{"id":5979,"date":"2013-04-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/how-many-conversations\/"},"modified":"2020-02-27T14:45:38","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T19:45:38","slug":"how-many-conversations","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/how-many-conversations\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Conversations?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>Systems consultant Judith Enright<\/a>, in the Maine Center for Best Practice video on the Western Maine Education Collaborative<\/a>, reminds us, \u201cchange happens one conversation at a time.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a truism, of course, but in our work promoting competency-based learning, it has met its moment.\u00a0 Again and again \u2013 in the case study work<\/a> I\u2019ve done, or in my own experience talking to teachers, parents and education leaders \u2013 I find that the real work of cultural transformation occurs when one person talks to another honestly, and a relationship is forged.\u00a0 One conversation at a time.<\/p>\n

Which means a lot of conversations.<\/p>\n

A colleague of mine once gave a talk to 350 faculty, and, afterward, five teachers approached him.\u00a0 He talked with each one, working with them to relate the general ideas of his talk to the specific circumstance of their classrooms.\u00a0 This wasn\u2019t because these five teachers couldn\u2019t have made the cognitive connections on their own, or because they needed to be spoon fed, or because they needed to have their own personal complaints validated by \u201cthe expert.\u201d\u00a0 They were suspicious.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t \u201cget it\u201d– in the sense that they weren\u2019t convinced.\u00a0 They needed the conversation to move forward in this learning and this work.\u00a0 They are not unusual.\u00a0 This is not evidence of a \u201cproblem.\u201d\u00a0 This is a normal part of the change process.<\/p>\n

Learning has an affective element to it \u2013 we all know this \u2013 especially learning around issues of value.\u00a0 Folks being asked to learn a new way of conceptualizing fundamental truths of their work, lives, and profession need to be able to sort through the knotty \u201cyeah, buts\u201d and \u201cthat\u2019s crazy\u201d and \u201cwhat does that mean\u201d and \u201cthis is frightening\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t tell me I\u2019ve been doing it wrong all this time.\u201d\u00a0 The person who could encounter these issues without having a conversation (or a hundred) would, by my reckoning, be quite rare.\u00a0 People need to have these conversations, and we have to be willing to have them.<\/p>\n

How many conversations?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the question that comes up when the \u201cchange happens one conversation at a time\u201d line is deployed — and it\u2019s a valid one.\u00a0 At the Nellie Mae<\/a> Learning 2030 Conference in Wellesley, MA, I found myself intruding into a conversation discussing this very thing.\u00a0 How many conversations do we have to have?\u00a0 Is there a way to foresee the workload we\u2019re taking on?<\/em>\u00a0 One of the conversants referred to my case study work.\u00a0 What had I found?<\/p>\n

In all of the districts I\u2019ve studied, even those that have been at this for years, the conversations continue to be ubiquitous and ongoing.\u00a0 The change began with conversations \u2013 in leadership teams, at conferences, in faculty meetings, in the teacher\u2019s room, in professional development, in the hallway, in the parking lot \u2013 and the conversations don\u2019t ever slow down.\u00a0 For these districts, conversation isn\u2019t a way of learning a thing, figuring it out, or solving it.\u00a0 A<\/em> conversation might end, but conversation<\/em> does not.\u00a0 It\u2019s a way of negotiating complex situations and relations \u2013 and there are always complex situations and relations to negotiate.\u00a0 Conversation is a way for an organization to be and thrive in a complex world.\u00a0 It is what drives a district to a culture of continuous improvement.<\/p>\n

This, of course, dodges the question of the conversants at Wellesley.\u00a0 Once you start the conversations \u2013 if you embrace this work \u2013 the conversations don\u2019t stop.\u00a0 But even assuming the conversation will continue on without us, at what point can we say, as change agents, \u201cOur work here is done?\u00a0 We have made the change?<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 There is no easy answer.<\/p>\n

Ronald A. Heifetz, in his masterpiece entitled (appropriately enough) Leadership Without Easy Answers<\/em>, captures this dilemma better than any writer I\u2019ve read.\u00a0 Any educational leader advocating the shift to competency-based learning would do themselves an enormous favor in reading it.\u00a0 There will come a time when a school can be said to have \u201cbecome\u201d a competency-based system \u2013 or, in Heifetz\u2019 examples, the Civil Rights Act will pass, or troops will be withdrawn from Vietnam \u2013 but it\u2019s impossible to mark that moment in advance.\u00a0 Until it happens, the educational leader is compelled to keep the conversation going.\u00a0 Until the conversation is done, don\u2019t make decisions that foreclose possibilities.\u00a0 Don\u2019t act in a way that drives folks away from the conversation.\u00a0 Don\u2019t allow folks the opportunity to abstain from the conversation.\u00a0 As leader, you can frame the conversation (\u201cIdentify the adaptive challenge\u201d), you can regulate distress, you can direct attention to the specific issues that need it, but, sooner than later, you have to give the work back to the people living the change.<\/p>\n

Change happens one conversation at a time.\u00a0 There are many conversations.\u00a0 The people living the change have to have those conversations.<\/p>\n

\n

Gary Chapin is a Senior Associate at the Center for Collaborative Education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","mapsvg_location":""},"legacy_category":[99],"issue":[370,368],"location":[94],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Many Conversations? - Aurora Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/how-many-conversations\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Many Conversations? 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