AWAKENING IMPACT
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Awakening true impact...
When we speak about awakening impact, we speak of doing that in a variety of settings, each with varying degrees. However, the true work of awakening impact comes in the work that we do with the students that have the biggest challenges to overcome. I am talking about the ones that many schools give up on, suspend, kick out, dismiss, ignore...the students that if we look beyond the behavior have had trauma in their lives that impact how they act, and react to learning.
As educators, we tend to have a fixed mindset around students and learning. We tend to have a vision for learning, and in that vision we see students that fit the educational "status quo". Yes, I bring it up again, because I see our largest issue in education is that we have put systems and structures in place that are only effective for a certain "type" of student, and if we were to be truly honest that student would be the one that comes ready to learn every day, is internally motivated and engaged, has consistent support from school to home, and is given opportunities outside of school to learn and apply. That's the status qou student that our current system is operating under.
Now, back to my point on the students with the greatest challenges. These students usually are acting and reacting out of root cause issues that have nothing to do with school. They are typically coming from home life environments where they have experienced trauma of some kind, whether directly or indirectly, and as a result they are reactive and in constant fight or flight mode. Research says that we use the same part of our brain to process learning and stress. Now, imagine a student coming from a stressful environment into a learning environment. As their brain is in a stressful state, they are coming and being put into an environment and asked to perform in that environment that is not structured for students coming in with tremendous stress, but rather our "status quo" student that was mentioned above. Imagine these students coming to school each and every day from extremely stressful and traumatizing environments into school where they have to use the part of their brain that is under stress to learn.
Typically what happens, is that these students have no time to decompress, or take down their stress level. They go from home immediately into school where they are asked to instantly work to learn while under stress. In that moment, it all becomes overwhelming for them and instead of being able to take in the learning, they play off of the stress and react out of that, usually in behavior that gets them kicked out of class, and school.
Now, imagine years of that. Imagine a student going through that each and every day. Imagine how defeated they feel right off the bat coming to school each day. Imagine how behavior then becomes the one and only thing they feel successful at, and therefore the one and only thing they know to do in response to their fight or flight.
Now imagine how much instructional time is lost in their school day, and imagine how over time their gap in learning becomes increasingly overwhelming, and the more overwhelming it becomes, the more defeated they feel, and the greater the increase in behavior....it's a cycle.
Here's the thing...there are variables of this that we can't control, but there are variables that as educators we can. The variable that we can control is our mindset around this student, and the learning opportunities that we can establish for them when we have the mindset of understanding why the act, and react they way they do. We can control our actions in the learning environment towards that student. We can control how we establish systems and structures that support those students, and we can control how we treat those students in our schools each day.
Mindset...everything and anything that we do goes back to our mindset around the situation and circumstance.
Right now, I am working on establishing programming in level 4 EBD where students are sent from schools that have given up on them, and this is their one and only hope left. Why is it that we can't establish a more cohesive system and structure within schools to support these students during the day, why is it that because we don't, these students, who have already been transitioned all over in their life, are now being transitioned all over in their school life? Something is wrong with the system....we can do better. We have to do better. We are educators. Enough of the fluffy saying about changing lives. Don't say it, if you have no intention of doing it with equality across all learners. I think it's time we take a critical look at mindset around educators, and educational systems and structures. We cannot afford in this country to continue to have inequality in education across the board. An average of 35% of our students graduating college and career ready is unacceptable, and at the heart of that issue is mindset.
If these students are made to feel "not good enough" at home, and them come to school and are made to feel "not good enough", then where in their world will they ever build any kind of self-confidence, self-esteem, success, sense of worth? Where else will they get that if we refuse to do that in school?
I have no problem saying these bold statements, because if you saw what I am seeing in schools each and every day your heart would feel heavy over this too. It's unacceptable for us in education to give up on these kids. They get that all day outside of school, and it's our job to build them up, give them hope and provide them lots of opportunities to be successful. For many, we are all they have in their day...that's it. It's us...
