Читать книгу Breakthrough Leadership - Alan M. Blankstein - Страница 19

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Deeper questions are also addressed in coming chapters about the value of grades, “catching up” when actually everyone is “behind,” and how to act on our collective understanding that students’ most common complaint about school is that it’s “boring” (Michael Fullan, personal communication, April 10, 2020). This sentiment has been fueled by a testing regimen that has consistently disadvantaged certain groups of students, that is not currently valid for any student, and whose future value can be more carefully considered at this juncture.

▸ A modern education should be preparing students for transfer—to be able to apply their learning within, and across, disciplines. We currently focus excessively on “covering” content and preparing students for multiple-choice, standardized tests. Those are narrow and impoverished educational goals. Instead, we should be preparing today’s learners to deal with unpredictable opportunities and challenges . . . now more than ever. (Jay McTighe, personal communication, May 11, 2020)

Both processes for advancing these conversations toward action, and examples of such visionary actions underway in schools and districts, await the reader. We now have a once-in-a-century opportunity to create a “cure” for inequity. This will be neither an easily attained nor a foregone conclusion to the story. The history of the underserved gaining access to true decision-making power, even over their own lives, is fraught. The use of breakthrough leadership is meant to provide both the best practices underway to address current inequities and a powerful guiding light for changing the conditions leading to them.

Many have heard the story of the wise old man and the mischievous boys. One day, a mischievous group of boys were idly looking for something to do when they saw an old man sitting on a park bench. He had the reputation of being the wisest man in town. The boys plotted to prove the old man unwise. They caught a bird that had been trapped in a bush. They said to one another, “Let’s hide it behind our back, take it to the old man, and ask him if it is alive or dead. If he says it is dead, we will show him the living bird. It he says it is alive, we will smother it until it is dead. Either way, we will prove him wrong.” So, the mischievous boys approached the wise old man, and told him they had a bird behind their back. They asked him, “Is the bird dead or alive?” The wise old man responded, “His life is in your hands.”

We have an opportunity to address a crisis beyond COVID-19 that can’t be ignored or explained away. The decision to act is in our collective hands. The possibilities and opportunities to transform schools to meet the needs of every student stand before us.