What 2 things resonated with you in chapters 4-6?
What 1 question do you have about the chapters?
When reading The Fifth Disciple so much of what Senge says translates into schools in my head. As I read this week’s chapters it was hard to pick out just two things that spoke to me but as I reviewed everything, I realized that “Seeing Circles of Causality” applied to school on multiple levels. In addition, the concept of “Dividing an elephant in half does not produce two small elephants” also made me think of many of our schools today.
Schools are constantly changing. Each year, teachers get a new class. In that class, students are rearranged into different groups, the content taught is different, the behaviors and the expectations are different. Not only in classrooms but also as a whole school there may be changes. Sometimes it’s administration, sometimes it’s central office, sometimes it’s just the classroom teachers. Schools at their core are full of change. However, sometimes with all the change that is going on, it’s important to look at and understand not only what is being changed and how to change it, but why. Senge said that “...individuals, teams, and organizations need to see beyond events and into the forces that shape change” (2006, p. 74). Every decision causes a ripple effect. It is practically impossible to foresee every result, but in seeing that “reality is made up of circles” we can understand why to make the decisions we make, why to make the changes that are needed. I feel as if we start to really understand that every change we make sets in motion both a cause and an effect, we can make better decisions to benefit our students.
One of the better decisions we can make to benefit both our students and our teachers is to limit the amount of “things” happening in our school days. I taught at a school where a new principal came in and she had previously served on a school improvement board for our school. One of her biggest comments had been there are too many “programs” happening at the school. Students were rotating to reading interventions, they were pulled into required small groups for a specific program during the ELA block, they were given 3-5 different computer programs that they had to have a certain number of minutes on each day. The teachers were asked to do a different program or project or something every year, without anything from the previous year being taken off of their plate. It was all very overwhelming and hard to keep up with. The teachers and the students were going in so many different directions when the new principal came in that nothing was getting accomplished. It was just as Senge described it, “you don’t have two small elephants then; you have a mess” (2006, p. 67). He also describe the mess as, “a complicated problem where there is no leverage to be found because the leverage lies in the interactions that cannot be seen from looking only at the piece you are holding” (2006, p. 67).
When the new principal came in, she had already taken a hard look at all the pieces and determined what was critical for the success of the students, and wiped out the rest. It was a good reset year because we took the time to focus on our students’ needs and took the time to focus on what we needed to do to truly be effective with the pieces that we did still have in place. Everyone was learning and everyone was given the chance to be successful. From there she continued to add to what was now a relatively solid foundation to provide continued growth.
Since I do try to apply everything I’m reading to a school setting, I’m reading about the different diagrams and I’m curious which one really suites a school? Or do they all in some form or fashion? I just can’t make the alignment between my role as a leader and how to best help my school (now or in the future) from these diagrams.
Are we a systems diagram where we’re looking at the desired achievement and how to “fill” the students with knowledge and experiences as they grow with us? Are we a reinforcing circle diagram? We teach the content, they learn the content, and if they pass the assessment, we teach more content? Perhaps we are a balancing circle diagram. The students come to us with a certain amount of knowledge, we assess to figure out what they know and we teach or challenge depending on the student, and then everything is balanced in that at least everyone should know the basic level of content taught? Could we even be a delay diagram? Students come to us, not knowing a significant amount but due to standards, we are aware of what they should know by the end of the year. They come in and we figure out where on the spectrum the students are, we adjust our teaching and the content so that students can grasp what we’re teaching in their own way, and then if we are lucky, we are successful. Another question...are we applying these diagrams to individual students, whole classes, whole grade levels, or whole schools? I will admit, my head is swimming.
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