I wish there were a step-by-step, easy to follow list of how to change your school into a resilient learning community. Unfortunately, the history of school and personal change clearly tells us that such rationalistic approaches ignore what it means to lead and manage change. People are far too irrational and far too comfortable with the status quo for an easy to follow list approach to have any positive, lasting impact on people’s behaviors, norms, and beliefs. For a school to become a resilient learning community, the depth of change required in the culture of the school - in its deeply held beliefs - requires a concerted effort and commitment too deep to be addressed by a one way fits all approach. It has taken me over 50 years to reach the vision I have for public schooling. I cannot expect others to be at the same place. I must honor their journey, and I must be prepared for their questions and resistance.

What we do know about change

• Change is external and situational. Transition is the psychological process every person goes through in order to adjust to change and is therefore internal. Therefore, leading and managing change means working with individuals, often one person at a time, to help each person acknowledge the need for change, accept the end to the old, and begin to internalize the behaviors, norms and beliefs that go with the new. This is particularly hard work since almost everyone would rather defend the old rather than seriously consider the new. It takes far more time than most of us recognize and are willing to give. We will continue to muddle through a range of failed school reform efforts unless we take the time and develop the skills, attitudes and behaviors to do it right. Managing and leading change and transition requires skillful work and can be learned.

Managing and leading change and transition requires above all that leaders be skillful at fostering resiliency. When people know that you care about them, that you have high expectations for them and will support them, and that you value their participation, it is far more likely that they will accept change and make the necessary transitions. Please, reread this paragraph since it is so central to what this is about.

The reader is encouraged to read William Bridges’ book Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change and Robert Evans’ book The Human Side of School Change.

• Change starts with ourselves. The only person we can change is ourself. This is why we need to clarify our own vision and acknowledge that a vision is ever evolving. We need to work on our own behaviors, norms, and beliefs. We need to actively practice good listening skills. We need to be courageous. We need to be sure that we - you and I - truly belief in the ability of all students to learn the habits of mind needed to use their minds and hearts well. Several of the activities in previous sessions are obviously designed to challenge you to clarify your behaviors, norms and beliefs. Using three specific students as a constant lens is meant to help you.

• School culture is largely determined by career teachers and staff. Many successful corporations were founded by individuals who established a corporate culture which became the company way and spent their careers building their corporations around that culture. Schools are different! School and district administrators, students, and parents come and go. The career teachers and classified staff are the constants who establish the unwritten rules for the way the school does its business. Therefore, school change involves transitions for people who have dedicated their lives to doing things a certain way. They know from experience that if they passively resist the changes desired, the change agent will probably stop pushing and/or leave. They also know that if they actively engage in the change efforts, the change agent will still leave, and a new change agent with a different agenda will soon be on the scene.

For most school employees, their experience with school change is negative and deeply emotional. Either they feel defensive, or their past efforts at reform were not successful. In either case, they are not hopeful.

Building relationships and working collaboratively with career teachers and with classified staff are amongst the most important skills leaders must learn and practice. This is all about building a school culture based on fostering resiliency.

• Anyone and everyone can be a leader. Strong leadership and student learning are closely linked. Often leadership is identified with a principal or superintendent, an outdated model of leader as hero. However, in reality, important leadership comes from teachers and often from classified staff, also from key parents and students. As a principal, I knew that key teacher leaders, the secretary, the custodian and several parents had at least as much power within the school community as I did. When we worked together, good things happened. If we did not, few people followed.

Managing Change: On Your Mark, Get Set, Are You Ready to Go?

• Start with yourself – Small Group Activity 7.1

• Assess how well your school community fosters resiliency. Answering these questions thoroughly, your assignment with this session, will guide your work. Collecting and sharing the evidence should be collaborative and might prove to be challenging and life changing.

1. How successful is your school in meeting the needs of your students?

2. Which students are you doing an excellent job for? Which students could you serve better?

3. What specific evidence do you have to support your answers to these two questions?

4. What is blocking your school from being more successful?

5. What are the underlying beliefs of your school culture that support these blocks?

6. What needs to change for your school to be more successful?

7. What specific evidence do you have to support your answers to these last three questions?

A final word

Obviously, the primary purpose of this module is to help school leaders understand and apply RT as a guide for proactive, systemic school redesign. My experience in sharing RT with others is that it makes sense to people. Sharing how a resilient learning community must stress the protective factors for the adults as well as for the students is very engaging to teachers. Teachers and administrators know the many ways their school does not offer this for students or themselves. They are eager to share the ideas with colleagues and to devote time and resources to improve the situation. I do not mean to intimate that change then becomes easy. The key underlying belief in the potential of all students is not widely supported in belief or practice. The norms and behaviors that must change to truly become a resilient learning community are deeply embedded in school practice. However, most people would like to be part of a resilient learning community and certainly want their children to attend such a school.

Several years ago, I asked a group of high school teachers and administrators to share with each other what they would show their own child at their school if their child was an 8th grader and they wanted their child to attend their high school. Marsha Speck and I had been working with this group of 25 teachers and principals for several months. We were focusing on the protective factors of resiliency as the core of their school action plan, and commitment to follow through with peers at their schools was coming slowly. Suddenly, one teacher looked at a second teacher, who was a recognized leader within our group, and said, “You do have an 8th grade daughter. Where will she go to high school next year?” The room became silent. The answer was a private high school. Every person in that room was ashamed, and they knew that they might make the same choice. No longer was this an intellectual exercise. People got serious about developing action plans, using resiliency as the focus, that they could proudly take back to their schools to facilitate discussion and action.