Small StepsA few years ago, I attended a summer workshop called Everyday Advocacy here in Michigan. I spent an amazing week with other teachers learning about how activists often build change through many small steps and figuring out how to apply those principles to changing something at my school.
One key principle is gathering allies, and I've been thinking about how this happens in a school. At my former school, where I did the advocacy project, I had allies already. I had worked there for over a decade and those years gave me the armor of credibility. I worked in a small town, with a stable staff population, so we all knew each other. Even if members of my department didn't agree with everything I did, they knew me as an educator who was acting in good faith, trying to do what is best for our students. So all I had to do to get them to take the first steps with me on my Advocacy project to promote a love of reading in our school and community was ask. Some people jumped right into what I was doing and added on with their own ideas, and some just took small steps, but my whole department walked with me. Then, they listened when we talked about how reading workshop changed our classroom practice, and once they saw the good results, others were willing to try it too. I saw first hand how change starts with some small steps and snowballs. Now, I'm in the first year at a new school, a school three times the size of the rural school where I spent my whole career. I'm realizing that the first step, finding allies, is much harder from the place I am in now. My new colleagues are friendly and open, but the key missing factor is my credibility. Because I am new, my ideas don't carry the same weight. The path to successfully changing something in my new situation has about twenty more steps than in my former school, which from this vantage point is looking like a long haul. I even question myself-who am I to suggest a change in this new school? Why do I think I could make things better? This is a true slice of life because I don't have an answer that I can put at the end of my blog as a pithy statement. In my slice of life right now, I still figuring it out, making baby steps.
6 Comments
3/3/2019 06:07:03 am
You CAN make a difference. I have no doubt. The fact that you realize the first step is building relationships and trust and credibility is everything. Baby steps. I know you will get there.
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Alaina Feliks
3/4/2019 03:45:48 am
Thank you! I don't think my post conveyed this, but I think it is actually empowering to think of change happening in baby steps. It reminds me that not everything has to happen at once, and that even small actions have meaning.
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3/3/2019 07:59:47 pm
I hear you. You will find your tribe at new school as well. The peers will recognize that you carry weight in gold. Just keep on walking with your head high a little longer.
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Alaina Feliks
3/4/2019 03:46:16 am
Thank you for the encouraging words!
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