Making History

As we have worked our way through the first two days of Summercore 2009, I have been thinking about change.  In some ways, like Steve B. says in Chapter 8, I thrive on change.  But my love of change (the Lexus) is tempered by my love of many older things (those olive trees are great), and my capacity to change myself, or the way I work, seems very different for different things.

I love watching my collegues find new things to bring change to their work, because although there are certainly frustrations with all new learning, there are so many wonderful “ah-ha” moments that make up for any frustrations.  I saw a lot of that this afternoon.

My questions for myself have to do with big changes versus small changes in our curriculum.  I think we are, as a school culture, excellent at small or even medium sized changes.  At the level of the individual course, we are all constantly redesigning, evaluating, fine-tuning, and improving what we do, how we teach, and what we teach.  We do it almost unconsciously, I think, and it keeps us interested all the time.

But when it comes to organizing the questions around big changes, or small things that seem big, I am not so sure we are as nimble or thoughtful as we might be.  I was thinking today about all the very practical technical knowledge we get in summercore, and where is it in the Castilleja curriculum that students are getting that stuff.  Without computer classes, they have to learn about file sizes, the rule of three for saving, and all sorts of basic good computing practices in their classes, but we don’t really have a system for making sure that happens.  Don’t get me wrong, I think many of our students  do know how to work very effectively with technology, and they do learn many excellent skills integrated into all kinds of classes, but do we know that they all know what they need?  I am afraid not.  How do we fix that?

Personally, I have been thinking about change.  What is it that made me finally make a change I have known for years was needed?  I lost weight, and have seriously been exercising, now with the goal of running the Nike Marathon in October.  That’s right, me, running a marathon.  Who would have thought?  There are powerful personal things that drive an individual to change.  What drives an institution to make change in thouhtful ways, rather than reactive ways?  What do we ask students to do to bring change in their lives? Do we try to teach them not just what to change but how to change?

Many more questions than answers tonight.