Author Archives: Stephen Seyfer

Assure There Will Be No Yada Yada in September

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Gut-check time.  A gut-check is a moment of reflection, introspection, clarity, and commitment.  This September, when schools return to as close to normal as they have been in 18 months, when the need for a remote education has been eased by vaccination, and school activity levels rise nearly to pre-pandemic engagement, we, public schools, need to do a gut-check of our priorities.  After becoming what we are not, closed and diminished campuses for child education, what is it that we want to be in the new normal?

Try these small checks.

  • Re-examine your school mission statement and educational objectives.  Mission and objectives are designed as the philosophic base for your school’s educational programming.  Read the entire statement beginning to end.  I did and I heard Elaine from Seinfeld muttering “Yada, yada, yada” in my ears.  Thinking maybe it was just my district’s document, I read the position statements of other regional districts and Elaine was in my ears again and again. 

What safely worded drivel!  We “encourage” and “ provide opportunity for” generalized educational achievements that prepare our students and graduates for a world we only think we apprehend.  Or, for the world we, as current adult school leaders, live in today.  We “enhance” and “aspire” and “hope” children will be these things.  And, then we shoot for average, state or national statistics, that we know from the beginning of our hopes are below par.  Weak verbs leading to weak outcomes. Drivel now and when we wrote it.

Is this the best we can be in our time of renewal?  Is this best we can do?

  • Reread your curriculum guides.  To what extent are the outcomes of each instructional unit compelling and a demonstration of significant learning growth?  Or, are they statements of things done, time spent, a check list checked off?

Children in remote education engaged in too much non-compelling curricula, especially when instruction included lengthy screen time, and expectations were set at the “just get it done” level of performance.  Such was education in a pandemic.

I observed flashes of strong teaching and learning from individual teachers using highly interactive, daily connection with remote children in the 20-21 school year.  There were “All Star” teachers working in a completely foreign school environment who caused their children to learn.  However, there were many more examples of classrooms where minimum was all that was given and all that was required.

That can not be the case in September.  Compelling engagement and strong demonstration of learning must describe our new requirements not just expectations.  If we, and there is no reason to, continue with pandemic-level teaching and learning in September, apathetic and lethargic student engagement in remote education will be our new normal. 

  • Realign your programming.  Remote education caused schools to prioritize reading, mathematics and academic book subjects and to minimize or eliminate instruction that required hands-on and one-to-one interaction, such as art, music, foreign language, and technical education. 

Prior to September, rebuild your capacity for total programming.  Daily instruction in the total curricular program must be visible in the school schedules made public in July and August.  Equity must be apparent, not a valued and devalued set of programs.  Don’t wait until September. 

Totality of programming includes the arts, athletics, and student activities.  While classes may begin in late August or early September, fall sports, theater, and marching and pep band begin weeks before.  Get in front of all 21-22 programming with new, inclusive, high requirement statements of learning and performance outcomes. 

This is not an attempt at a “best we can be or do” question.  It is a “we must be better” imperative.  If we cannot be compelling and strong in our requirements, COVID will have caused another pandemic fatality – public education.

Every organization must do its own gut-check as it emerges from the Time of COVID.  Some organizations will not survive the pandemic.  Schools will.  Our gut-check must be a matter of conscience.  We will not be guilt-driven but conscience-compelled to be better than we were in the pandemic but also better than were pre-pandemic.

The purpose of gut-checking is not an organizational selfie.  Gut-checks clarify what was and define what must be.  It is time to be better!

“Yesterday Is Gone And There’s No Getting It Back”

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I hear Robert Duvall’s voice as Augustus McCrae in Lonesome Dove say, “Yesterday is gone and there’s no getting it back”.  There is no false fact in his words.  We can do things differently going forward, starting right now if we choose, but we cannot redo what was or what was not done in our rear view mirror.  To the point: the education of children during the Time of COVID beginning last March and to this date is part of our history.  Whatever children as students have learned or not learned across these five months of two school years is their yesterday and there’s no getting it back.  The issue is what we will do for their future.

Take Away

The physics of time remain irrefutable – we move forward not backward.  We can attempt to re-interpret our understanding of our past, we can attempt to change the inferred value of what we experienced, and we can attempt to re-knit experiences into a different story, but the realities remain the same.  Learning experiences that did not happen did not happen.

