I'm a big dreamer. Typically I have complex, lengthy, dramatic dreams every night. Those dreams tend to wake me up early in the morning leaving me with lots of questions about life in general.
Last night's dream was vivid. I was amongst a group of teachers and as is so true of me, I was eager to share my point of view. A woman, known to me, dressed in a fancy lawn green dress and big hat was clearly not in favor of my participation. She and her cronies gave me the cold shoulder and walked off. That's when I woke up. The scene was evidence of a hurtful trend in my teaching career.
As an educator I was very naive about school culture and professional camaraderie. While that naivety sometimes made me courageous, it also cost me with regard to professional collegiality and strategic success. As a new teacher, I had a long list of school-wrongs that I wanted to fix from day one. As a child, I watched how schools had mistreated my brother who struggled. Later, I noticed how schools often treated people from some groups better than others. I wanted to change that as I knew education can play a powerful, positive role in people's lives if done well. By the time I eventually became a teacher, I was eager to make change right away, and as any worker knows, there's nothing worse than the new person coming in wanting to change the entire organization.
It wasn't as bad as I make it sound as there were some leaders that welcomed my enthusiasm and outlook. I was invited to work on a school inclusion initiative that was positive and powerful--I enjoyed that work, and as a school team we made good progress with that, the kind of progress that really made a positive difference in children's lives. I also worked with a lot of very bright educators who enjoyed reading the new research related to teaching and learning, and then embedding that research in the work we did. It was a vibrant teaching/learning environment.
As time went on and my personal life became more complicated by marriage and children, time for innovation and change was compromised. Similarly the changes in culture and school leadership were making greater demands on teachers' time and ability to serve all students well. What was a somewhat simple school landscape became quite complicated with far more leaders and services. The intention of the added leadership and services was not all bad, but the employment of that leadership and services was often messy, oppressive, and soul-sucking as the teacher's job became too-great for the time and support available.
I persisted with little mentoring. Leadership seemed like an extra layer of fat in the organization--a self-feeding layer that projected a lot of rules, expectations, and jobs onto the direct-service layer of teachers and teaching assistants. There was little to no mentoring, listening, or positive response. Rather than give in to what seemed to me to be an oppressive and somewhat inauthentic or honest culture, I persisted with my desire to make change. It's too bad that I didn't have a good mentor who understood the school culture at this point in my career, and it's too bad that I didn't have the foresight to seek out a mentor as at this turning point since my ability to use good strategy and collegiality was weak.
After a tough challenge, I did seek out more mentoring via a number of avenues, and that ultimately helped me to make a positive strategic change with regard to what we could do with and for students. This was good, but not as good as the change I could have made had I made this turn earlier in my career. That's why I am advocating for leadership modernization and change in schools now--I feel that too many educators are too oppressed in the school environment to do the work possible. That oppression comes from outdated leadership models. insufficient staffing, too-great expectations, too-little voice, and outdated online/offline, inside/outside learning environments.
Modernizing schools in ways that better empower and enable educators and students to do the good work possible will greatly improve schools everywhere in the country. This won't look exactly the same everywhere because schools like families differ greatly depending on geography, population, needs, and interests.
Our dreams send us messages if we take the time to think about them. Last night's dream shed light on my teaching career and the promise schools hold for a better future for all of us. Onward.