Change or Be Changed.
You don’t know jack.

Last year, Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone. And wow did people come out in droves to complain. It’s a small example of nuisance vs benefit, but the example stands, because the jack was removed for a number of quite thoughtful, future-ready reasons. Apple anticipates (and in many ways controls) the future: a wireless ecosystem, faster and smaller wireless tech, improved battery and processing power). Thanks to the removal of a single-use, antiquated connector (it’s literally from the 1950s!), Apple will transition much of its customer base (and the industry) to this future more rapidly.
This change shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone given Apple’s propensity to drag the rest of their industry forward (often kicking and screaming). Jettisoning old conventions has always been part of their approach to innovation. Remember Steve Jobs’s brazen excommunication of the floppy disk drive? Apple was drawing a line in the sand: that dragging legacy tech forward was not only unhelpful, it was actually a hindrance to their products and thus, the company. Passively waiting for natural causes to make things obsolete isn’t good enough. Jobs believed (and I believe) that, some outdated things need a merciful yet proactive euthanization.
In education, change sometimes happens for reasons that aren’t clear. Sometimes they seem nonsensical and result in negative outcomes (we’ve all griped at the statehouse). But in other cases, changes are motivated by truly genuine reasons: we discovered old conventions aren’t as effective as we thought them to be. Findings on socio-economic factors reveal new perspectives on equity. Child development research finds efficacy in new methods of learning. The list goes on.
These shifts can emerge anywhere along the spectrum: at the classroom level or the central office. They can affect a single student or staff member, or an entire district of thousands. Regardless, the demands of college, career, and citizenship necessitate we prepare our kids for any combination of what those post-secondary paths demand. If we don’t make changes to support these paths, our kids will suffer. They may have to take remedial classes before their freshman year of college, or they may even withdraw and enroll in another school or district that has implemented the sorts of programs and offerings that yours has yet to do. Changing school culture to be intentionally competitive with neighboring districts may raise hackles, but making the right changes to distinguish yourself really can be a way of serving your families with higher fidelity.
Assuming your general operational and HR needs are reliably met to serve students well, what’s the health of your tech stack? Are you aware of how it empowers or limits your other initiatives to send kids on to what-comes-next?
The Next Question
As the landscape continues to shift, the question becomes: Are our tools progressing along with our goals? If not, isn’t it our responsibility to find strategic ways to transition to approaches and tools get the most benefits?
Procrastination is understandable. Enterprise-grade change is time consuming, not to mention a bit above and beyond the routine work of a district-level employee. But as it does in any sphere, procrastination exacerbates festering issues. Options winnow proportionally to the passing of time during a school year. Think about how things tend to go: a steering committee is appointed. They meet and do their research, unwittingly limited by their collective knowledge base and motivations. Safe choices become normative.
A year later, things are different. But are they? The performance gaps and blind spots are still there. Boards and superintendents or school directors become convinced they to update an approach but are hampered by legacy software limitations (or, if the tool is cumbersome, the relatively low ceiling of a few internal experts).
So let’s stay honest but get practical. What, in the present, are some of K-12 education’s most tried and true conventions that could benefit from an overhaul?
Master Scheduling
If you spend any time in a modern high school, you know principals and guidance sweat the gaps in students’ transcripts, and do so against a loudly ticking clock. They must ensure students are getting the balance of courses required by the state’s diploma requirements while also providing them elective choice in customizing their educational experience as they inch closer to graduation.Thankfully, personalized learning is outlasting the typical buzzword lifespan in our field. Even if it was called something else in a prior generation, the technology has caught up to the vision: to give individual students instructionally what they need, when they need it, without driving teachers to the brink. In fact, many teachers who are doing personalized learning with authenticity are finding new life in their careers because they’re not continuing to deliver instruction the way they always have.
So, the tedious and archaic process of master scheduling will eventually go away as a result. What will stand is an ever-improving repository of rigorous, organized content to drive students forward skill by skill at their own pace. Can you imagine what else you can accomplish recovering thousands of hours from master scheduling?
Professional development
Ever since The New Teacher Project published their report on the inefficiencies of professional development, a whole range of change agents have chimed in, reimagining professional development and making it a frequent session topic at most education conferences.The common message? Teachers don’t like the hypocrisy of receiving instruction or self-improvement requirements in a vacuum. It’s not that they don’t want constructive feedback, it’s that they don’t want canned verbiage from their administration simply so administration can put a check in the “PD” box.
Since the advent of the PLC and the PLN, educators are filling in gaps organically and applying the same things we know about student growth to each other: that we like to get better at stuff!
You can also see the writing on the wall. Eliminating the requisite to provide hollow observations frees administrators’ to accomplish much more authentic projects, like teaching a master class for highflying students or co-teaching with peers. It also demonstrates their dedication to practice what they preach.
The Physical Campus
The furniture and gadgets have changed a lot from what most of us experienced as children. So much so that the reinvention of learning spaces has become a cottage industry in and of itself. Learning commons, multimedia studios, maker spaces, fully operational biochemical laboratories, you name it. Not every school or district has concrete examples of such divergent use of learning spaces, but it’s on the rise.From how we use walls and floors to the decor and furnishings adorning them, it’s all free to change. This is no fad. Rather, it’s an organic response to the question: what does it mean to learn together in the same room?
Fully integrated digital learning management or interactive tools are freeing physical rooms to be more esoteric, artful, and satisfying as learning laboratories, performance spaces, and monastic study spaces.
So What?
So…as exciting, promising, logical, and inevitable as some these examples are, why aren’t we quick to take on the work? Why does it seem as though it isn’t worth the effort?
I think it’s simply because we don’t know what to do next. Who among us has avoided any number of projects because of the missing “next step”?
The tenets of project-management don’t need to be addressed here. But consider the nature of your learning community’s culture. Who can you partner with internally to start honestly evaluating your ability to tend to such things above (regardless of what’s in the published strategic plan)? Are administrators or board members of the right personality type present to entertain an enterprise-grade shift? Having conversations with such folks will not only show yourself as a change agent but also help gauge support.
We’ll leave you with some questions to ask yourself as you take the first steps toward these new shifts:
- Who might stand in the way? Why? What are you going to do to remove their blocking stance?
- What is the morale like among teachers?
- How about parents?
- Are you ready to grapple with a vendor? Seriously! Are you recognizing the partnership capacity here in whom you select as your service provider. If they’re not willing to entertain your ideas or able to consult on your outcomes and respond with solutions that are “bespoke” to your needs, then maybe they’re not the type of vendor you want a longterm relationship with.
- What might we gain when we DO change?
- What do we stand to lose if we don’t?