Educators at their best are teachers and often reteachers and correcting teachers  It is a fact in our work that 100% of our students do not learn 100% of what they are taught 100% of the time.  As educators, we constantly are working to teach again, reteach, clean up what was mislearned.  We strive to create a quality of learned knowledge and skill sets when initial teaching and learning are not successful.  RtI programs are designed to improve the percentage of successful students by scaffolding this continuing teaching and learning. 

Compensation is a different beast.  We compensate when we accept the fact that something did not occur, was not achieved, or missed the mark by creating strategies to counteract that reality.  We counteract the reality with a new, parallel status quo.  Or, we apply equal or greater effort in opposition of what occurred in order to rebalance things.  Applied to schooling in the Time of COVID, many children did not learn and are not learning the curriculum they typically would learn if there were no COVID.  In the next months, we will assess and understand the differences between what was expected and what is.  And, as these yesterdays are gone and there is no getting them back, we will compensate.

What do we know?

The COVID Effect to the education of children to date is that a percentage of the learning we expected to accomplish in the close of the 2019-20 and the current 2020-21 school years did not happen and is not happening as intended.  To see the total landscape, some children are exceeding our school-based expectations and some are not.  Our assessment may show that some children flourished either as at-home learners of school instruction or as learners of virtual curricula from non-school providers.  We observe highly motivated AP students digging into their school-based assignments and online AP resources who will score the 5’s on their AP exams this spring.  High personal motivation at any time, COVID or not, is an ingredient for personal success.

We observe Kindergarten children who walk into a K-classroom mid-year where in-school learning have been delayed since September and demonstrate mid-year or better reading skills.  Parental support of school-based K instruction or parent substitution for school-based teaching has been highly successful.  We observe children at all grades and in all subjects who have enjoyed strong parental support for school-based learning, good Internet connection, and exercised personal commitment to their school work and are where they would expect them to be at this point in a school year in terms of their academic learning.

At the same time, we observe children who are the opposite of flourishing.  Causes abound and reasons can be understood.  The reality is that too many children at all grade levels and in all subjects have not learned their intended curricula.  Or, any curricula.  The reality is that some children have separated from our school entirely and will not return.  Some children were clearly idled by lack of school connections – Internet, personal, social – they were idled and stranded.  Their parents may not have sought other options because options were not available or due to time and/or money not obtainable.  The COVID Effect for manny of our continuing children is that across the yesterdays of their schooling, we/they were not successful in causing them to learn.  Yesterday is gone and there’s no getting it back.  Today we begin compensating.

Why is this thus?

We shall not generalize a compensatory strategy.  This is not a philosophical statement, but a descriptor of our reality.  If a school has 500 children enrolled, today we have 500 different educational stories.  Parse this among the 13 grades of a K-12 education and every grade and subject hold children spread across the field of expected learning, including motivated, diligent and supported students and students who were largely disconnected from school.  We cannot generalize a solution or remedy or compensatory strategy to rebalance all children in their school-based learning.  There are and will be groupings of children who demonstrate common needs for whom we can apply a common compensatory strategy.  We need multiple, well-designed compensatory strategies.

We shall not generalize educational outcomes.  There is no time like a crisis to evaluate what is essential for your well-being and future prosperity.  Annual curricula is a daisy chain of scaffolded learnings.  Each link in the daisy chain is essential for next learning.  Some single links blossom into multiple strands of curriculum.  Consider multiplication and division, then fractions, then Algebra.  Every school child knows this daisy chain first hand and many experience the challenges of manipulating fractions on their way to Algebra.  No fractions – no Algebra.  These are essential learning. 

But, is everything in an annual curricula essential.  As we cull 180 days of instruction, the scope of required compensatory education can be reduced.  If we could get yesterday back, we would not need every yesterday to prepare for our future.  Our compensatory strategies must be essential learning.  We will fill in the rest as we can when we can.

Compensatory teaching and learning will be woven into ongoing teaching and learning.  A child in fifth grade needs her compensatory instruction as well as her ongoing fifth grade instruction.  If not, we only trade lost yesterdays for lost todays and she will still behind where she needs to be tomorrow.  Weaving is a good verb for this teaching and learning.  Educators can do this.

Education is roundth not length.  Our yesterdays are not just academic, but contain all the elements of child and student development.  Again, we cannot generalize gain or loss because the COVID Effect treats different children differently.  That said, we need to explore our expectations for child experiences in creativity, artistry, musicianship, craftsmanship, intellectual development, exploration and inquisition, tradesmanship, entrepreneurship, physical and athletic development, collaborative and collegial capacities, and social-emotional development.  We need to know how children have grown in every aspect of a school-based education, not just academics.  A compensatory strategy just became much more difficult.

