Change, The Only Constant

Yesterday, York administered a practice ACT test to all students in the morning. After they were finished around noon, the students went home and the rest of the day was time for teachers to meet, collaborate, and get ahead or caught up on anything we need to. What I want to focus on is one of the meetings we attended. Administration split us up to meet with teachers we don't normally rub shoulders with. The meeting was meant to be a reflective and constructive discussion of how we can engage students more consistently and identify when they are engaged in the class and material. We used a few readings to launch the discussion, the first about the speed at which our society is changing and that we need to teach students how to learn and adapt to change more than to teach a certain set of facts or a rigid skill if they are going to be employable in a society that changes drastically from one decade to another - a fascinating point and topic, if you ask me.

Not everyone found it so fascinating. After reading it, a few teachers just dismissed it immediately, "I don't buy it." Another said, "This isn't a very balanced view, so I question its validity."

This is a perfect example of what is called "confirmation bias," when we tend to trust something that confirms what we already hold to be true and distrust anything that doesn't align with our preconceived ideas.

The conversation quickly devolved into a few of the teachers complaining about how the students don't take ownership of their learning, how they are inattentive and lazy, how parents don't cooperate with teachers, and several other macro level problems with education and society. Meanwhile, the other half of the teachers sat quietly for the most part. I became frustrated because all I saw was this "woe is me" victim mindset when we could have been talking about what we can do to be better teachers. I tried to redirect the conversation with a question back to the reading, but it went nowhere. The entire time, I was balancing two things in my head as I thought about whether I should speak up more: 1) Everything I say will be disregarded because I'm the student teacher in the room and 2) I have nothing to lose - I'm done in two weeks.

At the end, Jill (the other chem teacher in our group and expert on all things Google) spoke up with a great phrase: the only thing constant is change. I think it fell on deaf ears, but it was her last ditch effort to bring reality to the forefront.

The three of us walked away with one question: How can you get someone who is convinced they are doing everything right to become open to the idea of changing what they have been doing for years?