Book Study-Change

I'm participating in a book study of Change Leadership by Tony Wagner and Robert Kegan. It has been an interesting read so far. The authors discuss the importance of collaboration and its importance in the area of educators. I feel like my teaching partner and I collaborate every day about what is happening in our rooms. We also have weekly PLC time to discuss issues. Of course we would love more time to collaborate but we will take what we have and use it as best as we can. Another connection came when the authors defined the 7 Disciplines for Strengthening Instruction. Number 4 is "a shared vision of student results." I feel that at our school we do a great job of discussing student progress and tweaking our interventions to match the needs of our students. The authors also emphasize the role of making a commitment to the change and what the competing commitment might be. The competing commitment is what protects us from having to face the fears and discomforts that might come from our commitment to making a change. They emphasize that this isn't something that we probably want to shout out to others but that it is important to find so that we can move forward with the change. It's made me think about the competing commitments I possibly have and how to tackle them in order to make the changes I think are necessary.
I'm one that doesn't fear change but I also don't get really excited about change. I feel like every year of teaching (actually every day) provides change because we are always reflecting on how we taught and how well our students learned. Thinking about change on a larger scale is exciting and a bit overwhelming at the same time. We obviously need changes to occur so that we are teaching students what they actually need to know to go on to college and the work force.
It's exciting though to think about the changes that will occur from our work in this masters program.