Even sitting in the same room but moving the chair to face the opposite way gives you a different perspective on things.
Today our team of 5 joined other Australian teams and our leaders, Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, for the first face-to-face Australian meeting for the Powerful Learning Practice program. Will and Sheryl spoke about how the world is changing but how schools are not. We’ve had this conversation many times at school. It always seems like a difficult challenge, one that weighs us down. It isn’t going to happen. We push and push but the resistance is too strong. But somehow, today, the same challenge wasn’t as threatening. It seemed understandable. I remembered my own recent beginnings with technology. No, back even further, times in my life when the comfortable and familiar were disrupted by change. My first child, moving overseas, my first online experience for a post-grad degree, things like this. We all have them. It’s good to remember these times, and sensible to expect them to happen again. We’re not different to those people who protest against change, except that we’ve climbed over onto the other side of the fence. Some of us have sprinted over, some have struggled over and got our pants caught on a nail, and others have climbed under.
Sheryl reminded us that we need to develop flexibility and patience when things don’t work out; we need adaptability. I’m thinking that we’re like some sort of evolving species as we try to move with the times. We’re not comfortable when we start growing extra legs; it hurts!
But when change freaks me out, I have to remind myself that I also like moving the furniture around. It gets boring sitting and looking at the same view. There are new configurations to be discovered.