To do

Understand the learning status and needs of each individual child.  COVID is a universal pandemic but education is a personal endeavor and experience.  While our pandemic strategy moves children en masse from in-school to at-home and back, from in-class to quarantined based upon health data, and does these on a daily basis, we need to treat each child’s compensatory as an individualized and personal story.  The education of each child needs to be brought forward.

Chew what you can bite off.  The work will be in bite-sized chunks.  These are child-sized bites.  If compensation were a vaccine, what was lost could be regained in a moment.  As there is no quick fix, educators must create child-sized mini-curricula that in the aggregate create a child’s up-to-date education.

Get it right.  What a sin it would be if we compound what has been lost with less than our best work now.  Checking for understanding is required at every intersection of old and new learning and new learning upon new learning.  If a child is not solid in their compensatory learning, the entire design fails.

Think effect not time and effort.  A COVID Effect strategy will not be completed in what remains of the 2020-21 school year.  If we work on personalized educational needs, in bites, and ensure quality learning, our work will stretch well into the 2021-22 school year.  If we really are interested in compensating all children for the downside of their COVID Effect, this will be time well spent.

Don’t do what you can’t do.  A non-educator might tell us, “In the future, all children must be able to speak Mandarin”.  Whereas, we might agree with that futuristic educational outcome, it does not fit into the scope of necessary work in the Time of COVID.  Curriculum is always in a state of change, but now is not the time for large scale overhauls.  Tweak what would normally be tweaked and create child competence in the taught curricula.

The big duh!

Educating children remains our culture’s most noble enterprise.  In the Peanuts cartoon, a character asks, “I wonder what teachers make?”.  The other character says, “Teachers make a difference”.

The Time of COVID has clearly laid out the parameters of the magnificent difference teaching needs to make in the lives of children today.

School Board Work Is A Wonderful Responsibility

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To each person duly elected to the local school board, I say “Welcome.  Today you will begin to see, listen to, and think about school in an entirely new dimension.  Engage with fellow board members in a thoughtful discussion of how your board will meet its responsibilities to educate all children.  Then, get to know your school from the inside out.  We have a lot to learn and talk about.” 

An introduction to the school board was not always like this.

A few years back a newly elected school board member was chastised by the board president for visiting school classrooms and talking with teachers.  He was told, “Follow the chain of command.  Board members speak with the superintendent.  The superintendent speaks with principals and other administrators.  Principals and other administrators speak with teachers and other employees.  Don’t violate this chain for command”.  A conversation with the executive director of the state’s school board association confirmed this absurdity.  “Follow the chain of command”, he advised, “it exists for a purpose.”

And, they also should have said, “Take a firm grip on your rubber stamp, because the limiting funnel of information allowed through such a command structure will require little to no discussion by board members.  One voice.  One interpretation of information.  No discussion necessary.”

How absurd and how wrong! 

A quick review of state statutes describing the duties of a school board member disabused this new board member of what the president and executive director said.  The statutes contain no such limitations on the scope of a board member’s interaction with the district’s schools.    Our statutes tell us that our duties, among others, include these:

120.12 School board duties. The school board of a common or union high school district shall:

(1) MANAGEMENT OF SCHOOL DISTRICT. Subject to the authority vested in the annual meeting and to the authority and possession specifically given to other school district officers, have the possession, care, control and management of the property and affairs of the school district, except for property of the school district used for public library purposes under s. 43.52.

(2) GENERAL SUPERVISION. Visit and examine the schools of the school district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/120.pdf

Any board policies or regulations restricting a board member’s interactions are not founded in statute and are propagated only to protect an antiquated concept of the status quo.  The only valid admonition is a board member must refrain from discussion that might compromise the board member’s future role should the board meet in a judicial hearing.  For example, don’t engage in discussion of a specific employee’s work performance or a specific student’s discipline record.  A Board may fulfill its statutory role in hearing a case related to employee termination or student expulsion and the prior discussions of these by a board member may compromise the board member’s capacity to be objectively neutral. 

Better rules to follow are – “Treat everyone, adult and child, with integrity and respect.  Be informed.  Be a voice for the future of all children.  You are a legislator not an administrator.”

