This week we ran the first week of a simulation in creating change in a school. We acted as administration trying to effect an unknown change upon a whole district. We had to use up resources to get the staff on board with our proposed change. After the simulated end of one year... we had not even begun to figure out what the change is that we are going to get our district to undergo. I kind of feel like this is the way a lot of administration feels about us teachers. They have great ideas, why won't us teachers just go along with it already :) The frustration is good in that it serves a real purpose to show how we need to refine our ideas before presenting them to the larger group.
We also read some articles about the stages of change that will be very useful for next week's simulation. The simulation that we are doing has the same parts that article: http://www.mcrel.org/toolkit/res/change.asp has and will be useful to use as road map in the coming game.
We also took a look at Motivation in Leadership and all of the different things that can make a department a more cohesive unit. It featured a couple of good tidbits of advice from hosting socials to keeping observations to short "walkthroughs". It was a nice change of pace since the previous chapters were mostly concerned with conflict resolution. I like that we now focused on the good things.
John,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you that this simulation was frustrating and it makes you just want to force the people to come along and make the changes because you are the boss. However, it is very much real life like. People can not force others to change. I look forward to meeting again this week and see how well we can do now that we have a better plan.
John,
ReplyDeletewhat a good thing that I was not the only person who felt a bit befuddled but I agree the change of pace was nice. As I eluded to in my own blog for the week; it was a sink or swim situation that left me with a whole new awareness of what an administrator has to go thru when trying to exact change.
I would agree that some of the handouts and reading material will be a big help to the simulation this week. What changes have been a part that maybe the teachers felt left "out of the loop".
ReplyDeleteOK... if you like forcing change... go into the military and attain rank quickly! It was really interesting to see how long it took to start making any headway in this simulation. In my experience the changes are just made and then we have to adapt the mechanics of the change to suit our situation (keeping the spirit of the change in tact!... not always an easy task).
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