A Hurricane - The Latest Educational Forecast

Are you really ever prepared for the next storm? Even though you do not know when, where, and/or how, you are certain that it will happen? When you least expect it, the torrential storm will strike!

In the field of education usually the storm that I make reference to is the storm of “change”. Change is the word educational leaders have become very leery of when it comes to someone discussing education.

Why does it appear that change is difficult for so many? According to Dr. Michael Fullan, change is work that requires the energy and commitment of ownership. Could it be the lack of individual ownership that instills the fears associated with change? The thoughts of changes means someone is going to have to let go of some old habits or practices for newer innovative ones.

Change is about altering a course of action to provide a new pathway that will hopefully lead to success. Change is about being agent of change, a risk-taker, a visionary, and a goal-oriented person. Change is not only about an individual it is about a culture or process of the way things always have been done, successfully or not, it really does not matter to those that see a need for change.

Change begins with a cause. In today’s educational circles, the talk about change is all about data that has been collected by someone or something that points to the need for changing a process or procedure to promote greater opportunities for success. For the results of changes to be successful, there needs to be an effective leader who has the knowledge of successful changing implementation. However, before we can begin change, here needs to be an understanding of the process of change itself.

You can associate the idea of change to that of going on a diet to loose weight. In most cases, when an individual goes on a diet they want to look and feel better or change their appearance. What is missing from the secret of dieting to loose weight? Habits! The eating and exercising habits that go along with you to where you are today must be changed to align your new routines with your new goals of looking better and feeling better.

The fad of dieting , Weight-Watchers and The Hollywood Diet, are similar to that of educational changes that we have made in the last several year. Do you remember when all educational situations were converting to teaching metric math and whole-language? Now we are seeing the push (storming) towards the 21st Century Learner Skills and a greater emphasis on Reading. Have we changed our habits? If the answer is “NO”, then our educational successes and/or results will be similar to the thousands of people that began diets and fail to meet their goals.

If you keep on providing the same kind of educational instruction over and over, year after year, you will keep getting the same results over and over. If we take the approach of changing the way we do things to help students be successful in the various aspects of the education, then we possibly will see significant successes. But, changing is difficult as I stated previously. Are you content with how education is struggling to keep up with the global and society demands, then change is not the term that you use frequently.

You can bet that a storm is brewing just around the corner with the election of new our governmental leaders in Washington, DC. However, what will happen to the all of the current waves of change implemented and mandated with No Child Left Behind? Will the educational tide begin to toss to and for searching for that ever elusive perfect educational system?

The impact of the storm of change is sometime seen as aggressive and necessary, while at other times, change is hard to justify when the results of such change does not show sustained improvement from the change. The ever-changing demands from society and global network of world leaders for better educated and more scientifically-based thinkers for societies presents some of our newest needs has or will become the hurricane of tomorrow. It is this storm of change that is a constant requiring most educators to be re-trained to assist with with realigning their instruction with the needs of the world.

C.H.A.N.G.E. - Constantly handing answers non-stop to good educators..