This post may anger many, but we need to stop dancing around the big elephant in the education world, begin to have courageous conversations around mindset, and start to make changes from undergrad education programs through schools and districts, and states across this country. It's time. We can rewrite the Common Core over and over and over, but until there is a drastic shift in mindset around equitable education for ALL, and drastic shifts in the educational system in this country, there will continue to be thousands and thousands and thousands of students left behind.
As educators, we tend to have a fixed mindset around students and learning. We tend to have a vision for learning, and in that vision we see students that fit the educational "status quo". Yes, I bring it up again, because I see our largest issue in education is that we have put systems and structures in place that are only effective for a certain "type" of student, and if we were to be truly honest that student would be the one that comes ready to learn every day, is internally motivated and engaged, has consistent support from school to home, and is given opportunities outside of school to learn and apply. That's the status qou student that our current system is operating under.
Now, back to my point on the students with the greatest challenges. These students usually are acting and reacting out of root cause issues that have nothing to do with school. They are typically coming from home life environments where they have experienced trauma of some kind, whether directly or indirectly, and as a result they are reactive and in constant fight or flight mode. Research says that we use the same part of our brain to process learning and stress. Now, imagine a student coming from a stressful environment into a learning environment. As their brain is in a stressful state, they are coming and being put into an environment and asked to perform in that environment that is not structured for students coming in with tremendous stress, but rather our "status quo" student that was mentioned above. Imagine these students coming to school each and every day from extremely stressful and traumatizing environments into school where they have to use the part of their brain that is under stress to learn.
Typically what happens, is that these students have no time to decompress, or take down their stress level. They go from home immediately into school where they are asked to instantly work to learn while under stress. In that moment, it all becomes overwhelming for them and instead of being able to take in the learning, they play off of the stress and react out of that, usually in behavior that gets them kicked out of class, and school.
Now, imagine years of that. Imagine a student going through that each and every day. Imagine how defeated they feel right off the bat coming to school each day. Imagine how behavior then becomes the one and only thing they feel successful at, and therefore the one and only thing they know to do in response to their fight or flight.
Now imagine how much instructional time is lost in their school day, and imagine how over time their gap in learning becomes increasingly overwhelming, and the more overwhelming it becomes, the more defeated they feel, and the greater the increase in behavior....it's a cycle.
Here's the thing...there are variables of this that we can't control, but there are variables that as educators we can. The variable that we can control is our mindset around this student, and the learning opportunities that we can establish for them when we have the mindset of understanding why the act, and react they way they do. We can control our actions in the learning environment towards that student. We can control how we establish systems and structures that support those students, and we can control how we treat those students in our schools each day.
Mindset...everything and anything that we do goes back to our mindset around the situation and circumstance.
Right now, I am working on establishing programming in level 4 EBD where students are sent from schools that have given up on them, and this is their one and only hope left. Why is it that we can't establish a more cohesive system and structure within schools to support these students during the day, why is it that because we don't, these students, who have already been transitioned all over in their life, are now being transitioned all over in their school life? Something is wrong with the system....we can do better. We have to do better. We are educators. Enough of the fluffy saying about changing lives. Don't say it, if you have no intention of doing it with equality across all learners. I think it's time we take a critical look at mindset around educators, and educational systems and structures. We cannot afford in this country to continue to have inequality in education across the board. An average of 35% of our students graduating college and career ready is unacceptable, and at the heart of that issue is mindset.
If these students are made to feel "not good enough" at home, and them come to school and are made to feel "not good enough", then where in their world will they ever build any kind of self-confidence, self-esteem, success, sense of worth? Where else will they get that if we refuse to do that in school?
I have no problem saying these bold statements, because if you saw what I am seeing in schools each and every day your heart would feel heavy over this too. It's unacceptable for us in education to give up on these kids. They get that all day outside of school, and it's our job to build them up, give them hope and provide them lots of opportunities to be successful. For many, we are all they have in their day...that's it. It's us...
