If your life and work are going well, why change?
The urge to grow often disrupts. A child's urgency to walk creates the need to childproof a house, a teen's quest for independence means a lack of sleep for parents, and an employee's new ideas upset a manager's plans, schedule, and expectations.
The desire to move forward comes from dreams and vision of what can be?
Teachers know education is not ideal--particularly teachers who work with large numbers of children each day. Teachers like that are constantly left with the choice of who to serve and how to serve so that most children are getting what they need. The algorithm of teaching large numbers of people is not an equation that works for everyone--someone is always left out simply because the equation doesn't work perfectly (Am I wrong about this?). Hence, the nature of teaching lends itself to vision, problem solving, and a desire for growth.
Similarly, life alone leads to a similar quest. We are never totally at peace if we're living life. There's always an area of desire, need, and quest. Perhaps it's the desire for a child, the need for a relationship, or the quest for a new job. The act of living is one that urges us to move forward in order to meet our needs, desire, and quest.
In schools, we're remiss not to note this need to move forward to find better ways to teach all children well. As educators we know the power education holds for a good life. We realize that education creates choice and choice holds the promise of happiness. We also know that the world is not perfect. There's much work to do in order to erase poverty, pollution, and greed--events that cause despair, pain, and most of all potential lost.
Hence, how do you foster forward movement in your schools? How do you respond to those who seek to improve their work, learn more, and develop systems of positive education? Where is the balance between growth and that status quo?
We need to move forward as the world we live in is always moving and changing. The pacing, direction, and ways we move offer us content for discussion and debate, important conversations that will make a difference.
