I had the pleasure of listening to Simon Breakspear yesterday and I walked away needing to process. That always happens when I spend time with him, I walk away tired and full of exciting new ideas. If you teach in the district, you may be saying, “Uh oh, what now? Will we be forced to jump on the newest band wagon of educational reform?” That’s a fair statement and I actually get the sentiment. I’ve felt the same way at times.
The good news though, Simon’s message is a little different than a full out changing of direction. In fact, he supports not going full out with implementation right off. It involves too much commitment at the outset and the failure of the initiative would mean a huge loss of dollars and time to the organization. Not only that, it supports the notion that some teachers have that initiatives are a waste as they are “come and go” by nature. This can breed a very distrusting climate in a school. It happens, I’ve seen it.
One of the points that Simon made straight off is still bouncing around in my head. It’s the idea of Principals going out of the way to curate collisions, collisions of thinking and ideas. Places where professionals can dialogue and openly banter about their practice and what works . . . Professional Learning Communities is one example. It was interesting that he brought this up as it’s been reflected in a lot of my reading lately. In fact, Michael Fullan talks about the power of it in his new book, The Principal: Three Keys to Maximizing Impact. It’s the first key and the most crucial in my opinion.
This collision of ideas isn’t new by any stretch of the imagination. It’s where great innovation has always occurred. Take a look at Steve Johnson’s great link below for some further insight into the collision of ideas.
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