This post may anger many, but we need to stop dancing around the big elephant in the education world, begin to have courageous conversations around mindset, and start to make changes from undergrad education programs through schools and districts, and states across this country. It's time. We can rewrite the Common Core over and over and over, but until there is a drastic shift in mindset around equitable education for ALL, and drastic shifts in the educational system in this country, there will continue to be thousands and thousands and thousands of students left behind.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Starting points....
I love Kari's resources in reimaging education. What a powerful message for us as we consider awakening impact across educational systems and structures.
In my work right now, I am very much in the push and pull of starting points. Where do I push? Where do I pull back? What starting point is the most effective, and with what stakeholders will this need to have in this work to have the greatest impact.
My work always begins with relationship first. Now, for those of you who know me this should not come as any kind of surprise. My top strength on the Myers-Briggs is "Whoo". I am the cheerleader, the heart on my sleeve, the "you can do it, or better yet WE CAN DO IT TOGETHER!" Let's go! I hug everyone that will let me, I don't hold back my thoughts, opinions, heart, any of it. I'm about as real and genuine as they come. Now, this makes me somewhat of an outlier in this type of work, as many of the people that I work with tend to be more conservative, more held back, they have the most amazing thoughts, but will hold them in and wait for the right, safe time to bring them out. Whereas, I tend to just say it, cross my fingers and hope for the best, ha!
Regardless of your "type", each stakeholder has a critical role in the ongoing conversations, and work surrounding school improvement efforts. After all, we all know that one spoke alone does not hold the wheel, but rather all spokes working together make the wheel turn at it's finest. The question becomes, "Where do I start? How do I begin to bring the right people around the table to address some courageous conversations?"
My first starting point is always the same. We must build relationship first. We must observe all educational settings, and take in what is current in the classroom, and at the building and district level, we must invite conversations around teaching and learning, and within those conversations we must be the lead "listener". Just listen....hear voice, tone, strengths, weaknesses, fears, concerns, questions, celebrations...just listen. Take it all in, and after these conversations note patterns. What are the patterns that I see in observations? What are the patterns that I see in conversations around teaching and learning? What are the patterns that I see in the data, and how are these patterns connected?
This is the start. This is a highly critical time, and although it is slow, and doesn't tend to feel like much is happening, you need to hold tight to the fact that slowing down, and building a strong foundation will pay off later when you begin to do the work of building solid systems and structures piece by piece. After all, we know it is human nature to want and NEED to trust in people first, before processes. Once relationship is established we can then move into our second starting point.
Starting point two is to take the patterns taken from observations, and conversations, and data, and begin to outline themes. This work is often called root cause analysis, and tends to be the point where buy-in to the process happens. This is a highly critical process. It is difficult, but necessary. It tends to bring up discomfort, and fears, and a sense of change looming. Stakeholders at this point will often dig their heels in on what they fear may be lost in the change process. These conversations are courageous for a reason after all, they are going right to the root of the problem, and usually that makes for a very uncomfortable atmosphere. However, if you know up front that is the likelyhood, then you can plan...plan for discourse, plan for questions, plan for sharing, plan for breaks, and plan to be flexible. Be clear upfront about what the intended goal (or in the educational language..."outcome') is, the time frame you have, the process that will happen to guide that, and the decision that needs to be made in the end. Create a pathway for the conversation that assumes positive intent, and creates a pathway for productive conversations that are solution orientated.
These are starting points, and they are the most critical part of the process...they are the foundation. Consider this time like dating....yes, go back in your mind to dating.;) In dating you are observing how the other person acts, reacts, treats people, treats family, treats you...you are observing behaviors, patterns, responses, engagement in the process...all of it. You are taking it in, and as you take it in you begin to use that as starting points in conversations. Conversations that lead to knowing each other better, and often times will in the beginning have moments of bliss and moments of discomfort as your approach a variety of topics. All of it leads to one thing...trust. Can I trust this person with my world? Right? It's the same idea here. We may not be trusting our colleagues with our personal world, but most definitely our professional world,and we know that personal often impacts professional so trust in any change process is highly critical.
So, I encourage you today to consider when the last time is that you stepped out and observed what is happening around you. What is happening in other classrooms, in the building, at the district level. When is the last time you used PLC's to engage in courageous conversation around observations and data? How have you used that to consider patterns, determine root cause, and analyze solutions collaboratively around teaching and learing.
