For those of us working in school systems with traditional calendars, summer offers a valued opportunity to recuperate from the stress of one school year and prepare for the next, simultaneously. In all likelihood, some of the planning for the next academic year began in the spring or even winter of the prior year, but the summer offers a chance to finally concentrate our energy on the future. Depending on what changes we anticipate in our schools, this summer preparation may be invigorating—or it may induce further stress. How can we keep the balance on the positive side?
An Era of Change
First, we must embrace the constancy of change. I spent the 2014–2015 school year visiting public schools throughout California, gathering stories for my book Capturing the Spark: Inspired Teaching, Thriving Schools (Enactive Publishing, 2016). I don't think I ever had a conversation with a teacher in which I was told, "Nothing much has changed here in a while." Change is our constant companion in education, especially in the past 16 years, which have given us high-speed internet, mobile connectivity, and a variety of policy shifts—some fairly tumultuous—around testing, standards, and accountability. The question is whether or not educators can make choices or select strategies that seize the exciting potential of change without feeling so overwhelmed that we want to leave the field.
The months and years ahead will be full of uncertainty regarding federal policy. The Trump administration and new U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos seem poised to bring about dramatic changes in priorities, goals, funding, guidance, and enforcement. So for teachers and school and district leaders, long-term planning will now be even more challenging. Accountability mandates and funding are likely to change. Enrollment may fluctuate in unanticipated ways. School climate and culture, especially in more diverse communities, may require special attention to ensure that every student is safe and supported.
We'll need to focus our efforts on changes that are likely to bring the most powerful results. I would argue that educators focus too much attention on best practices and not enough on best conditions. Think of education as a greenhouse. Too often, we walk among the rows of exotic plants and tropical flowers, picking out the ones we'd like to grow ourselves. Instead, we should be taking notes on the greenhouse itself: its structure, the temperature and humidity, the soil and fertilizer. If we get the greenhouse right, we may not end up with the same plants others have grown, but we'll succeed in cultivating our own unique and enduring collection.
Choosing "One Thing"
I'd argue that bandwidth and motivation are the key concepts to keep in mind as we approach changes in our schools. Most people are familiar with the idea of bandwidth at this point. Just as your home Wi-Fi service will slow down with too many devices streaming too much content, your teaching will suffer if your focus is excessively fragmented. School leaders can set the tone and provide the example, but it takes all of us to prevent a scattered focus in ourselves, our peers, and our schools.
In 2010, I wrote an article for Education Week about the book 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times by Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel (Jossey-Bass, 2009). My article was partly a description of my own teaching, partly a book review, and partly an account of a conversation I had with Trilling. I had told Trilling about my concern that goal setting and pedagogical change could be overwhelming to teachers (since there is never enough bandwidth). His advice was simple: Choose one thing. In the years since then, I'm not sure I've ever succeeded at choosing just one thing, but I've tried to keep from choosing too many.
Keeping a narrow focus helps teachers stay motivated. We know from the study of motivation (see Daniel Pink's book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us [Riverhead Books, 2009]) that people are most motivated when three conditions are met: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Teachers who want to avoid burnout need to make strategic choices about managing change. They must have some autonomy in their choices, and must be guardians of their own time to approach mastery. And if a teacher doesn't recognize or agree with the purpose behind a change, that change effort is doomed to mediocre implementation at best.
Aligning Your Priorities
I suggest that educators who will face changes in the next academic year try this exercise. Make a list of several specific changes you might adopt in your practice this year, putting each change into one of three categories: passion projects, mandates, and school goals. Passion projects are those creations and teaching experiments that excite you: the new materials, methods, lessons, projects, and unit plans you believe will bring learning alive for your students. This is why you went into teaching.
Mandates, of course, are changes stemming from official policies and contracts that are expected as part of your satisfactory job performance. I'm thinking here about changes, meaning new mandates from above—the kind that don't necessarily arise every year. When your school or district adopts a new learning management system, that's a mandated change, one that's beyond your control and that demands extra time and attention through a period of transition. Mandated curriculum adoptions often have even greater effects.
