In speaking with a fellow educator and friend at the First conference today, we discussed issues between the administrators and teachers in his district. There is a group of people that desire change, and then there is the opposing group that does not. Relationships are shaky. Trust is missing. The climate is dismal. I’ve heard this story so many times.
He also told me that the opposing group often uses the phrase “That’s the way we’ve always done it” as their why. Now, in being a new admin myself and walking into a situation where we needed to make changes in order to move forward, streamline processes and create some consistency across the district, there are very few phrases that will ruffle my feathers faster, with one of the only challengers being “It is what it is”. Maybe whatever the process is has been done for so long that people have forgotten why they do it. Maybe they didn’t know the why to begin with. Or, maybe they are just satisfied and don’t want to deal with the struggle of change, but saying we will continue to do something because that’s the way we have always done it tells me nothing of what the process has to do with supporting student learning.
How much more powerful would it be if the answer to “Why do we do it that way?” would be a list of at least three why’s as to how it is effective and supports learning? If you can’t give the reasons why, then we need to seriously ask, why do we continue to do it that way? But, if I want to make a change and it’s met with solid reasons as to why it is effective, I will take these reasons into consideration as I think about moving forward. I’m not saying that the change won’t still be necessary, but in recognizing the strengths in how it had been done in the past, possibly adjustments to the new process can be made to make it even better.
If we continue to do things we’ve always done, we will continue to create a system that struggles in moving forward.
“That’s the way we’ve always done it.”
“It is what it is.”
Neither tell me a why. Neither are a convincing argument for being satisfied with the status quo.