Have reports of the death of newspapers been exaggerated?

I’ve been thinking a lot about student publications. Newspapers and literary magazines mostly. Yearbooks are a different beastie.

Print publications by and for students maintain a strong hold on our student writers. Perhaps because they are so used to seeing their own words (albeit in the a very different form) in their social networks, that having their name in a print publication carries more gravitas. Be that as it may, we are obliged to prepare students for their future, not our past, and I think we would all agree that print publications are undergoing major change.

As an environmentalist, I am also mindful of the resources consumed  by print publications. True, it may be argued that electronic communication is simply a matter of shifting the burden from producing paper to producing servers, but in my view the servers win out.

To date, most high school publications have had a very limited reach: other students, faculty, staff, and parents. These groups comprised the writers audience, there was little opportunity for feedback, interaction, or for reaching a broader audience.

I believe that as young scholars, artists, writers, journalists, videographers, photographers, composers, musicians, and performers, students can gain insight and invaluable experience by interacting with a  diverse audience of readers. New technologies enable students to reach national and international audiences, readers of all ages and occupations.

Students will write differently for a broader audience and, I think, they will write better.

There are some issues to deal with when moving from a small, “in-house” audience to a global audience, and from a print-based publication to online.

• Privacy. Many schools have guidelines or policies about the use of student names and photos outside of the school. The fact that a print publication could, in theory, be snail mailed to people outside of the school seems to have not crossed the minds of some policy makers. The Internet, however, puts the issue right before their eyes.
• Audience. If your audience is broader, than the use of in-house humor, jargon, and so on renders articles that use such language less accessible to some readers. This means that editors need to step up and determine when such language is appropriate and when it obfuscates meaning.
• Interactivity. Why have an electronic publication if there is not a means for the readers to provide feedback? And what will become of that feedback? Are the editors willing to engage in conversation? Who will moderate the comments, and do they need to be moderated?
• Rich media and COLOR. ‘nuf said.
• New production roles. Currently, all one needs to produce a decent paper or lit magazine is a word processor, maybe a page layout program, and a copier. Electronic journalism has roles beyond copy writing and editing, to audio and video production, web site design, and even custom coding.
• Publication schedules. Since there is no longer a print publication to create—which means that content is released all at once—online publication allows for a more varied and timely schedule of publication. To draw readers to the site on a regular basis, content can be refreshed as it becomes available, and not held hostage until everything else is ready to go.
• New types of “news.” Papers and lit magazines can expand their repertoire of content to include exemplary scholarly works. Or perhaps schools can launch a research magazine highlighting some of the best academic work of students. Instead of only being read by student and their teacher, the student’s work can now reach a a broad group of scholars.

There are many among us who fear for the demise of the “paper.” Personally, I am more concerned about the consolidation of professional journalism in to the hands of a few media giants. And while I no longer subscribe to a daily paper, I do like picking one up at my local Peets when I stop for coffee. But when a paper isn’t available, I happily turn to my iPhone where I read the NY Times—for free, and without a single wasted tree.

Well this marriages got off to a rocky start, but in this case the fault lies more with the e-reader than Shirky’s prose.

The premise of Shirky’s book will not come as a big news to most readers: new technology is changing everything about how groups form, communicate, influence, collaborate, and are managed. Replete with numerous (and sometimes overly-long) examples of how groups have spontaneously or more deliberately formed to address issues ranging from petty theft to child abuse, informal thought experiments to commercial ventures involving millions of people,  Shirks demonstrates the “tetonic shift” that social computing is causing. Shirky writes “The current change, in one sentence, is this: most of the barriers to group action have collapsed, and without those barriers, we are free to explore new ways of gathering together and getting things done.” [Note. I'd cite the page number, but it's different depending on which resolution you have the reader set at. So what are you supposed to do?]

Self-organizing groups hold a special fascination for Shirky. He describes the origin of the organization chart in the early railroad business, and how its hierarchical structure caught on in other industries. [I would have thought the org chart was military in origin.] Hierarchical organization works well for awhile, but “at some point an institution simply cannot grow anymore, and still remain functional, because the cost of managing the business will destroy any profit margin.” But for many social groups on the Internet, the “costs don’t fall moderately…they collapse. Thousands of volunteers contribute and moderate content, for free. Loosely coordinated groups can now achieve things that were previously out of reach for any other organizational structure.”

