Moving Parts

Sometimes profound learning may be found in the simplest lesson. The context for the lesson I want to share with you now and shared with others earlier today is the School Turnaround Conference convened by the North Carolina Association of School Administrators at the Friday Institute on the NC State University Centennial Campus.

Beyond attending presentations by Dr. Carl Harris, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education; Pat Ashley,  Executive Director of District and School Transformation; and Dr. Bryan Hassel, Co-director of Public Impact, my role was to moderate a panel discussion with superintendents and principal practitioners. By the way, Dr. Treana Atkins-Bowling, Dr. Karla Lewis and The SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro staff is owed a debt of gratitude for sponsoring both Bryan's research presentation and the practitioner panel.

By way of setting the stage for the panel discussion,  I shared with the audience a lesson that I call "Moving Parts." The idea was to underscore the challenge that lay before all who would transform low-achieving schools into high-performance learning organizations. Here's the lesson:

Imagine yourself in a room full of people, tables, and chairs not unlike those you might find in, for example, a conference room. A facilitator asks for eight or nine volunteers to stand up and be part of an experiment. Desiring to advance social science research, the requested number of volunteer-subjects arise.

Once standing, the facilitator asks that each subject, without telegraphing intentions, identify two other subjects from the standing group with whom they will complete a human triangle. He also tells them that they cannot talk. Before stepping aside, the facilitator clarifies subjects' questions and ensures commitment to the vision. He then says, "Go."

What do you think will happen? Can the subjects create the intersecting, interdependent triangles to which they have committed? If they can do it, how long will it take them?

Since seeing the experiment demonstrated at a National Staff Development Council Conference breakout session, I include it in my own teaching. Here's what happens: As if choreographed by unseen hands, subjects move and shift their bodies in a silent dance. Tables and chairs become obstacles not to be defeated but to be worked around.

Peoples' eyes begin to meet and smiles cross their face as they realize they are in another person's intended triangle. Soon there is laughter. Huge adjustments in the beginning become smaller and smaller over time. Every now and then, however, a final half-step tweak stirs a roomful of re-shifting.

In my mind, the experiment is a metaphor for what happens when people engage in school turnaround, district transformation, or any other change initiative that requires commitment and collaboration. Psychologists teach us that humans are essentially self-directed, self-organizing beings who, once they comprehend and commit to the task before them, can accomplish amazing feats, including making triangles with their bodies in a conference room.

Leading school turnaround is more bumble bee than bullet, more dance than footrace. It is a matter of mutual adaption and working within real-life contexts and communities. Like the silent dancers in a conference room, in the end large-scale change occurs one person at a time.

By the way, the answers to the above questions are "yes they can" and "not as long as you might imagine." DO try this at home.