpose. Feeling confident and affirmed in my role as a teacher is the most irreplaceable of foundations, and in times of changes it has been critical to have that foundation to find my footing upon.
One of my favorite parts of writing as much about my practices as I do with The Broken Copier is the opportunity it provides me to reflect on what matters most to me in this work. Spending time reflecting on the most meaningful experiences I’ve had as a teacher is a way of reaffirming that foundation, and consequently makes that foundation even more reliable in times of change and crisis.
Venet writes in Chapter 11 that the way we build “capacity” for unexpected change should keep “our integrity and wholeness intact” (214). For me, that starts with reflecting on where my own integrity and wholeness come from in my work—and then using that as a compass moving forward.
So what does this look like at scale?
Considering how this can be translated to a broader context, however, I feel like there are two potential paths forward:
Building and sustaining a meaningful vision that can create a sense of collective purpose for everyone to buy into
Supporting individual teachers within that context in creating and pursuing their own unique purpose
Going back to one of Venet’s earlier chapters, in truth this needs to be a both/and—schools need to be a place with a shared vision of where they are heading, but that shared vision should not preclude individual teachers from living out their own individual purpose, too.
The Real Question: Can These Work At Scale?
Something I admit quite often to those around me: the vantage point of what works in the classroom is a lot simpler to peer through compared to the vantage point of what works beyond the classroom.
In education, after all, solutions rarely scale effectively or sustainably.
(Despite what some pretend to be the case.)
That said, I do think that these three lenses—of support, of agency, and of purpose—are worthwhile to consider more broadly: how can we make these priorities felt tangibly in the experiences of as many teachers and school communities as possible? What are the barriers to making these cornerstones in the day-to-day experiences of teachers and students alike? And how do those barriers inhibit our best potential responses to change?
I’m not sure, but if nothing else I feel like these are worthwhile questions.
Right?
What did you think of Chapter 11? Feel free to hop into the comments to reply and share your thoughts! Next week you can find the final reflective post over at Adrian’s Newsletter—and keep an eye out for some end-of-book-study discussions coming out as we wrap up this incredible experience!
"In education, after all, solutions rarely scale effectively or sustainably."
This strikes me as a really important point that gets at a really important question. Teachers figure out a way of doing something; it works. Systems try to replicate that way of doing something; it doesn't work. What gives?
In thinking about this question, I think it may be helpful to unpack the word "scale" a little. When we talk about "scaling educational solutions", we're using terminology that comes from the discourse of management. But more than that, "scaling" is a management imperative: "scaling" is how a practice becomes part of a system of management.
But what does it mean for a practice to "scale"? A lot of the time - all too often, I think - it means that it becomes standardized and generalized, which is to say that it becomes de-personalized and de-contextualized.
The problem, of course, is that effective teaching is highly personal, interpersonal, and contextual. This is why a big part of why effective teaching practices resist being translated into effective and sustainable management procedures. "Scaling" doesn't respect craft, and respecting craft is necessary if we want to build teaching and learning environments that offer purpose, agency, and support.
I think the reason I lean so much into forming connections with my students is because connecting with others has served me best when navigating change (either expected or unexpected). Whenever I feel that my humanity is centered, even if the change is stressful, I know that I will be able to get through it with help from others, both my colleagues and students.
As I read this chapter, I realized how much I create routine structures that help my students navigate the ups and downs of the school year. Soft starts, regular meetings, catch-up days, all communicate to my students that I privilege care and community in my classroom. As to scale? How can we scale humanity, dignity, and belonging? I think it takes time and many individual efforts working one-on-one to slowly build a strong community.