Shirky uses the metaphor of a ladder to describe the group activities that are more easily facilitated by online tools, with the rungs of the ladder,”in order of difficulty… sharing, cooperation, and collective action.”

News organizations in general, and newspapers in particular, are still reeling from the effect of the internet, bloggers, and the proliferation of amateur news reporters on the viability of their businesses. Shirky reminds us that these amateurs are not professional journalists, that “mass professionalization is an oxymoron.” (This offers little solace to the thousands of professional journalists who have been given their walking papers in the last few years.) Such monumental change (and Shirky likens our period ot that following the invention of the printing press) is messy. “Because social effects lag behind technological ones by decades, real revolutions don’t involve an orderly transition from point A to point B. Rather, they go from A to B through a long period of chaos and only then reach B.” The practical effects of anyone being able to claim journalistic privilege in a court of law is unknown, but sounds a bit scary to me.

Chaotic times lead a lot of people to be be scared, and scared people often react with “fight or flight.” Take the music industry, which is using its own user base. Or any other content provider that goes after those who “mash-up” their original works into new creations.

One of the most memorable phrases from Here Comes Everybody is this: “much of what gets published on any given day is public but not for [emphasis added] the public.”

That explains all the idiotic things I run into.

So with so much stuff out there, Shirky tells us that the only reasonable means to make sense of it is to filter it, and technology, which provides an avenue for so much stuff, can also provide a solutions for getting you just the stuff you are interested in. “Mass amateurization of publishing makes mass amateurization of filtering a forced move.” Communities of practice, such as those that have formed in Flickr and Wikipedia, are two examples of how legions of amateurs can help make sense, and ensure quality, from the legions of stuff.

As an educator, I am passionately interested in what these new tools may mean for today’s students. Shirky asserts:

Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. The invention of a tool doesn’t create change; it has to have been around long enough that most of society is using it. It’s when a technology becomes normal, then ubiquitous, and finally so pervasive as to be invisible, that the really profound changes happen, and for young people today, our new social tools have passed normal and are heading to ubiquitous, and invisible is coming.

Then Shirky lets fall the other shoe, claiming: “Our social tools are not an improvement to modern society; they are a challenge to it.”

But in the midst of all of this mess there are signs of hope that society can meet the challenge, and be the better for it. In chapter five, “Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production,” Shirky writes at length about Wikipedia, and how its model of collaborative writing and editing demonstrates every day the power and possibility of social tools, where “a Wikipedia article is a process, not a product, and as a result, it is never finished.” He concludes the chapter, with this: “When people care enough, they can come together and accomplish things of scope and longevity that were previously impossible.” And therein lies the hope for making sense out of chaos.

Shirky also weighs in on one of my favorite topics, open source software, and how the open source movement has changed the economics of failure. “Most organizations attempt to reduce the effect of failure by reducing its likelihood.” So Microsoft, Apple, and other commercial firms are risk-averse. But “open source doesn’t reduce the likelihood of failure, it reduces the cost [emphasis added] of failure.” More risk, means a greater likelihood of big breakthroughs and innovation. “When a company or indeed any organization [might I suggest schools?—ed] finds a strategy that works, the drive to adopt it and stick with it strong. Even if there is a better strategy out there.” The resulting “systematic bias for continuity creates tolerance for the substandard.”

Towards the end of his book, Shirky poses a question worth pondering by all of us interested in social media. “The most obvious change is that we are going to get into more groups, many more groups, than have ever existed before. Is this a good thing?” Later, he posits “Arguments about whether new forms of sharing or collaboration are, on balance, good or bad reveal more about the speaker than the subject.” But “To ask the question, ‘Should we allow the spread of these social tools?’ presumes that there is something we could do about it were the answer no. This hypothesis is suspect, precisely because of the kinds of changes involved.” So now that the genie has already escaped the bottle, what do we do? Shirky replies that for himself, “In the last fifteen years I’ve had to unlearn a million [things], because they have stopped being true.” Unlearning: the first step in learning.

Shirky can be a bit long-winded for my taste, but there’s no doubt that he has done his homework and he provides a valuable resource to readers interested in the societal effects of new technologies.

You add books to the reader via your computer and a USB cable. The Reader does not offer wireless capabilities. I found the software easy to use, and purchasing books from the Sony store to be a breeze. I purchased Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody (featured in an upcoming review) for purposes of testing. You can also load PDF files, which I did in the form of an open content Earth Science textbook from CK12.