  • Integrity and respect are gold standards for boardsmanship.  Each person you speak with requires these two qualities from you.  No matter the person’s role in school – parent, student, teacher, custodian, administrator, community taxpayer – that person has a legitimate claim to your attention.  You are that person’s representative on the school board.  The integrity and respect you demonstrate sets the role model standard for the school district.  If integrity and respect are not present at the school board, how can you expect them be present anywhere else in the school?
  • Integrity and respect are demonstrated by listening rather than talking.  You want to understand their perspective not overlay your own.  You can do that at the board table.  Integrity is demonstrated by sharing the multiple perspectives you have heard.  Integrity is making fact-based decisions and holding to a decision as long as the facts support a decision.  And, when the facts do not support a decision, adjusting the decision to reflect new facts. 
  • Board members need first-hand information.  The old chain of command assured that most information was second- and third-hand.  Create your information base by proactively visiting classrooms to observe instruction, the use of curricular materials, and student and teacher interaction.  I call this “perching”.  You are not in a classroom to interact or participate, but to see and listen and feel.  However, if the teacher invites your participation, do not hesitate.  Enjoy the moment.

Engage in hearty discussions about employment policies, responsibilities and expectations, and practices.  Gain firsthand information about the school environment from an employee and student perspective.  See teachers, aides, district and school office staff, kitchen and food service, custodians and maintenance staff, bus drivers, and coaches, directors and advisors doing their work. 

Then, with respect and integrity, share your information appropriately at the board table. 

https://www.aasa.org/SchoolAdministratorArticle.aspx?id=13914
  • Your real constituency is the children of the school.  You may be elected from a precinct or supported in your election by voters who favor certain programs or want specific changes and improvements in the school district.  However, your focus should always be on the quality education of all children, emphasis on all.  When the board is called upon to vote on a matter, your vote is powerful.  Of all the voices speaking to the matter, when the votes are tallied, only board voices/votes are counted.  Make your vote stand for the highest quality of programming your schools can provide to all children.
  • You are a legislator not an administrator.  Board members work with policies stemming from the mission and goals of the school district.  Affirm policies that are creating desired school district outcomes and amend or delete policies that are not.  When in the school, watch, listen and feel – don’t direct.  You have no authority to tell anyone what to do.  That is a role of school administration and supervision. 

Leadership Longevity Is Tenuous

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(This article was first posted in 2015. It remains germane to day.)

Leaders, who are not self-employed, live in a fragile world of employment security made increasingly more tenuous with each passing year. Making a career as a leader is a role to which many aspire but few will achieve longevity. Their reality is that leadership is the art of swimming in deep water while carrying the weight of their decisions. The sign on the leader’s office door says, “No lifeguards on duty.”

In The Anguish of Leadership (2000), Jerry Patterson describes a leader as a person always swimming in deep water. At the beginning of his tenure, a leader swims quite well. He enjoys the honeymoon of employment when his employers and most employees wish him well and their support gives him buoyancy. Also, his pockets are empty. He has no experiential record, good or bad, in this employment.

I paraphrase Abraham Lincoln with “You can be successful with all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot be successful with all the people all the time.” Every time a leader is unsuccessful, a rock is placed in the leader’s pocket. Events that are hugely unsuccessful load in larger and heavier rocks. And, rocks in the pockets make it increasingly more difficult to swim in deep water. On the positive side, rocks may be taken out of his pockets by professional successes. Interestingly, there is no correspondence between the rocks taken out for a success and rocks placed in for a failure; the rocks of failure are heavier and more numerous than the rocks of success.

Adding a second paraphrase, this from John Wayne in Big Jake, “ … my fault, your fault, nobody’s fault, I am going to hold you responsible.” Patterson believes that a leader’s professional well-being is affected by the successes and failures of everyone in the business for whom he is responsible. When a subordinate is unsuccessful, rocks may be placed in that person’s pockets but always some rocks will be placed in the leader’s pockets. When President Truman placed his famous “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his White House desk, he also was saying “This is my rock pile – all grievances, disagreements, and disenchantments with my leadership go here.”

Eventually, Patterson writes, the total weight of the rocks in his pocket will pull almost every leader under the water. Or, the constant burden of swimming with heavy rocks in his pocket wears down the leader and he succumbs. Few leaders escape significant drowning as they work through their careers. Some leaders will re-emerge in a similar leadership position in a different organization and many may enact a resurrection several times over the length of their career, but almost all will drown once.

