We are living in a tumultuous time for education. If you’re feeling more exhausted and frustrated than ever before, you are not alone. The COVID pandemic has created a marathon of emergencies and urgent initiatives, leaving educators and ed leaders stretched thin under continuous stress. As consultants to many of these leaders and school teams, we’ve heard many educators question how they can advance through this moment to create change that is both sustainable and transformative in the long-term.
With the benefit of our “bird’s-eye view” across teams, and our own experiences as education system leaders developing new models and building resources for schools during the pandemic, we believe that now is the time to work together as practitioners, support providers, and leaders to build capacity and ensure schools are prepared and supported – now and into the future. This vision isn’t impossible, and we wanted to share our perspectives on ways leaders can take on system transformation without “drying out the well” (so to speak) even more. Over the course of the next four blogs in this series, we aim to provide resources to help teams translate their vision into a sustainable reality.
Each blog in this series will focus on one of four steps we’ve found essential to sustainable change and will include concrete, tangible resources to start the work within your own context.
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Step 2. Learning to Sprint: Leveraging small wins along your road toward large-scale change
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Step 3. Powering Up: Developing a team focused on collective action
- Step 4. Championing Sustainable Change: Creating systems for leaders, teams, and their initiatives
Across these posts, we’ll try to offer advice and questions that support you to reflect on where your system currently is and where you hope to be in the future. This will help to shine a light on how to best leverage outside resources, understand your personal context, and begin the work with your team to support long-term change. Check back to the TLA Blog on Thursday, June 2 to dig into “Step 1: Designing Collective Futures.” If you have any questions or additional strategies to share in the meantime, please reach out to samantha@learningaccelerator.org.
Thrive is a nonprofit consulting firm composed of education leaders and coaches who are dedicated to sustainable change and transformative learning.