Starting points. They are messy...and usually difficult, but difficult is necessary and will begin to awaken impactful conversations, solutions, and in the end create greater work around impact. If we are really opening up a growth mindset around educational reform, the reform starts here...small, but impactful starting points in every classroom, building, district and system in this country and around the world. Wouldn't it be wonderful to start conversation here...with this blog...let's bring a more global perspective to this work.:)
In my work right now, I am very much in the push and pull of starting points. Where do I push? Where do I pull back? What starting point is the most effective, and with what stakeholders will this need to have in this work to have the greatest impact.
My work always begins with relationship first. Now, for those of you who know me this should not come as any kind of surprise. My top strength on the Myers-Briggs is "Whoo". I am the cheerleader, the heart on my sleeve, the "you can do it, or better yet WE CAN DO IT TOGETHER!" Let's go! I hug everyone that will let me, I don't hold back my thoughts, opinions, heart, any of it. I'm about as real and genuine as they come. Now, this makes me somewhat of an outlier in this type of work, as many of the people that I work with tend to be more conservative, more held back, they have the most amazing thoughts, but will hold them in and wait for the right, safe time to bring them out. Whereas, I tend to just say it, cross my fingers and hope for the best, ha!
Regardless of your "type", each stakeholder has a critical role in the ongoing conversations, and work surrounding school improvement efforts. After all, we all know that one spoke alone does not hold the wheel, but rather all spokes working together make the wheel turn at it's finest. The question becomes, "Where do I start? How do I begin to bring the right people around the table to address some courageous conversations?"
My first starting point is always the same. We must build relationship first. We must observe all educational settings, and take in what is current in the classroom, and at the building and district level, we must invite conversations around teaching and learning, and within those conversations we must be the lead "listener". Just listen....hear voice, tone, strengths, weaknesses, fears, concerns, questions, celebrations...just listen. Take it all in, and after these conversations note patterns. What are the patterns that I see in observations? What are the patterns that I see in conversations around teaching and learning? What are the patterns that I see in the data, and how are these patterns connected?
This is the start. This is a highly critical time, and although it is slow, and doesn't tend to feel like much is happening, you need to hold tight to the fact that slowing down, and building a strong foundation will pay off later when you begin to do the work of building solid systems and structures piece by piece. After all, we know it is human nature to want and NEED to trust in people first, before processes. Once relationship is established we can then move into our second starting point.
Starting point two is to take the patterns taken from observations, and conversations, and data, and begin to outline themes. This work is often called root cause analysis, and tends to be the point where buy-in to the process happens. This is a highly critical process. It is difficult, but necessary. It tends to bring up discomfort, and fears, and a sense of change looming. Stakeholders at this point will often dig their heels in on what they fear may be lost in the change process. These conversations are courageous for a reason after all, they are going right to the root of the problem, and usually that makes for a very uncomfortable atmosphere. However, if you know up front that is the likelyhood, then you can plan...plan for discourse, plan for questions, plan for sharing, plan for breaks, and plan to be flexible. Be clear upfront about what the intended goal (or in the educational language..."outcome') is, the time frame you have, the process that will happen to guide that, and the decision that needs to be made in the end. Create a pathway for the conversation that assumes positive intent, and creates a pathway for productive conversations that are solution orientated.
These are starting points, and they are the most critical part of the process...they are the foundation. Consider this time like dating....yes, go back in your mind to dating.;) In dating you are observing how the other person acts, reacts, treats people, treats family, treats you...you are observing behaviors, patterns, responses, engagement in the process...all of it. You are taking it in, and as you take it in you begin to use that as starting points in conversations. Conversations that lead to knowing each other better, and often times will in the beginning have moments of bliss and moments of discomfort as your approach a variety of topics. All of it leads to one thing...trust. Can I trust this person with my world? Right? It's the same idea here. We may not be trusting our colleagues with our personal world, but most definitely our professional world,and we know that personal often impacts professional so trust in any change process is highly critical.