Head coaches for professional sports teams are a case in point. As the person leading a professional team, the coach is ultimately responsible for the success of the team as expressed in the team’s win and loss record. Wins are good and losses are “rocks”. Too few wins and too many losses creates a heavy pocket of rocks. On Monday, December 29, the day after the final game of the 2014 National Football League season, four head coaches and two general managers were fired. Each had accumulated too many rocks in their pockets. 2014 is not unique. The average tenure of a head coach in the NFL is 2.39 years. The average tenure in the National Hockey League is 3.0 years, 3.03 in the National Basketball Association and 3.8 years for Major League Baseball head coaches. Leaders drown in the deep water of professional sports every year and sometimes at mid-season.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-02-29/managers-coaches-tenure/53376918/1

Public education is no different. The keeping of wins and losses is not as dramatic in education as it is in sports, but school leaders are handed rocks just as often as head coaches. The average tenure of a school district superintendent is 5.5 years. The rocks for urban, super-large districts are heavier. Their average tenure is 3.3 years. Approximately 15% of all superintendents professionally drown each year.

http://www.aasa.org/content.aspx?id=740

Superintendents are hired and drown in the shadow of the Lincoln paraphrasing. Few are fired due to a criminal act or professional malpractice. These do happen, but they are rare. The great majority of drownings are the result of a general loss of confidence in the superintendent. A loss of confidence may occur with major stakeholders in the school district, such as parent groups or special interest groups. These groups control large piles of rocks. Local religious and business leaders have their own stockpile of rocks. Students, the most important group of people in a school district, also control rocks albeit smaller rocks. And, of course, the confidence of the Board of Education is essential. When the Board loses confidence in the superintendent a professional drowning is soon to follow.

A superintendent making important decisions for a school district will inextricably offend some rock holders even with the best of decisions. It is a fact of life for a leader. Creating smaller class sizes is a good thing for students, teachers and most parents, but it stirs the rocks of taxpayers who object to increased costs. Cutting costs is a good thing for taxpayers, but diminishing the resources for schools and classrooms stirs the rocks of the teacher’s union and PTAs. Allowing school events on Wednesday evenings wins the admiration of sports and fine arts fans who enjoy more games and concerts, but it raises the rock throwing ire of church leaders who lose time for religious education generally held on that night of the week. No matter, rocks find their way into the pockets of every school leader and even the best eventually sink lower and lower into Jerry Patterson’s deep end of the pool.

So, knowing the reality of a leader’s professional world, those who aspire to be leaders, those who are still above water in the deep end of the leadership pool, and those who employ leaders should honor Robert Herrick’s verse to The Virgins. Leaders must lead as well as they are able to and for as long as they are able to remain above water because no leader survives the eventual weight of the rocks in his pockets.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles to-day

Tomorrow will be dying.

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/virgins-make-much-time

Change And Institutionalization Are Inevitable

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A constant tension exists in every organization for persons who see a need for change.  How can I cause necessary change in the window of time that change requires before I become institutionalized and part of the status quo?  Change takes time.  Time creates status quo.  Ugh!

What do we know?

Change is a constant.  It happens all the time and everywhere in our world.  The more we think things are staying the same, the more naïve we are about our world.  What seems to be staying the same actually is in a slower motion compared to other things that are changing more rapidly. 

Change is a dynamic of motion, sometimes slow and evolutionary and sometimes immediate and revolutionary.  Yet, everything is in motion relative to its momentary position.

Change can be a pendulum swinging over a more normal status.  They direction of swing is not just back and forth, but also elliptical.  We feel the change when the pendulum swings beyond the center or area of normalcy one way or the other and we feel normal when it swings back toward and over the center.

Though revolutionary change can be quick in terms of time, quick change can cause unanticipated consequences.  Some the of the unanticipated outcomes may be less desirable than the pre-revolutionary status.  Revolutionary change can have a life of its own.

Though evolutionary change can be slow and inevitable, it experiences an inertial resistance of the status quo that limits its full potential for change.  Evolutionary change is a series of compromises.

Yesterday’s change is today’s institution.  Every significant and successful change redefines the institution until the institution looks like the change.  Institutionalization is as inevitable as the motion of change.

What more do we know?

