Time and Priorities

"Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."
--H. Jackson Brown


Over the years I have seen a fair number of “changes” in education. Most of them required very little effort honestly. Textbook adoptions were the biggest issue for most teachers. The hours teachers put into complying with a publisher’s program which resulted in kids still just reading and answering questions was time wasted! It was a misplaced priority. To really do something to change education and meet the needs of kids requires real change, real effort, and a deprogramming of factory thinking. 

Recently my school district launched an initiative to “Change the way we do school.” While this is a district-wide push, there would also be a small group of teachers who would be paid to meet and help chart the course to 21st Century learning. The information nights about this were sparsely attended. People complained about the shortness of notice to apply for the team. People wanted to know where the money was coming from. All the usual complaining and whining so common to education. I sat through the presentation and I was thrilled to see such a large institution embracing the journey in a way I did not expect. 

The previous leadership in our district was obsessed with compliance and franchising our schools to the point we referred to them as Mc Middle Schools. Everyone was required to use the same materials. Math teachers were required to be on a certain page in the textbook by a certain date. Innovation was stifled because factory thinking and compliance to rules was king. Words like risk were taboo. Ten years of wasted efforts. A decade down the drain in an effort to shore up the past practices. Meanwhile, the rest of the world moved forward. My district is very far behind.

Now we have new leadership with a vision. To my district’s credit, the target for this new initiative isn’t defined at all. The goal is to move forward and improve education and learning for all kids. In a sense, move away from what we have always done because the world has changed. Anyone who is trying to embrace 21st Century pedagogy would have been thrilled by the stated effort. Our superintendent even used the word RISK. I expected lightning to strike him dead! It was great to see excitement by the teachers who attended. Of course there were those who left and commented, “That was vague.”

The factory mindset of teachers is constantly looking for prescriptions. The profession has been poisoned by compliance thinking and it is going to be very hard to innovate in some classrooms. Perhaps like the children of Israel wandering in the desert, a generation is going to have to pass on before real progress can be made. I hope not.

One thing is for certain. If we don’t change our priorities, we will be wasting time. And when people gripe that they have no time, I think about all the other innovators and game changers that came before us. They had the same amount of hours and they made a difference. We have excuses not to change. “I don’t have time” is a very telling statement. It really means, “It isn’t a priority.”

You have plenty of time if you have the right priorities.