The PRS 600 has a solid, well-manufactured feel to it. The screen size is approximately that of a paperback book,  and it weights just over 10 ounces (.28 KG). All of the ports are on either the top or the bottom of the unit, making for a smooth feel along the left and right sides. You can navigate between pages using touch gestures if you wish, but I found the buttons to be more consistently responsive. You can use either the provided stylus or your fingers to navigate on the screen, highlight text, and so on. The touch function I used most frequently was that of highlighting text, for which i found the fingernail of my index finger to be more useful that the stylus. (I’m always afraid of losing a stylus, a hold-over from my days of using Palm handhelds).

The reader can also play DRM free M3 and AAC files. I did not test this function, as I was primarily interested in its ability as a reader.

Bottom line: If you are in the market for an e-reader, keep looking.

The are a number of reasons why this is not the e-reader I need.

• No color. While the lack of color is not a problem with many texts, it’s an absolute show-stopper when it comes to textboosk, such as the beautifully illustrated Earth Science text mentioned above. The monochrome screen does its best to provide shades of gray, which look nice for the sample photos, but as an iPhone user I love its color display, and won’t accept anything less in an e-reader.
• While reading text, you can access the tool bar located at the top of the screen which allows you to highlight or annotate text, or on the bottom of the screen you a dictionary can appear to provide definitions of words. But you can have both available at the same time. I would like both.
• I would like the option to display black on white AND white on black text. Only the former is available.
• When flipping from one screen to the next, the screen briefly flips to white on black text of the next page before it is displayed. I found the page flipping to be a distracting animation.
• Shirky’s book contains several graphics and figures, which the e-readers renders as virtually unreadable. Zooming in magnifies the text, but did nothing for the figures. I still don’t know what they contain. (see screen shot, below)
• Another anomaly was that throughout Shirky’s book a number of WORDS could not be rendered correctly. (See circled ares in screen shot below.) What’s with that! This is simply unacceptable.
• The Sony Touch allows you to enter notes using an on-board screen keyboard. In this case I did resort to using the stylus. However, the performance of the keyboard is poor, often lagging several seconds behind the typing.
• Reading the PDF Earth science text book I found that paragraphs were often breaking in strange places when I increased the text size. Whether this is a problem with the PDF formatting or the reader I don’t know.
• The Sony Touch does not have a back lit screen, and reading it in even a dimly lit room can be difficult. You will need a brightly lit room or reading lamp to use it effectively.
• Forget about making useful marginal notes while using the Touch. You do have access to free form note making with the stylus. If you like writing your signature at the grocery store on touch-sensitive pad, you’ll like this experience. If you handwriting looks illegible, don’t expect the Touch to improve it or try to convert it to typewritten text. Additionally, margins are irritatingly small for such notations. What I want is the ability to put a pen at an insertion point, type or write a note, and then hide it. But the clincher for me is that when you make a note, and then change the type size, the note moves location on the screen. It’s no longer assocaited with its position on the screen adjacent to the text you wrote it next to.  As currently implemented, this is a useless “feature.”
• While I am on the topic of making marginal notations, if I had my way there would be a mechanism to toggle them on and off, so that a subsequent reader could choose between a pristine or annotated version of the book.
• Finally, what should happen when you hold down a right or left key to advance or reverse the text. The logical thing, I would think, would be for the key to automatically repeat, to allow you to flip forward to back several pages at a time. Not so with the touch. Want to go forward 10 pages, ten gestures or ten presses of the forward button.

Sony makes several version of the Reader, and the Touch may not be representative of the features and capabilities of the other models.

I so wanted to like this e-reader but, alas, I don’t. YMMV

I have no idea what this graph is supposed to depict.

There are dozens of examples of missing text in the book similar to this one.

But this is not to suggest that there’s no place for Google to improve. After all, most of their products are perpetually beta releases.

Here, in no order other than how they came to me, are ten ideas for making Google Apps and Mail better for education:

1. Most of the time when I am adding contacts, I am adding their work contact information, not home information. I’d like Google enterprise users to be able to default the field to work rather than home.

Don't assume I'm a home user, please!

2. The Google Enterprise help form sucks. Like most organizations, especially those that offer a free service, try to get users to exhaust self-help options before contacting the company. I get that, and I am okay with it. But when I do get to a point where I need to create a trouble ticket with Google, their selection of what problems I am reporting is terribly limited. Those of you who have to do thi know what I mean.

