Holiday Reading and Reflecting
Book: Disobedient Teaching - Welby Ings
What caught my interest:
In light of the recent committee and whole school discussions around how things are changing in the education system around NCEA structure, and the proposed changes within the school, I found sections of this book thought provoking.
"Each of us , irrespective of where we stand in an organisation, has the ability to change things. It is the nature of education we should question, and it is the nature of proffessionalisim that we should seek to improve on practise the we recognise as flawed." (pge 22)
Welby discusses two types of personality that often clash during times of impending change:
* the disobedient thinker - the creative people who think beyond limitations and beyond the proscribed and mediocre. Productive disobedience that broadens our world. With optismisim and knowing the necessity they can look into the heart of what exists and conceive effective alternatives realising new social, economic, technological and political reforms that better meet ordinary poeple's needs.
Teachers often say we want to be more creative, we recognise it when we see a more creative way of approach, but we find it difficult to accomodate the teaching of it into an evidence based paradigm that relently infects the structure of our education system. Creative thinking is not only nebulous and difficult to massage into assessable performances, it is also often disruptive of time and resources.
* the social editor - this can be the cautioning voice everyone has that says 'no' to your ideas because they might sound silly, or they might not work, or they might be unstable, or they might make you look like a fool. It is silent and controlling it has phenomenal power and it casues you to function at lower levels than what you are capable of and tells you that you are not empowered to change things. The social editor protects the perniciousness of cool, particularly in students, and may threaten the chance of taking risks as they might lead to public failure and peer riducule.
Collegues that support our sometimes deemed outragously out there ideas, but have a more practical approach to problem solving, can also be our social editor. Conflicts often arise when the outrageous meets the cautionary, however, to be future focused, these oposing views need to form an alliance in order for improvement and change.
I believe that a succesful organisation is one that has a mix of the above. Shooting for the stars, talking about 'in the perfect world', or in the 'best scenario', then molding the ideas to fit within the context, ensuring the vision is still intact enables future thinking and sustainability. This approach preserves ones 'coolness', meets the needs of the requirement of change and allows creativity by softly and respectfully applying a gentle 'handbrake' to reduce the speed, not the enthusiasm and ideas.
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