You Need to Change

Last week Al Overwijk and I had the opportunity to present at the Board's Leadership Conference.  To be fair, Al presented.  You see, our story is really Al's story.  There is no doubt that I changed my practice as a result of our collaboration but it was Al who really turned his practice on its ear.  In the presentation Al explained how after 3 semesters he was done teaching the grade 10 applied Math classes.  No matter what he tried it seemed that he couldn't engage the students and he was frustrated with the results.  He then said something in the presentation with which I took acceptation.  He reported that, as his department head, I told him he needed to change;  that he had nothing to lose because what he was doing wasn't working anyway.  He may have heard "You need to change" and maybe I did say it, but I like to think that what I did do was give him permission to take everything he knew about good teaching and put it aside.  To fill the void we went with two fundamental ideas.  First - let's just play - for the first month anyway, and teach everything through activities.  Second - we won't restrict and define our play within units of study, instead we will spiral back to all the big ideas again and again.  Al likes to say we had no idea what we were doing.  I like to believe that I knew exactly what we were doing.  We were casting off the moorings, pushing off from shore and slipping into uncharted waters.  We met almost every day to plan our next move.  The result of which fundamentally changed Al's approach.  He turned away from his rock solid chalk-and-talk and embraced an open-ended approach steeped in inquiry and observation.

We felt very good about our morning session and received great feedback.  With less time allotted for the afternoon session we knew that it was going to be a challenge.  With our principal and our superintendent and directors from other boards already in the room, our own director of education walked in with the keynote speakers Andy Hargreaves and Pasi Sahlberg.  The stakes increased along with Al's heart-rate.  It made me giggle to think that these accomplished educators whose work we have followed for years were now listening to us.  

In the end we both felt a little disappointed with the way the afternoon session rolled out because of time constraints.  As we were wrapping up we were offered a compensation prize of sorts.  A woman told the story of her friend's daughter who had been through three years of 'our program'.  At first I thought she said "You changed her life" but after consulting with Al and others I confirmed that she had indeed said "You saved her life."