Forum: "Sort of" is not getting us there

By Robby Champion

Journal of Staff Development, Winter 1998 (Vol. 19, No. 4)

 

Reality from my window on educational change looks like this: Almost nothing is really getting implemented anywhere. Principals and teachers tell me everywhere I go, in essence, that they are living "The Emperor’s New Clothes," pretending that new initiatives are actually being implemented to students’ benefit.

The norm in most school systems today seems to be that "sort of " is an acceptable mode. We have come to tolerate shallow, short-term staff development opportunities for a tiny portion of the total staff to "sort of" learn new approaches. Then some of those staff members "sort of" implement the planned changes. This usually means that some students, some of the time, in some classrooms, get new opportunities to learn thanks to some semblance of the new approach.

"Sort of implementation" continues to cause increasingly serious credibility problems for staff development programs. Typically, these programs aim to serve as a predictable means for achieving better results with more students. When "sort of" staff development becomes the acceptable norm in an organization, however, people lose any belief in the power of staff learning to pay off for students.

Instead, those who work closest to students learn to go through the motions of implementing "Yet Another Latest New Big Thing." They may do all of the paperwork, but — inadvertently or purposefully — they can and do withhold their personal power to make significant things happen for students. They often are on overload, not listening much, and they don’t try out the new approach. Then they don’t experience anything different with students and so they are simply not convinced.

The end result of this cycle of "sort of change" is that the momentum and synergy needed for large-scale, deep organizational change to occur never really happens. It all stays rather tepid and slow paced.

"Sort of change" and "sort of implementation" are by no means cheap. "Sort of" costs us in a lot of ways. It eats up valuable resources, including time, money, energy, support of our collaborators and sponsors, and opportunity windows. And much of the funding we can call on is soft money with once-in-a-decade availability. Each failed initiative makes the next attempt harder to sell, harder to get rolling, harder to make work.

I propose that we first accept being part of the root cause of the "sort of" culture. Then we need to combat that culture by changing our staff development planning as we start any new initiatives. We eat up lots of energy focusing too far back from students.

Let’s skip the standard needs assessments, which dwell entirely on the grown-ups’ wants and needs. Resist the habit of dwelling only on the learning outcomes for the few staff members who will take the lead. Instead, start the dialogue in a very different place: Get the planning group’s agreement on acceptable indicators of students’ success.

Then, throughout the implementation and life span of that initiative, keep those images of successful students plastered on every wall at every meeting, on every agenda, and in every evaluation. Teachers have told me again and again that often they are simply not aware of which indicators of student success are the targets of the whole initiative.

We need to be continually asking ourselves and our colleagues one question: "Will this significantly help us get our students there?" Keeping this at the center of our thinking as we consider every aspect of the implementation — from workshop agendas and peer coaching plans to study group dialogues, calendars of inter-school visitations, schedules of demonstration lessons, etc. — will help us overcome the mediocre norm of "sort of."

About the Author

Robby Champion is director of Champion Training & Consulting, 9712 Riverside Circle, Ellicott City, MD 21042, (410) 750-1920, fax (410) 750-6259, e-mail: champion@clark.net.

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