Change We Can Believe In, Well Maybe Not!

Change We Can Believe In, Well Maybe Not!

Writer Sandra Steingraber coined the term "well-informed futility" to describe those moments when we discover the immensity of a problem or experience and retreat to a place where solutions appear to defy us, positive solutions appear futile.  As a nation we experienced this prior to the election of Barack Obama.  Our national ills seemed so overwhelming, we appeared to retreat to a place of "well-informed futility" or maybe even denial, one step beyond.  With Obama's election, we all seemed to be hooked into the notion that this was change that we could believe in, and now some are pondering, maybe not.  Once again, the reality of our overwhelming issues, war, the divide between rich and poor, dealing with the issues associated with undocumented immigration and the hard economic times, seem to be pushing us to the same port of call, well-informed futility.  Perhaps, we know too much, and feel that the problems defy one man and our government's ability to resolve so we retreat, and feel totally overwhelmed by the depth of what we know.  There is an interesting parallel for schools today.

With new accountability measures, new mandates driving the educational agenda, we appear to be caught in a system that is going to at the least, bog down, and at the worst implode.  We wonder how these initiatives will help us to close the achievement gap, to prepare our students for college and the work place, permit us to equip teachers with the skills they need to meet the new demands, and most importantly how we are going to preserve everyone's American birth right, access to free public education.  For those of us on the inside, we know too much, we see the writing on the wall, and we could easily slip into well-informed futility and even denial.  We could easily become complacent, or just cave in to the demands and challenges inherent in a new performance review process tying principal and teacher performance to test scores, assessments that overwhelm students and teachers, while quite possibly robbing instruction of creativity, depth, and the expression that comes from academic freedom.

This is truly our moment, our clarion call to action.  We can either succumb to what appears to be inevitable or seek alternatives to these immense and overwhelming issues.  Our children, our students require that we renew our call to change we can believe in, and that we stop equivocating or falling victim to the learned helplessness that can easily result.  We must in a sense become "mad as hell" and express that "we are not going to take it anymore."  The proverbial line from the movie Network.  We can martial our efforts and choose to try to make this work, or fight back to win as many battles as we can as we seek to overcome the futility of some of these initiatives.  So, as we confront an assessment bloated system, challenge ourselves to identify reasonable accountability measures, seek ways to preserve the art and the science of teaching, while using data to inform instruction, and attempt to increase rigor while meeting the needs of all students as well as confront economic challenges, we must be vigilant in our efforts to preserve our integrity and what we as an educational community hold true.

Educational leadership must be laced with optimism, a belief that we can muster the solutions to confront these challenges and to bring about sustainable reform.  We must set priorities, work hard to achieve them, engage our stakeholders in the process, and advocate for political reform.  We must tell Governor Cuomo and the New York State Legislature to stop playing politics with our schools, to repeal the tax cap, and to find new ways to support failing schools, often those serving the poor in our more urban areas.  We must not run from our belief that a free public education is an important value and that our schools seem to be failing the very students who need us the most.  These are challenging times.  Should we retreat to well-informed futility, call the problems too great, and the solutions too little or find ways to bring about the meaningful reform we seek?

It has never been more important  for us to martial our communities to support our schools, our students and our teachers.  It is time for us to clearly state that our schools are capable of meaningful reform, and our students are capable of success beyond our futile limits.  We must not slip from well-informed futility to denial.  Through distributive leadership practices, engagement of all constituents in the response to these measures, through political action, and through a collective renewal of what we believe about children, our mission  and our schools, we can achieve the change that we believe in, without compromising, and without the hesitation that a "well maybe brings."  Only then can we avoid the port of call that seems so inevitable and arrive at a place where honest dialogue, trusting relationships, and shared values will help us to alight.  With our students in mind, we must resolve, "Yes, we can!"

 

This is my view from here.