Planned change is a bumpy road.  Planned change experiences immediate opposition from the status quo.  Stalwarts of the status quo and doomsayers oppose change that upsets their normal.  Often the opposition to change is so strong that it not only defeats change, but moves the institution backwards.  If that resistance can be overcome, there is a brief acceptance lull.  This feels like “wait and see”.  The second bump in the change effort is the learning curve.  Planned change requires new behaviors, new attitudes and dispositions, and new skill sets.  Sometimes, new people.  It takes time for new behaviors, dispositions, and skills to be learned and new learning always experiences unsuccessful initial learning and a need for second-instruction.  More ugh!  This is all uphill work against the inertia of the past.  Once “new” is learned, there is trial and error time.  This is a series of less severe bumps.  Working with the newness will expose its problems and “See, I told you so” from recalcitrants.  Objective and subjective data is required to demonstrate that what is new is better than what was old.  Eventually, the “working it out” brings back some of the old to be mixed in with the new resulting a hybrid that is mostly new.  Voila!  Change.

How does this play out?

Consider the evolutionary change in the automotive industry from gas-powered to battery-powered motors.  This change may seem revolutionary, but it has been in the making for decades.  With a step back, one can observe initial opposition, a break through in technology, a wait and see, slow learning of new attitudes about cars, changing skill sets within the industry, compromising with hybrids, a second break out with more commitment, and, voila! – change in the industry.

Planned change with its calendar of initial presentation, resistance, learning curve, adaptation, and institutionalization takes approximately seven to eight years start to finish.  Changing things is easier.  Changing people and their behaviors is harder and takes a lot of time, energy, and constancy.

The status quo counts on change agents losing energy because of the opposition of time and the entrenched past.  Time is not on the side of planned change.  In order to overcome the opposition of time, change agents must engineer micro-changes.  A series of changes, each one a significant change in itself, but just a link in the chain of change, allows change efforts to surpass the usual clock of seven to eight years.

Institutionalization of change agents carries its own clock.  Every person in an institutionalized organization slowly becomes institutionalized.  That process is inevitable.  A rule of thumb is that within five years of accepting an employment assignment the employee is routinized into the status quo of that assignment.  Once institutionalized, change agents are part of the normal and defenders of the usual.  They have been neutralized.

A second rule of thumb is that within five years the institution will weed out revolutionary change agent personnel.  The objective of an institution is stability, predictability, and minimal change.  This definition explains why so many of our social institutions are in trouble.  Life is changing faster and institutional change is slow; they can’t evolve fast enough to be viable servants of their stated missions. 

What does this mean for education?

Change in public education is constantly happening in an evolutionary way.  The world around public education historically exerted a drag effect that moved the institution to change across time.  Slowly and sometimes defiantly.

Integration of schools.  Title IX and girls sports.  Mainstreaming of children with special needs.  EL learners.  School choice, charters, and public support of private schools.  The schools of 2021 are not the schools of 2011, 2001, or 1991.  With hindsight, we can observe the change phenomenon of demand, opposition, acceptance, learning curve, compromising, and creation of a new order within education. 

Schools feel the shift of Republican or Democratic administrations.  Consider how Leave No Child Behind affected teaching and learning and the power of statewide testing.  NCLB was a change or suffer event that slowly was resolved by the recalcitrance of those being asked to change and the anticipated pendulum swing back toward the status quo.  Although NCLB seemed revolutionary, its story was foretold in conservative fiscal policy and perception of public education’s lack of accountability for academic outcomes.  Too much money and too few results.  The concerns have not gone away, only the popular use of NCLB as its title.

Ironically, the more institutional public education acts in opposition to change demands, the more it attracts demands for faster change.  This has been observed in school district policies during the pandemic.  Schools were never just about teaching and learning.  Schools are the nation’s largest day care operators and when schools closed their doors as a pandemic protocol, business, government, and working families became demonstrably oppositional to school policies focused on the safest way to protect children and teachers in a school.  The need for day care was greater than child and teacher health.  Millions of families left public education and may not return when schools are open to in-person teaching and learning.  The institution of public education will be changed by the pandemic in ways we yet do not know.  That story is still playing out. 

The Big Duh!

If you want to be a change agent, understand the dynamics of change theory.  Understand the nature and machinations of the status quo and that institutions are based defined by their status quo.  Understand the calendar for change activity and the calendar of institutionalization.  Understand that revolutionary change brings unanticipated outcomes, hello pandemic.  Understand that planned change and micro-changing can modify our world, hello Tesla.

Above all else, understand that your world is changing and there is nothing you can do about this fact other than understand and work within its phenomenon.  Or, become a revolutionary and look out!