“I think we’ve valued competence to the extent in education that it’s placed limits on what we’re able to accomplish.” -David Guerin
@DavidGuerin Blog
I read David’s blog post with “yes!” playing through my mind again and again. I began reflecting on why the shift to creativity, meaning breaking out of rote instruction and inserting your “gifts and strengths”, is so challenging for many teachers when teachers are such creative people. I believe it comes down to two fundamentally human things: conditioning and fear. Afterall, aren’t those two factors the catalyst for so much human behavior in general?
A few years ago, the now retired superintendent of my school district, David McLaughlin, had “Get Out of Jail Free” cards printed and distributed to every teacher in the district. He asked teachers to take risks in their classrooms without fear. Mr. McLaughlin wanted teachers do try things that may not work – because maybe they would! Maybe they would be the catalyst for innovation in the classroom. His intentions were to clip our wings and open our cages of compliance. He may have removed the fear of risking jobs or status, but removing the fear of failing our students is a much more profound task.
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I think that no matter how many times we hear the phrase “fail forward”, it isn’t going to inspire the well-conditioned and fearful to break out. It is not because teachers are afraid of failing themselves; they afraid of failing their students in the ways that are measured immediately. That is due to the years of conditioning to teach to the test. The battle scars are deep and not just for teachers whose class never had the highest scores – heck, they have the least to lose. It is the teachers who were “successful” and had their names announced and were cheered at faculty meetings. These teachers have their identity to lose. They risk losing their ability to know if they are a “good teacher” – or NOT. What do we model and reinforce so that teachers can take a risk that isn’t just theirs to take but their students’ as well? How do we celebrate creativity when the risk of losing the feeling of competence is so great? What do we give or demonstrate to show the fearful that their skill will embed itself in their creativity and that their students will be just fine?
Evidence is stacking up to show they will be more than fine. They will be ready for what lies ahead and less fearful to find new ways to demonstrate that. If you have discovered the key to this cage, please pass it around to the educators around you. We can soar as we are meant to – in a flock.
Reflections of an Evolving Teacher 