I attended both lectures at last nights 10th annual Summer Leadership Conference. The first meeting was entitled “Restructuring for caring and effective education: The possible futures of education.” Richard Villa created a road map of questions on how to get to the new future of education, and how to identify the milestones to achieving the goals we have for education.
Mr. Villa talked about what goals we need to have in education, how to get there, and what it takes to achieve these goals. Mr. Villa also talked about what it takes to create changes in schools. In order to achieve changes in schools it requires the answer to 5 simple questions.
The first is What is the destination? His answer was a Lacoda courage shield with 4 spokes on it the first had mastry, the second genorocity, the third belonging, and the forth independance.
The second question he posed to the audinece was whos invited? his answer was the people who have faught to be here. People such as African Americnas, Immigrants, LGBTA youth...anyone who has been marginolised in education is allowed to be apart of the changes in schools.
The third quesiton Mr. Villa posed to the audience was What are the routes to getting to change? His answer was a blend of exallence and equality called equaexallance.
The forth quesiton he posed to the audience was what is the path we need to take? His answer was that there were 5 stages to creating change. The first is a vision, the second is having the skills nessisary to create change, the third is giving incentives, the forth is havning the resources, the fifth is an action plan. If all of these are in place then change will happen.
The last question that Mr. Villa asked was How do we know if we arrived? His answer was by the culture we have created.
Once question I had was why does changing things take so long to happen?
The answer to this question is complex, but the pure fact is that most people aren’t comfortable with change. Teachers don’t want to revamp their curriculum because it has worked for them, principals don’t want to rock the boat with the superintendent, and the fact that no matter how hard you try there is always the hold outs who will disagree with you and not want to participate.
A second question I have is can a system change work if a principal or administrator is not on board?
The answer is no, you must have administrator support or your changes will be seen as a threat to the principal and the program, and the principal will rally his troops and overturn your changes.
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