My district’s end of the school year/beginning of the summer two day administrative retreat is widely acknowledged by its participants as the “best two days of the year”. Not only has the completed school year blown away the “to-do list” cloud of worries, but the phones have stopped ringing. There is no better way to spend this all-too-brief respite than to gather with a group committed and talented professionals to chart a new direction for our schools. The retreat starts with a presentation from people like Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Gary Marx and Ian Jukes and ends with a workshop applying their ideas to our district. It is not an exaggeration to say that Alan November’s presentation Tuesday created more momentum than the last couple years combined. Stressing new literacy, Alan’s review of web tools and the conceptual framework of specific student roles in a “connected classroom” sparked enthusiasm like nothing has in the past. The next day people were setting up iGoogle home pages and Skype accounts.
Usually I’m re-energized by these presentations, the outside affirmation from such a respected speaker anoints what I have been saying for years with legitimacy. It was easy to get caught up in the excitement of this new age with the blood pumping and the mind crackling. Getting together with like-minded people and exchanging this tool and that tool, this site and that site, the conversations would just flow with ideas and applications. We could do this, we could do that. The possibilities were always endless.
I’m sad to say that I don’t feel that way anymore. In fact, I didn’t even get juiced by introducing Alan to wetpaint.
The excitement has grown as stale as the excuses that none of these tools have really gotten any traction beyond a few classes and couple teachers. It is for just that reason that I’m skipping the tweets and posts from NECC, hearing people gush about “convergence” and “global collaboration” is old already. Most of them are riding the circuit, making snake-oil presentations and leaving districts faster than road-runner from Wile E. Coyote. And all of the hope for real change floats to the ground like those last couple feathers. The presenter’s check clears, teachers post their PD hours and everyone gets back to business as usual. Systemic change is the grail, and we still haven’t found it.
Underneath all the possibilities and all of the tools is a big, nasty pile of rubble that can only be moved one stone at a time. Half of the rocks are “my password doesn’t work” or just “it’s not working”. Others are the format mess that infects almost every media making it impossible to move text, audio and video between editing tools and viewing platforms. The most intractable layer of that rubble pile is the conceptual understanding of the differences between a web page, a blog, a forum and a wiki. And the silly names don’t make it any easier.
Yet those of us who have moved through our pile over the last ten years should recognize that we cannot dismiss the frustrations of our colleagues as simple ignorance or intransigence. It may boil down to nothing more than time, screen awareness and clicking. No one who uses these tools was trained to do so. They found them, got excited and started clicking. How do we balance the excitement of possibility and the drudgery of necessity?
Systemic change needs the clarion call of Kennedy challenging a nation to put a man on the moon. A effort on the scale of the Marshall Plan to pay for rubble removal. Schools need squads of people who can answer the “it’s not working” questions so swat teams can be available in any classroom at any time. This would work much better than just one or two people in the whole school. Governing councils with the infrastructural expertise of tech departments, the pedagogic vision of teachers and the authority of administration need to chart and fund a specific direction for the district and insist upon its success, by any means necessary. And all of us need the courage to dump much of what we have been taught about schools.
But while the days are long and the grass is tall, perhaps we can build our confidence that we will eventually find our way between the rocks and the hard place.