So before we decide to work together and make teaching into something that offers effective and meaningful learning opportunities like never before, we have to talk about our attitude towards change. We don’t like it. We think we have things all figured out. We know that what we are doing is working just fine the way it is. We know it, and we feel it, and we fight anything that tells us differently. But, change happens regardless. The issue question then is, do you want to enact the change or react to the change?
It comes down to this. We have to adjust our mindset. I know that to some the term “mindset” is just a new and hip way to say “attitude.” So, we have to fix our attitudes. In the immortal words of the Captain from Cool Hand Luke, you “gonna get your mind right. And I mean RIGHT.” This is the only way we can elevate ourselves as the professionals we are and elevate the learning that should be taking place in our classrooms.
Getting back to the question then, “do you want to enact the change or react to the change?” One of these choices has power and effect and influence; the other has compliance and stagnation and negativity at its core. In order to be effective and in order to have the mental and emotional energy to do our jobs as educators and do it well, we have to be in the mindframe and belief that we are change agents. “I am a change agent” is a powerful truth for us as teachers. It is a mindset that no matter what is happening, a new district policy, a new principal, a new pandemic, we are the agents of change that can, if we so choose, to make things happen in the classroom for learning!
We come to work to do one thing. And that one thing is not to teach. The one thing we come to our schools and classrooms to do is to make learning happen and witness it happening by any means possible. Some of those means might require us to look at what we are doing and change. It is completely up to us if we have the mindframe that we are change agents despite anything else that may be happening. Yes, there may be constrictions and obstacles and things out of our control. But, in the end, if we truly believe we are change agents, none of the other stuff matters. What it comes down to is this: we are faced with the daunting task of producing learning, not teaching. We can react to changes and everything we don’t like about procedures and policies. We can continue to do what we’ve always done and live in feigned contentment. Or we take the attitude that WE are change agents, WE have control over making learning happen, WE are where change begins. It comes down to a question we all have to reflect upon as educators. We lost a screen legend this past week, and one line I remember most from his work is from The Untouchables. Sean Connery’s character is trying to get Kevin Costner’s character to realize that doing things the same way he’s always done them just isn’t going to work. So he asks him the same question I ask myself when faced with changing what I do to teach less to have others learn more. It’s what all of us should stop and ask and truthfully answer deep down before we can make real, meaningful learning happen, “What are you prepared to do?”
