Yesterday I talked about the calendar-based challenges to making substantial change to schools or instruction in the first four months of the school year. Jumping from back to school warmup to the monthly buildup and physical and emotional disruption of the three major holidays, there is a constant subtle (and not so subtle) gravitational force holding us to earth and our comfortable patterns.
So after the new year should be a perfect time to start new, right? Well, the atmosphere does shift, but not in a way that is conducive to innovation. Despite the fact that the majority of the school year remains, despite the start of a new semester, my experience is that January starts the long beginning of the end of the year and anticipation of the next. Events for graduates start early, signaling to all that the end is near. In the world of Catholic schools, January marks the opening of enrollment season for the following year. It isn't long before meetings start taking the tone of planning, rather than starting or maintaining new ideas in the current year. Excitement grows not so much for what we are doing, but for the new ideas for next year…next year when we will really change things.
To be fair, many great teachers and administrators do manage to buck these seasonal gravitational forces. I also don't want to suggest that the daily and seasonal disruptions to “normal” class are a bad thing. However, when we go from year to year wondering why that program never got started, or why we end up doing the same things in the same ways, we have to recognize that it isn't all about us…the callender conspires against us.
This of course poses the question of how to fix this problem. It isn't easy, because the seasonal nature of school is integral to what it is. Many schools experimented with year-round programs in the ‘90s, but most of these have come back to the traditional schedule. It is also very difficult for any school to move unilaterally on this, because parents with kids at multiple schools very much want uniformity of schedule. No matter what the schedule, the current nature of school requires a start and stop as students matriculate. In fact, this grade level orientation may be one of the issues that should be addressed in school reform, but how does a school (or better a school system) stop midstream to make corrections?
It may take a larger disruption than the will to reform to overcome the inertia of the school year. However, until that disruption, be it major change in public opinion, financial collapse of school funding, or alien attack, comes, we need to fight the gravity of the calendar.
As always, I welcome your comments.
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