So, I encourage you today to consider when the last time is that you stepped out and observed what is happening around you. What is happening in other classrooms, in the building, at the district level. When is the last time you used PLC's to engage in courageous conversation around observations and data? How have you used that to consider patterns, determine root cause, and analyze solutions collaboratively around teaching and learing.
Starting points. They are messy...and usually difficult, but difficult is necessary and will begin to awaken impactful conversations, solutions, and in the end create greater work around impact. If we are really opening up a growth mindset around educational reform, the reform starts here...small, but impactful starting points in every classroom, building, district and system in this country and around the world. Wouldn't it be wonderful to start conversation here...with this blog...let's bring a more global perspective to this work.:)
Reimagining Learning
Ran across this Ted Talk on Twitter--ha to share. So important. Thinking about education differently!
Monday, December 8, 2014
The Smartest Kids in the World: Let's Make it Happen
Many of you know that I was working with an amazing group of teachers last year who were passionate about changing how we DO school. They are champions around the ideas that Kristin just wrote about: getting kids to THINK, They are committed to connecting thinking; not 7 hours of classes that have no connection, but rather HOW CAN WE CHANGE this. These people are STILL committed to this way of thinking, and we STILL have dreams of how to make this happen.
While this book, The Smartest Kids in the World, may have it's flaws, this book truly inspired me--and many others who read it with me. There ARE people out there who are WILLING to make this leap, who are EXCITED to change the way things are done. We just have to make it happen!!
Here is from Amanda Ripley's website:
The Smartest Kids in the World
A New York Times bestseller, The Smartest Kids was selected by The Economist, The Washington Post, The New York Times and Amazon.com as one of the most notable books of 2013.
In a handful of nations, virtually all children are learning to make complex arguments and solve problems they’ve never seen before. They are learning to think, in other words. What is it like to be a child in these new education superpowers?
In a global quest to find answers for our own children, author and Time journalist Amanda Ripley follows three Americans embedded in these countries for one year. Kim, 15, raises $10,000 so she can move from Oklahoma to Finland; Eric, 18, exchanges an upscale Minnesota suburb for a booming South Korean city; and Tom, 17, leaves a historic Pennsylvania village for a gritty city in Poland.
Their stories, along with groundbreaking research into what works worldwide, reveal a pattern of startling transformation: none of these places had many “smart” kids a few decades ago. They had changed. Teaching had become more serious; parents had focused on what mattered; and children had bought into the promise of education. A reporting tour de force, The Smartest Kids is a book about building resilience in a new world—as told by the young Americans with the most at stake.
We should...
I was listening to an interview yesterday on CNN with Joel Klein, the former Chancellor of New York City Schools. His vision for educational reform not only helped me get through my cardio workout faster;), but really had me thinking more deeply about the impact that his ideas have had on New York schools, but COULD HAVE on the Nation as a whole.
In his interview he spoke to the importance of having highly qualified professionals in teaching. This means, instead of pulling from the bottom percentage of undergrad classes, we follow the model of other countries and recruit our teachers from the top percentage of graduating classes. This means that we have to start to consider restructuring our system to make this profession more highly marketable to a different audience. Having highly qualified, innovative, passionate professionals with a growth mindset in our classrooms has been a source of discussion for years and years, however I beleive the reason we don't tend to pull from the top percentage of graduates, and furthermore we don't retain teachers is because that mindset finds the current "boxed" educational system frustrating. I don't think it's that we can't recruit, and retain highly qualified educational professionals, it's that our system speaks of growth mindset, but is set up under a fixed mindset system.
According to Klein, we should be able to have the freedom to look at educational systems and structures under a growth mindset, and we need to! This country currently has about 35% of it's graduates college and career ready...35%! There's no excuse for that. Yes, we have college and career ready standards in the common core, but at some point if we really want to put actions behind the language in those standards, we have to have a larger discussion about the systems and structures we currently have in place. If the nation's average is 35% graduating college and career ready, we have an issue...a large issue, and we must begin to have courageous conversations around the WHY?
