Change. It's Coming.

Change. Change. Change. Change. Isn’t it funny when you read or say something a few times it begins to lose its meaning, becomes a “fake” word? Like those nonsense words we make children read.

I’ve been thinking about change a lot lately, we all do, big changes or little changes. Good and bad. Things that have to change or the things we need to change.

Change is all around us...long summer days to short cold winters...caterpillars to butterflies...characters in a beloved novel...beginning to the end of school...it’s all a tolerable cycle, whether good or bad. Or maybe a pendulum, always making its way back the way it came.

Working in education, we as teachers are faced with change all around us. The student who comes to school out of the blue beside themselves because their life fell apart over the weekend. Or the new rules that came down the pike that put our perfectly planned day into a tizzy. What about the “new kid” that shows up two months into the school year and makes us rethink the immaculate desk arrangement...and then leaves in two months. Change affects us all in different ways. As educators, we have to be flexible for these changes as they affect the way we teach within our classrooms, approach fellow colleagues and even handle students.

As educators working as a team is a must. Everyone from the ground up has to pitch in to help students reach their potential and become successes, throughout many school years and across different campuses. When change affects a team's dynamics, it takes a bit to shake things out and accept the new with the old, and learn to mix them gently and work with where things lie.

For those of us who have learned to deal with change in an efficient manner, kudos to you. For those of us who need a bit to process change and talk it out, kudos to you too! Change is hard whether it comes on slowly or happens overnight. Change is dealt with in a variety of ways and we need to respect and work with all the way change is finally accepted.

Change is inevitable. It has to be. That's how the world goes forward. It's in how you choose to deal with it that matters. And with that, I'll leave you with this,

"When we begin to listen to each other, and when we talk about things that matter to us, the world begins to change. Everyone has the capacity to figure out how to make a difference. Listening and talking to one another heals our divisions and makes us brave." ~Margaret Wheatley "Turning to One Another"