3. Google Apps Status should be offer more granulated information and proactive notification. For example, there have been time when we’re having issue and the status shows green across the board, as this is true for Google overall. But if there are local issue to my site it would be nice if Google could automatically recognize that and report it. Better yet, they should send me a SMS.

4. Google Apps for Education should include Blogger and Picassa. If Google wants schools to use Blogger instead of Wordpress (or Edublogs, sorry guys), then promote it and integrate it with Google Apps, especially Google sites. Ditto for Picassa. Want to beat Flickr, offer schools unlimited storage, great privacy controls, and robust organization skills so that photos can be organized and shared online.

5. Google Widgets. I like adding useful Google Gadgets to sites. It’s a great way to add dynamic content to a site. Yet I have a couple of beefs with how this is currently implemented in Sites. (a) then you type in a search term for the gadget you are looking for, example RSS, you it takes a loooong time for all of the results to load. And then there is little to differentiate between a RSS utility, which allows you to insert your won RSS feeds into a site, or someone who has created their own RSS feed of Hannah Montana news. (shiver). And then, to top things off, the results may include several widgets with exactly the same name and description, with no version number or other information to tell you the differences between them. Lame.

6. Better imap migration support for FirstClass. Okay, so maybe this one is not really in Google’s court. My hunch is that it is a FirstClass problem, but nonetheless, we had a devil of a time migrating email from FirstClass to Google using imap, which is preferred over POP3 since it can migrate mail folders as well as inbox contents. But shame on you, Google, for not having better error messages when the process would fail because an email attachment in FirstClass was greater than 10MB.

7. Integrate of Google Video and YouTube. It’s nice that we get nearly a terrabyte of free storage for Google videos along with our Google Education edition. Google video is proving to be an important adjunct to our coursework, and it’s an easy way to keep content private. But our school also maintains a YouTube channel, and some of the content should be able to live in both places with a simple click of the mouse.

8. Implement change of owner in Google Docs speadsheets. Yeah, yeah, you’re working on it.

9. Controlled vocabulary for Google Sites. Every couple of weeks I go in to the admin interface for Google sites and I am pleased to see so many new sites available. Faculty, staff, and students are creating them right and left. But this organic growth has its limits, especially when it comes to tagging the groups so that others may find them. Let me suggest a couple of things that might help: (a) Le the administrator set up a list of tags, at least one of which must be applied to the site, such as “clubs,” “faculty,” “employees,” or “students;” (b) allow a tag cloud to be created in a master directory of  sites.

10. Smarter management of duplicates in Contacts. Google, the premier search engine, seems clueless when it comes to contact. Oh sure, it can find them, but it’s up to you to suggest which ones are duplicates to be merged. I’d really like Google to perform an audit of my contacts from time to time to identify potential duplicates. And while they’re at it, why not validate the email addresses and URLs I’ve entered, and cross check to see if any of my users have Google Voice numbers?

Hey Google,  keep up the good work. (But make it a wee bit better….)

Oh, and here’s a bonus suggestion. Make my Google Education account work just like my personal account. There’s still some things I can’t log into using my Google ed account. Instead, I’m forced to use my personal account, for things like support forums, Google Voice, and so on. Tks….

Here then are some suggestions for using some of the most well-known social networking and web 2.0 technologies: Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, YouTube, and iTunes.

• Each technology should be used to its best advantage based on its users, message type, and consistency with overall school messaging protocols and strategy.
  • Fit the message to the medium. Twitter may not be the best choice to announce a tuition increase, for example, but its a great place to update sports scores.
  • Linked-In may be a better place to look for professional mentors or adveretrise a job opening  for students than Facebook, whereas Facebook is terrific for connecting with alumni.
  • YouTube is the place for video. Link to it when you need to share video content, using yourt own school-branded channel. If the video needs to be private, use an internal network. (If you are a Google education or enterprise customers put it on your Google video site.)
• Mutli-channel communications are powerful and should be used with forethought.
  • Use the small to drive to the large; Twitter or Facebook status updates to YouTube, iTunes, or new blog entries.
    