We need to look at what other countries are doing that are graduating higher percentage of college and career ready students, we have to do some deeper analysis of our current system, and we have to have enough people passionate about changing it to actually advocate for change.
It's time. Students are growing up in a fast-paced, technology driven, very competitve society and yet we remain steady across the board in terms of systems and structures.
It's time for courageous dialogue, and discussion, and more importantly CHANGE! As educators, we need to have a louder voice in this. This is our future we are talking about, and yes we can say that and get warm, fuzzy feelings, but this is a very serious issue that we need to attend to in this Nation. It is our duty as citizens, educators, parents etc. to take a step and be a voice for change.
In his interview he spoke to the importance of having highly qualified professionals in teaching. This means, instead of pulling from the bottom percentage of undergrad classes, we follow the model of other countries and recruit our teachers from the top percentage of graduating classes. This means that we have to start to consider restructuring our system to make this profession more highly marketable to a different audience. Having highly qualified, innovative, passionate professionals with a growth mindset in our classrooms has been a source of discussion for years and years, however I beleive the reason we don't tend to pull from the top percentage of graduates, and furthermore we don't retain teachers is because that mindset finds the current "boxed" educational system frustrating. I don't think it's that we can't recruit, and retain highly qualified educational professionals, it's that our system speaks of growth mindset, but is set up under a fixed mindset system.
According to Klein, we should be able to have the freedom to look at educational systems and structures under a growth mindset, and we need to! This country currently has about 35% of it's graduates college and career ready...35%! There's no excuse for that. Yes, we have college and career ready standards in the common core, but at some point if we really want to put actions behind the language in those standards, we have to have a larger discussion about the systems and structures we currently have in place. If the nation's average is 35% graduating college and career ready, we have an issue...a large issue, and we must begin to have courageous conversations around the WHY?
We need to look at what other countries are doing that are graduating higher percentage of college and career ready students, we have to do some deeper analysis of our current system, and we have to have enough people passionate about changing it to actually advocate for change.
It's time. Students are growing up in a fast-paced, technology driven, very competitve society and yet we remain steady across the board in terms of systems and structures.
It's time for courageous dialogue, and discussion, and more importantly CHANGE! As educators, we need to have a louder voice in this. This is our future we are talking about, and yes we can say that and get warm, fuzzy feelings, but this is a very serious issue that we need to attend to in this Nation. It is our duty as citizens, educators, parents etc. to take a step and be a voice for change.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Big wins?YES!
My posts recently have been focused on mindset, and change, and how to work through that process through difficulties in order to achieve a dream. I wrote about how we all attend to opportunities and difficulties in different ways, with different mindsets, and how it is in our human nature to revert to fight or flight when we sense change is coming.
In my past work, we spoke of how people don't fear change, people feel loss. There is so much truth to that statement, and in fact it tends to be why when we feel challenged by change we have to make "in the moment" decisions as to whether we will take a risk, take on the change and move towards fulfilling the vision or dream that we have for future,or revert back to what is safe and comfortable and status quo.
We know that in order to awaken a sustainable impact, we must first have vision, from that vision we must then focus on what our mindset is around that vision, and then we must decide if we are willing to fight through the fear of loss to gain the reward of the change, or take flight and run back to what is comfortable and status quo.
The saying, "With risk comes great reward" has been around for hundreds of years, however I don't believe that many people actually believe that. I believe if we were to look into the research around change agency we would find that it is actually a small number of people who lead lives that act on their belief of that statement, but yet we throw it around as if it's common understanding, belief and action.
My post yesterday mentioned the frustration that comes when we have made the decision to fight through the fear of loss that comes with change, and then reach the point where not a lot of change is actually happening. I spoke of the reality during this time in which we feel isolated in the work that we are doing, but yet we know it is only for a short time. This to me is always the most critical period, because it is in the slow part, before things move fast, that we have time to consider giving up and returning to the comfort and familiar and safe places that we are used to. It is in this time that we have to make a conscious choice to stay the course, to invest in building the stakeholders around us so that we are no longer alone, and be willing to sit through the discomfort of that process knowing that in the end we will have a sustainable team to navigate the implementation process from beginning to end.
