If you’re a regular reader here, you may be asking, “thursday thoughts? huh?” and here’s the explanation. Monday (when we usually feature a quote as Monday Motivation) was already filled with a Labor Day themed post, and then Tuesday I wanted to get out the playlist of songs for September, so here we are on Thursday with Monday Motivation but on a different day. (They do Monday Night Football on Thursdays sometimes so there’s a precedence for such). Anyway, on with the real post!
Across Georgia, school administrators are in the early steps of implementing a statewide literacy emphasis, mandated on that scale from that level. Of course, everyone has ALWAYS had a literacy emphasis, but there are particular methods and structures that are now required to be implemented at schools across the state.
The actual work on the science of reading has been often proven to be a successful approach. The work itself is sound and the concept of improving literacy rates is obviously important and noble.
Truth is, the IDEA is rarely the issue. School initiatives are more likely to struggle from the implementation than from the idea. They can lose momentum when not championed by someone in leadership, primarily the principal.
HOW YOU HELP others navigate the change is often as critical as the change itself. Again, it’s more often the implementation than the idea that stalls progress.
Remember, humans are wired to oppose change (it triggers a fight-flight-freeze response). For many (and sometimes most) of your faculty, change can bring about stress, illness, and frustration. As the leader, you should care both about your people and about the change you’ve been directed to enact. HOW you do so will have a lot to do with the wellbeing of your people and the potential success of the implementation.
So specifically, WHAT does the good school administrator do to help her teachers navigate the change? Here are a few concrete actions you can consider.
- Open conversation opportunities. Not just meetings to tell the teachers what to do, but opportunities (not mandatory) for them to share their thoughts AND their feelings (!) about the change process. Venting is essential and not negative when done intentionally.
- Really listen. Don’t be flippant about either the thoughts OR the feelings your teachers are having about the implementation. Listen to them. You may not have the resources or authority to act on all they share but remember their feelings are as real as a school bus and need to be recognized.
- Time. We are where we are from another change from another day. We are only comfortable with it because of the time we’ve had to absorb it. The same is most likely true with whatever change you’re bringing now IF YOU can help your people navigate things until they can wrap their minds around it, have some success doing it, and understand it more deeply. If you stress them too much, they’ll collapse; if you don’t bring ENOUGH urgency, some of them will blow it off. Here is the life of the school principal… escorting your people from the dock and onto the boat without them slipping into the water.
Change is a process and its timing is a confluence of many factors, not the least of which is the speed with which your teachers can embrace it. And that requires patience and pressure from you, given in the right doses at the right times. You learn to do that by activating your prior experiences about change… how did you get it done then? What worked? What flopped?
School leadership is like medicine and law in that it is a PRACTICE. Be confident in yourself, your skills and your training to be an effective practitioner, especially in your role as change leader.
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