  • Keep the daily updates down to one or two per day to start with. Anything more than that can be seen as spam by users. As your channels become more diversified, you can increase the total number of updates coming from the organization overall, while keeping the per channel communication number low.
  • Strategically link applications to reduce staff time. For example, Twitter can update Facebook status.
• Official channels of communication should be marked as such.
  • If you have a Facebook fan page or group, use your logo and something like “An official Facebook page of…”
• Determine which channels will be one-way, and which will be two-way.
  • Institutional tweets should be for announcements, not conversations; Facebook groups suggest camaraderie and message exchange whereas, Facebook fan sites can be controlled like a regular Web site; an official YouTube channel should be moderated like any other official channel of the school, with publishing guidelines understood and enforced.
  • Channels need regular feeding and attention.
• Twitter, Facebook, Linked-in and similar channels thrive on daily updates, whereas iTunes and YouTube feature episodic publishing schedules based on when new multimedia content becomes available.
  • If you are concerned about mentions of your organization through non-official channels, subscribe to any one of a number of clipping services which monitor social networks and news organizations.
  • Faculty, staff, and students should be encouraged to create content for and subscribe to these new media gain familiarity and comfort with them, distribute the burden of content creation, and enrich the experience for all users.

My thinking is far from being fully formed on this topic, and I could really use the input of others. Please comment.

Ya think?

Evans goes on to say “Of all the factors vital to improving schools, none is more essential—or vulnerable—than hope.”

Yes. Especially the “vulnerability” part. Like the evil spirit cartoonists depict sitting on our shoulder and whispering FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt)  in our ear, many educators are constantly on the cusp of giving up.

Evans closes his book with sage advice about how to maintain hope among “the key members and red hots who have  been pouring themselves into school reform.”Let me attempt to summarize:

• How far, and how fast? With so many things that one can add to the “change plate,” it is far better to do “fewer innovations better, than more innovations worse.” He cites research that suggests five years is required for a significant organizational change. If you’re not in for the long haul, best not get on the bus.
• Evolution, not revolution. Consensus, not fiat. Accountability, not micromanagement.
• In an eerily familiar sounding section entitled “The Triumph of Hope,” Evans includes a beautiful quote from Vaclav Havel, a portion of which I include below:

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not a conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is this hope, above all, that gives u the strength to live and to continually try new things, even in conditions that seem…hopeless.

Robert Evans has given me much to think about, but I do not look to him for hope. For that, I look to my own convictions about the nature of humankind, and to my friends and colleagues. I encourage you to do the same, read Evans wonderful book, think about it, and then talk with others about it. Schools can and will change. I hold no illusions that they will change as much or as rapidly as I may like. that aspect of my youthful optimism has been eroded. But I am also at a more peaceful place. I do not mean to suggest that I am content with what is, or unmindful of how much is left to be done. But a place where I can strive for what I think is right without undue attachment to the outcome.

The first is that schools are often very full of smart adults. Smart leaders recognize that “tapping into the wisdom of the group” is a wonderful way to generate superior ideas, leverage creative problem solving, uncover hidden barriers and unintended consequences, enlist group buy-in and support… The list of positives goes on and on. As Evans says, “Most educational reformers see traditional school leadership, epitomized by the administrative bureaucracy, as disenfranchising teachers…, forcing them into conformity and isolation, depriving the school of their wisdom and creativity, and denying them the chance for professional growth.”

Analysis-Paralysis

So the definite trend in schools is towards more participator decision-making. But here’s the rub. Sometimes the decisions don’t get made, they just get talked about. It’s the well-known enemy of change: analysis-paralysis, or AP. (I recognize the irony of calling this AP. See a previous post on the other type of APs!)

Faculty put the “independent” in independent schools. They are smart, opinionated, articulate, and ready to argue the merits of a proposal. Sometimes these arguments take place in a meeting, but too often they take place in “other” meetings—hallway conversations, over lunch, or outside of school. Which brings us to a second challenge in schools:

Most teachers don’t know how to constructively confront one another.

Teachers tend to be harmonizers, the like things running smoothly, with public conflict kept to a minimum. Conflict is seen by some as an act of disloyalty to the unstated code of conduct that says that we all need to get along with one another, and that means not disagreeing with one another. At least not in public, or very strongly, or emotionally. Arguing with one another is bad. Raised voices are a source of shame.

In the 1970’s, assertiveness training was all the rage. People learned about passive behavior, aggressive behavior, and assertive behavior. I don’t think the lesson stuck for many of us. I find that many teachers are passive/aggressive: not voicing complaint about changes publicly, but sabotaging efforts to change covertly. Sometime I suspect that certain people will use the tendency to want to over analyze a situation to by time to keep the change from happening, hoping it will simply go away as proponents lose steam or get put on other projects. And you know what? Sometimes it works.

