{"id":568,"date":"2021-03-27T13:53:07","date_gmt":"2021-03-27T20:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/?p=568"},"modified":"2021-03-27T13:54:17","modified_gmt":"2021-03-27T20:54:17","slug":"lrnt-525-final-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/lrnt-525-final-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"LRNT 525 | Final Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nAs per a post on Christopher Rowe’s blog<\/a>, I will not be writing in academic prose because I want this to be more of a discussion than a statement.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Well, it seems another course is down, and the more I think about this, the more I feel I have had some dramatic change in my view of leadership in education. I have read more books by Kouzes and Ponser than I care to admit and to be honest, I have found myself somewhat disheartened by my realizations throughout the course. While I have always understood that change is hard, I have taken a more granular look at it and found that it is really hard.<\/span><\/p>\n

So hard, in fact, that change resistance is engrained in societal norms. A recent discussion with my superintendent confirmed my fears that real change only occurs when key individuals retire or move on. Comparing the average professional lifespan of an educator, it becomes obvious why K-12 institutions struggle to keep up with modern changes beyond the superficial levels we see now. I am starting to understand why our good friend mother nature put a natural expiry date on us, and I shudder to think of the world if this did not exist.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, this leads me back to a critical realization I had as a kid, that life is defined by key moments, and change can be relatively impactful during these moments. Nevertheless, this means that anyone wanting to have an impactful change in K-12 needs to grind out the years until the right moment occurs. And this grind is not the simply show up to work and do your thing type of grind. No sir! It is a show-up to work; make waves to differentiate yourself while at the same time not too high of waves to create too many enemies that you are a suitable candidate for one of these moments. Then, it becomes time to pray. Pray that you created enough impact to be noticed (but not too noticed) that your current leader selects you as a suitable candidate to incite your brand of change.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then the real work begins, and still, you need to deal with hierarchal social structures that will undoubtedly view a methodological change to education as a threat to their status. Thus you play politician, convince the right people to believe in you (and I am sure you noticed I didn’t say to believe in the change itself here) enough to risk a deviation from the norm. And still… you have a very low chance of success. You risked your credibility (which is everything in education) for the slim chance to have an impact.<\/span><\/p>\n

It seems like a huge gamble, and sometimes I question the sanity of even attempting it. However, I am pretty good with numbers and meta-game most things, so maybe I can swing something in my favour. Plus, the alternative is to grind life away, and I cannot accept that. So has my view on leadership on education change? Well, duh, of course, it has. It changed from the idea of an influential person standing against the tide to a mostly insane gambler willing to risk it all. But hey, I think you need to be a little crazy to change the world, so maybe this is just a little bit more realistic.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As per a post on Christopher Rowe’s blog, I will not be writing in academic prose because I want this to be more of a discussion than a statement. Well, it seems another course is down, and the more I think about this, the more I feel I have had some dramatic change in my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt525"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0158\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}