School goals are those that arise from collaboration, discussion, and analyzing evidence within your school, grade level, or department. In a thriving school, teachers will have helped identify these goals, and as a good colleague, you should be willing to do your part, at a minimum. For me, changes connected to school goals have included teaching a new course, trying new approaches to grading, and expanding use of formative assessment. Then there are perennial favorites, such as teaching new texts or units, implementing new projects, or improving technology integration.
From each of those three categories, determine the top item you're best equipped or most motivated to address in the year ahead. Then, assume you're going to do the item you picked from the passion project column. Remember: this is why you went into teaching. From the other two lists, consider whether you can somehow align the top item with your passion project. If you can address a mandate or a school goal through your passion project, you may have the bandwidth to make progress on all three fronts.
If the passion project doesn't quite align with a mandate or goal, choose either the change tied to the mandate or the change tied to a school goal as an area of focus. It's not that you totally ignore the other item or withhold contributions to the collegial work of addressing school initiatives. Rather, I'm suggesting you set a reasonable limit to the bandwidth you'll dedicate to those items. Keeping your passion for teaching alive may require minimizing your contributions in some arena.
For example, coming into the 2016–2017 school year, our district mandated that all students would be expected to have a laptop or Chromebook in class every day. This shift brought with it a variety of opportunities to change the way we managed information and materials, including the way I shared readings and the way students shared writing. Although this particular mandate affected students more directly than teachers, I embraced the chance to adapt my teaching to this new reality. After all, wireless devices and cloud computing are likely here to stay in our work.
Meanwhile, the change I was most passionate about was joining our school's Social Justice Pathway, a curricular program within the school offering interdisciplinary team teaching in English and social studies, along with project-based learning, authentic research, and service learning. As the cohort's English teacher, I committed to working with the same students all the way from 10th grade through graduation. The technology mandate affected this new (for me) kind of teaching, but, clearly, there was much more involved here. I could align my work relating to these changes—but only partially.
At the same time, my school also implemented new professional learning "strands" in which teachers would facilitate learning opportunities for peers in a series of monthly afternoon workshops (a school goal). In past years, I'd have been quick to volunteer for peer-to-peer professional learning leadership, but mindful of my limited bandwidth, I refrained from overextending. When those workshops occur, I'm there participating and learning, and that's enough. I've made strategic choices regarding how to manage change and keep from burning out.
Freeing Up Time and Energy
Change is a constant in teaching. For those of us trying to stay in the profession and remain motivated for the long term, managing change through the strategies I've suggested here (or others that work for you) is a must.
Maybe the first year with the new software and information system won't be the year you master all its features. Maybe you'll have to decline when your grade level or department seeks volunteers to pilot a new text, science lab, or performance unit. Don't feel guilty. It's the ability and willingness to compartmentalize, to merely comply in some areas, that's going to free up more time and energy for you to excel in other ways.
Advice from the Trenches
I asked teachers featured in my book Capturing the Spark for some advice on managing change effectively. Here are a few of the replies.
Immediately after the school year is over, I spend time reflecting on what went well and what could go better next time and make a list while it's all fresh in mind.
—Larry Ferlazzo, teacher at Luther Burbank High School, Sacramento, California
Sometimes I feel [reform] fatigue. The only thing that remedies it for me is staying in contact with like-minded colleagues. I have started a monthly coffee meeting with my past student teachers and science methods students. They are people who are trying parts of [the model I'm using in my teaching]. We all discuss kids together from a positive stance. What can we do to make school better for kids? What is best for student learning? This is my question—always.
—Dr. Shannon Morago, teacher educator at Humboldt State University and science teacher at Six Rivers Charter High School, Arcata, California
The first step in implementing any kind of change is research. This research could be as informal as asking other educators about their experiences when we run into them at Starbucks or exchange tweets on Twitter, or as in-depth as visiting other schools. In the past year, my district has been gearing up for 1:1 Chromebooks and possibly a new eight-period schedule. I've visited other schools, and I've been involved in surveys of teachers, parents, and students … Hearing from as many people as possible, and adjusting timelines and plans based on that feedback, is key to change.
—Vicki Mailes Leoni, English teacher, Tulare Western High School, Tulare, California
