I just received a solicitor’s email, and I could not help but read the sub text before I clicked delete. The email made a reference to change management. Who does not feel like this is within their repertoire lately? That’s what I thought. 😊 The email said that “…if we aren’t examining what we’re doing that should or could change, we’re wasting the real lessons of the year.”
Now change is inevitable, and the outbreak of 2020 makes it feel constant. I don’t want us to think about change management as the way we manage the change and chaos being thrown at us. This is not effective and will ultimately end with burnout. When we are just managing the constant shifts in education, whether it is going to remote learning and now simultaneously teaching to both face-to-face and virtual students, we are not finding opportunities to grow professionally. How can we? There is not enough time to pivot nor add any extra time to train.
I do think there is time to reflect (even for 5 minutes). This might be a tall order, but I would love to see you and me taking time to examine the things we are doing. If we feel like it is an epical fail, let’s generate some feedback on why we thought it should not become best practice. Now, we have to allow for some mistakes and misses. After all, we are trying to help students during a world crisis and there are a lot of things out of our control. Recognize that fact but DO NOT get stuck on it. As Master Jedi Yoda, once said, “The greatest teacher failure is.” Some of my best lessons have been from failed attempts because I learned what didn’t work or, at the very least, I found a way to polish something to make it better. Honestly, the students let us know when something works and when something doesn’t work.
The trick is to let your students or even your colleagues now that you are willing to take a risk or at least try something once; it is ok if it does not go smoothly or have the intended outcome. The important thing is to let your students see how you handle it and then reflect on either doing it differently or maybe just scrapping it all together. At least you tried.
My hope is that when we get to the end of this pandemic, and we will, we look back and realize that we have found some great new things in our pedagogy that will remain. For many educators, this will be in the way of using technology as a tool for students to learn and grow. Although I enjoy collaborating in person, it has been a huge eye-opener to see how many people that I can reach in a day with either one-on-one conferences or small group collaborations. Keep trying and find time to examine the changes happening today.
See You Real Soon,
Erin
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