Evans quotes a middle school principal as saying “Our collegiality train has left the station, but it has many cabooses.” I love that phrase, even as I hate that reality.

On those occasions when conflict comes into the open, school leaders tend to look for win-win scenarios. Evans extols the virtues of “principled bargaining” (attributed to Fisher and Ury),  “which separates the people from the problem…, focuses on interests, not positions,… invents options for mutual gain…, and insists on objective criteria.” Very difficult to pull off, in my view, unless a school invests time in what Peter Senge calls “personal mastery” skills, skills which start with people knowing who they are, being comfortable (but not smugly so) in their skin. This requires a level of maturity and self-knowing that many adults struggle to consistently manifest, especially when certain issues touch a “hot button.”

Evans concludes his chapter, “Participation—Without Paralysis” with a powerful section on what I think of as “followership.” We spend a great deal of time talking about leadership theory, but who are leaders without followers? Not lemming-like followers, but engaged colleagues who understand their roles and that of the leader. As Evans says, “…organizations ne3ed and like to be led–not bossed, led.” He continues to describe six ways to build optimal participation:

1. Clarity in decision-making. Is the decision already made? Are we looking for consensus? Input only? Are we taking a vote? Who is doing what?
2. Informal outreach instead of formal structure. Why create a committee when a few conversations will do?
3. Distributing leadership skills throughout the organization. Not simply insurance in case the leader is hit by a bus, but a way to help everyone become better leaders and followers as the need may be.
4. Adaptable improvement plans. Whoever had an ide that was perfect from the get-go?
5. Understanding and accepting that change means conflict. Conflict is normal. Get over it, then get with it.
6. Regularly checking in with stake holders and asking “how are we doing,” thereby building collaboration between the leader and followers.

Next post will likely wrap up my thoughts about Evans and The Human Side of School Change.

I don’t recall specifically where I saw a particular poster or what the image on it was, but I remember the words on it:

If you don’t think ageism is relevant to you, just wait awhile.

This is not a prelude to my accusing Evans of being ageist. And the research he cites is indeed troubling. Here’s what he has to say:

• “No innovation can succeed unless it attends to the realities of people and place.” Right on, Robert!
• “Looming behind every aspect of the [change] debate about schools is a profound demographic shift among educators: almost en masse, they have become a veteran, middle-aged, immobile group.” (The average age of an American teacher is 45.)
• This veteran group is furthermore much less mobile, tending to stay within a few school systems and a geographic area compared to other professionals.
• “…teachers’ dissatisfaction is broad and deep but it is closer to passive resignation than to active indignation, closer to dejection that deflates energy than to anger that inspires action.” These feelings of inconsequentiality often lead to burnout.
• Yet another problem that may confront older teachers is that of being “underchallenged.” Bingo! Dr. Evans. Some teachers are indeed simply bored. They have taught the same subject, perhaps exceptionally well, for a number of years and it no longer holds the same challenge for them.
• Evans further asserts, and here is where we begin to disagree more fundamentally, “Crisis is not inevitable in our middle years, but ambivalence is.” This ambivalence about our careers as we approach our maximum effectiveness and earning potential, while at the same time starting some physical decline, can lead to a kind of fixed mentality that he calls the “‘help-rejecting complainer’—someone who is chronically dissatisfied but resists all assistance and advice.”

Given that much of our teaching workforce is mid-career, and that indeed there are useful generalizations to be made about mid-career professionals that can inform the change-agents strategies (such as boredom and the resulting leveling-off of performance, a greater focus on material job rewards, the reduction in challenge, and growing isolation among colleagues), it is possible that for some teachers, they will end up in a no-growth zone, something that Carol Dwek would call a “fixed mindset.”

Evans’ produces a wonderful continuum, which he labels the “Midcareer Continuum of Growth and Performance.” How interesting it might be for each teacher, and her or his supervisor and colleagues, to place herself or himself on this continuum.

Evans is eloquent in his description of each of these stages.

So this if the above arguments about the effect of age on ease of change is the “what,” what is the “so what?” and “now what?”

In a word, “revitalize.” Evans says that the job of the school agent is “not just to reform schools, but to revitalize staff.” To return to a previous metaphor he uses, to “unfreeze” their thinking.

Herein lies my bone to pick with Evans, and admittedly it is based on my own limited experience and current situation. I find no correlation between time in service or age an willingness to change or adapt to new ideas. If the teachers in my school were to “act their age” according to what national norms are for mid-career teachers, we would not be the forward thinking, dynamic organization that we are.

