Leading Change in K-12 Education

            I was quite intrigued at the onset of the title of this unit.  As an administrator who has spent most of her life in K-12 education, this obviously peaks my interest.  In public schools, we often have the top down approach to change in education.  Our ministries often dictate what changes, programs or policies that they feel is necessary.  Although I will always support these changes, they seem to come at a rapid speed only to move to the ‘next best thing’. This can be disheartening for many reasons.  Are the changes based on sound research? Or are they a knee jerk reaction to a political agenda? I have seen both in my 28 years. However, what I have also noticed is that change will not be effective if the school leaders can’t make the stakeholders ‘buy what they are selling’.

            As I reflect back to my own experiences watching the distance learning movement enter my school, I sat in the middle for some time as I listened to adamant educators professing that this would be the demise of education. Teachers would be obsolete, and their jobs were going to be in jeopardy.  While my administrator at the time, was doing her best explaining the advantages our students were being given in taking new courses, learning from different educators, learning from students in other schools all the while advocating for change in a sometimes-hostile climate.  Fear of change was real. My choice was to observe.  I had never experienced distance learning except the archaic send your work via paper route that my students hated, and I hated being responsible to send in for them. 

             I watched; I learned; I jumped at the opportunity when given to teach online and it was because of my principal’s leadership and her excitement and her ability to weather the storm that she was facing from many of the staff.  If she had not had the courage to stand alone and work towards change, I am not sure that I would be the administrator I am today as well.  Someone needs to lead change and show that through positive leadership, it can have a powerful impact on student learning.  If you ask her today if she would change things, I am certain she would.  I actually became her administrator a few years later and was excited to see the changes she was making in her courses.  She became my role model for effective online teaching.  She was one of the emerging leaders in distance learning. “Emerging leaders in distance education not only must be transformational leaders but must also become situational leaders who are innovative visionaries that can motivate, energize, inspire, and induce others to move forward while fully articulating a shared and competitive distance learning agenda” (Portugal, 2006).

           So as a leader, it is my responsibility to affect change.  The TEDTalk video by Tom Chatfield – 7 Ways that Games Reward the Brain, which can be found on the Making the Move to K-12 online Teaching website, cements some of the reasons we have chosen at Maani Ulujuk to use technology/game-based learning into some of our programs. Currently, we provide Minecraft as a learning tool with our students.  It is not just about zombies and fighting in the dark, students are expressing creativity by building objects, learning survival skills – how long can the resources that they have accumulated last? A day? A week?  They learn about farming and responsibly looking after animals; they learn about energy and fossil fuels. They learn mapping skills and building dams.  As Chatfield pointed out in his TEDTalk, it is important for gaming to provide instant feedback, to have both short and long-term goals and to reward effort.  All of this can be found in the Minecraft games.

           We have also incorporated Mathletics into our school. This is a game-based math program where students are math gaming at their level.  Not only are they learning the mathematical concept with their peers, they are doing it at differentiated levels.  Both the Mathletics program and Minecraft have been met by some judgement from other educators.  There has been the concern that we aren’t giving students the proper tools and why would we be encouraging games and play while others are seeing the potential.  So this long convoluted story is meant to illustrate my growth.  As a fence watcher and now advocate for not only distance learning but play and game in school, I have grown.  It is easy to say no to the new technology and so much cheaper! However, we need to meet the growing demands of education and the changing focus that technology is placing on it. 

           Technology is going to continue to grow and develop.  Students are using it at a rapid pace and in many ways are so far ahead of some of their teachers. We may not be able to keep up with all the new educational games or apps or devices, but we can foster change that allows our students to work in the 21^st century and use technological learning to inspire the next generation of learners.  We do need to be transformational leaders.  Our world is transforming rapidly; we cannot have leaders who will not as well. 

           To me, this validates the need for transformational leadership theory.  It is the transformational leader who sees the need for change and thus create a vision that helps foster the change.  Distance education will continue to change as technology will inevitably continue to as well.  We need leaders who can see this and will challenge the status quo to continue to drive distant learning initiatives.