Ready for a Change - Week 9 Reading Response

There will always be “a better way” of doing things in any school district, or schools in general. No one person will ever be happy with the way things are and there will always be someone looking to incorporate the latest and greatest new idea or method into the classroom that will be a “sure success” for students and our society in general. However, as discussed in Chapter 21 of Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology, it is not necessarily what changes, but instead how the change is gone about.

Looking at change in two different ways, piecemeal and systemic change, really hits home how, no matter how hard we try, the ways in which we incorporate change in the school setting will set us up for failure or success. When reading the description of piecemeal change as “tinkering or adjusting” (p. 210) I, unfortunately, sat nodding my head in recognition of what goes on all too often in schools when it comes to “school improvement.” Educational professionals want to fix things for the better and are always looking for ways to improve, but we often only “tinker” and “adjust” what we already have, to no avail. Then we sit back and wonder why things aren’t working and why we are right back to square one. Of course, I thought, we want systemic change. Of course we need a change in “the whole system” (p. 210) if we want results, but how? Why did I feel hopeless after reading that definition? Then, to my surprise, the four distinct meanings of systemic change (p. 210-211) discussed (Statewide, district wide, school wide, and ecological systemic change) seemed to answer my questions as to why systemic change seemed so impossible at first glance. If everyone has different expectations of change, and act from that expectation, then things will never change, even when we all put our whole hearts into the effort. Who knew such a short descriptive section on the ways in which we try to incorporate change and why we are or are not successful in our endeavors could so acutely point out (for me at least) one of the biggest issue in our change process (and one that I have never really understood before now)?

Another portion of the reading that really stood out to me comes more as a question rather than a “aha” moment as above. Hopefully someone can help or at least follow my thought process somewhat. While reading about the Decatur Township School District’s process of systemic change, one of the first things they did was develop their initial starter Leadership Team, intended to help begin the change process with a small group of people and then build on from there. The “core” or “starter” team was to include “five to seven key opinion leaders from all the major stakeholder groups” (p. 216). Decatur’s starter team (of key leaders, remember) included “a school board member, a principal, a PTA leader, the president of the local Education Association, and the superintendent. My question, then, is where are the teachers, since, in the following paragraph, key stakeholders include “parents, teachers, students, staff, administrators, employers, and other community members” (p. 216). I understand it is a “starter” team and the goal is to start small, but I was a little confused as to why a teacher or two wasn’t included in this starter group. Maybe they were thought to be represented by the people already included in the group, but it just doesn’t seem logical to me. Only two years later (2001 was when the starter teams were formed and 2003 was when they expanded their teams to more “key leaders” p. 216) did they begin to include more of the community in the systemic change process, including, I am assuming the teachers. I would just assume, maybe incorrectly because of my inexperience, that a major stakeholder group in the systemic change of a school system would be the teachers, and so they would be included in the process from the beginning.

Change is always scary and the only way to do it right and get successful results was well put when the authors state that change can only occur when there is a “readiness and willingness to engage in district wide reform” (p. 217), when “an appropriate culture for change” has been established, and when a foundation is laid in which there is “greater trust and communication among all stakeholder groups” (p. 216) Now, where do we get started? :)