Perhaps the exception proves the rule.

What do you think?

Imagine the following issues being simultaneously confronted in many schools:

• 21st century learning and teaching
• funding
• authentic assessment
• interdisciplinary learning
• co-curricular activities
• professional development
• STEM
• social justice
• environmental sustainability
• learning differences
• technology
• student stress

and the list goes on and on.

Robert Evans (see previous posts), points out that schools “routinely find themselves undertaking more program than they can manage or fund and are unable to eliminate some so as to concentrate on others.” He opines that “In my experience, this tendency used to be more common in wealthier schools that make strong claims to excellence, as if advancing on all fronts at once were a way to confirm superior quality, but it is now ubiquitous.” These multiple demands may lead to greater administrative overhead (program leads, coordinators, and the like) but little lasting change.

As Evans asserts, “teaching is an unusually draining activity, one marked by the sharp disparity between giving and getting.” And while many teachers are used to this, the cumulative effect over many years can be exhausting. On top of this, Evans points out that “Norms for professional growth and innovation in education have never been high.” Constrained by time, money, and energy, professional development activities at most schools pale when compared to those offered, or required, in other professions. Evans says that such experiences have contributed toward “what is sometimes called a ‘union mentality’—that is, a militant antimanagement [sic] posture, a to-the-minute definition of the work day, and a reflexive, legalistic opposition to virtually any innovation that might impinge on contractual agreements.” And while I am personally far from anti-union, I can appreciate his depiction of the worst-side of some organizations.

Finances are often, perhaps even always, a problem in schools who wish to innovate. Evans cites the example of the Alpena, Michigan school system—a school system in which I actually taught for two years—which had to close its doors for months due to a budget shortfall. Living where I do now in California, Evans’ comments about the disastrous effects of Prop 13 on per-pupil spending in our state public schools rings true. But lack of funds alone are not an excuse for failure to innovate.

An organization’s capacity for change is further constrained by the lack of time for professional development activities and deep discussions of pedagogy and curriculum matters. In a previous post I wrote about one approach to year-round- schooling that I think would go far to address time concerns.

Addressing the capacity of a school to change will take an investment of time, money, and energy, as well as a laser-like focus on a one or two major change initiatives per year rather than a laundry list that results in little being done. “Better to go deep, than wide” is my mantra for the classroom—and for changing our schools.

Not So Fond Memories

As some of you know, I grew up in the Midwest: Michigan, North Dakota and Minnesota. I know winter. And I know the faith that drives people to keep trying the same old thing in hopes it will get better. If you’ve ever seen someone stuck in a snowbank, spinning their tires trying to get out, you know what I mean. You watch them as they dig their tires deeper and deeper into the snow, convinced that the squeal of the tires means they will break free, any…. second…. now…..

I now  live in California, and I never go to the mountains to see the snow, so I don’t get to see such a vivid and humorous reminder of the faith in things that don’t work. (I suppose the same thing happens when people drive on the beach or in the mud.)

But I digress. Back to change.

How do we get teachers to change? Why not try a little guilt, with a dash of anxiety to boot? To quote from Evans, “”One must usually raise people’s guilt by noting that their performance violates a shared ideal… or raise their anxiety by noting how their performance violates a shared goal or threatens their well-being.”

Now we’re getting somewhere. A plan that really resonates with my Roman Catholic upbringing.

Teachers, by and large, love children and they love their job. They want what is best for their students, and they want to be able to stay in their profession, their “calling,” if you will. So challenging teachers by demonstrating that a current practice is detrimental to children gets their attention, if not their action. And once you have their attention, you can move to other stages of change. But having fostered some guilt and anxiety, you need to deal with it before you move to other stages in the change process. You have to let teachers know that “I value you as people, and I will help to get where we need to go.”

Evans calls this step “unfreezing,” the first of five “tasks of change” that must be accomplished within the school to move forward.

Reducing the anxiety around trying something new is not easy, particularly in schools with high expectations for its faculty, staff, and students. Saying that you want people to take risks, and celebrating the failures as well as the successes that result from risks taken, is not something most schools do well. How do we change THAT?

Every school has awards days. How about an award for the biggest flop by a teacher? A flop so spectacular that it resulted in real learning for the teacher, her students, and her colleagues?

What if all teachers would take risks like this one: