Change is hard! If someone wants to truly change, then they must truly believe in what they are doing next. In Dr. Harapnuik's blog post, he speaks about how people who like things a certain way, usually don’t see a problem with how things are at the time. This would make sense as to why it takes so long for old practices to change. Those who want change, don’t tend to stick around to wait on someone else to do it.
I believe to see a big shift in education, it is going to take the majority of the education world to be on board. That is going to take a lot of convincing...or an event that FORCES change. This past year with COVID closing down schools and causing us to go strictly online, at least for part of it, forced our hand. Educators grew leaps and bounds. They learned new things. They succeeded and failed and then succeeded again! I truly believe this kind of shift would still be several years away if we hadn’t have been forced into it. But I also feel that the forced nature of it all lead to cut corners and plans that may have contained some hole, solely because we were trying to keep our heads above water.
As I said in the first line, change is hard. And piling that on an already demanding job, it can make it seem nearly impossible. It is much easier to look at what has been done in the past and just tweak it. But now the “tweaking” is not keeping up with the change. This is where the innovators step in and show others how it is possible even in organizations that may seem stuck in their ways. I know that when I think about tackling a big change in just my classroom it can be intimidating, so it seems hard to imagine changing a whole organization. And to even make this possible, all participants must truly believe in what they are doing and that it is possible.
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