So today, I made the decision to step out of my place of comfort, present a vision to new stakeholders and see what happens. With wonderful, yet courageous conversations our outcome was a new team, a more refined purpose, and a deeper vision for implementation. At the end of the meeting a colleague said to me, "Kristin, yesterday I was ready to give up and look for another job. Today, I am excited, and I have hope and I see future in this." My response was simply, "Me too!...to all of it!"
See, anytime we have a vision, we have something that we want to risk and try and do, we must work through this process. Nothing comes without the bumps, and hurdles, and moments of feeling overwhelmed, and wanting to give up, but we must stop, take a moment to reflect and process how we will proceed, and if we choose to stay the course we must pick ourselves up, gather our courage, take risks, and celebrate every little win along the way knowing that we are now one step closer to the intended outcome. Not only are we closer, but hopefully we are closer with a team of partners in the process.
So I hope this post today encourages you. It's okay to fear change, to fear loss, but it's what we do with it that determines our course. If we allow the fear of loss to bring us back to what is comfortable then we lose out on the opportunities to run, not walk, but run into awakening impact in education, and across all areas of our lives. Don't let fear hold you back, take a step at a time, build partners in the process, and together build sustainable capacity around a new vision, innovation, and change!:)
In my past work, we spoke of how people don't fear change, people feel loss. There is so much truth to that statement, and in fact it tends to be why when we feel challenged by change we have to make "in the moment" decisions as to whether we will take a risk, take on the change and move towards fulfilling the vision or dream that we have for future,or revert back to what is safe and comfortable and status quo.
We know that in order to awaken a sustainable impact, we must first have vision, from that vision we must then focus on what our mindset is around that vision, and then we must decide if we are willing to fight through the fear of loss to gain the reward of the change, or take flight and run back to what is comfortable and status quo.
The saying, "With risk comes great reward" has been around for hundreds of years, however I don't believe that many people actually believe that. I believe if we were to look into the research around change agency we would find that it is actually a small number of people who lead lives that act on their belief of that statement, but yet we throw it around as if it's common understanding, belief and action.
My post yesterday mentioned the frustration that comes when we have made the decision to fight through the fear of loss that comes with change, and then reach the point where not a lot of change is actually happening. I spoke of the reality during this time in which we feel isolated in the work that we are doing, but yet we know it is only for a short time. This to me is always the most critical period, because it is in the slow part, before things move fast, that we have time to consider giving up and returning to the comfort and familiar and safe places that we are used to. It is in this time that we have to make a conscious choice to stay the course, to invest in building the stakeholders around us so that we are no longer alone, and be willing to sit through the discomfort of that process knowing that in the end we will have a sustainable team to navigate the implementation process from beginning to end.
So today, I made the decision to step out of my place of comfort, present a vision to new stakeholders and see what happens. With wonderful, yet courageous conversations our outcome was a new team, a more refined purpose, and a deeper vision for implementation. At the end of the meeting a colleague said to me, "Kristin, yesterday I was ready to give up and look for another job. Today, I am excited, and I have hope and I see future in this." My response was simply, "Me too!...to all of it!"
See, anytime we have a vision, we have something that we want to risk and try and do, we must work through this process. Nothing comes without the bumps, and hurdles, and moments of feeling overwhelmed, and wanting to give up, but we must stop, take a moment to reflect and process how we will proceed, and if we choose to stay the course we must pick ourselves up, gather our courage, take risks, and celebrate every little win along the way knowing that we are now one step closer to the intended outcome. Not only are we closer, but hopefully we are closer with a team of partners in the process.
So I hope this post today encourages you. It's okay to fear change, to fear loss, but it's what we do with it that determines our course. If we allow the fear of loss to bring us back to what is comfortable then we lose out on the opportunities to run, not walk, but run into awakening impact in education, and across all areas of our lives. Don't let fear hold you back, take a step at a time, build partners in the process, and together build sustainable capacity around a new vision, innovation, and change!:)
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