The ‘whoosh' of a great training day is a rare and valuable thing. If you don't catch it and use it, then it will sparkle only for a short time. Classroom practice can be transformed overnight. Previously cantankerous colleagues suddenly appear at their classroom doors, positive referrals fly Poppinesque down the corridors and screaming rows have been replaced with startlingly reasonable conversations. Children look oddly at their teachers wondering just how long it will be before the INSET medicine wears off. Sustaining cultural change needs more than just a few one offs.
Training that is interspersed with 30-day action research projects allows new strategies to be properly examined and developed in context and in real time. Driven by the middle leadership, the projects produce highly creative and innovative practice. The attention to detail is welcome by everyone and whispered conversations are liberated from the dark corners of the staff room and forced into the open. As data from the individual projects is shared, staff see the seeds of change and the possibility of having the college that they always wanted.
30 action research projects change habits for the long term. Formerly entrenched colleagues have an excuse to take a risk, to try and do things a bit differently. Just for 30 days. Of course the truth about transformational change is that it is the behaviour of the adults that must be changed before the students will change. When adult behaviour changes for 30 days it becomes normalized, habitual, routine. A faculty, a department or a whole college can create a seismic shift in just 30 days.
What will you change in your teaching in the next 30 teaching days?
What will you try to change in your own behaviour ?