Reading through this article (and processing it as I went), my mind on several occasions wandered to (years’ worth of) professional development opportunities, staff development meetings, teacher inservice days, etc that were interesting, informative, important, and a “hot topic” at the time but that then, as most things tend to do, fizzled out before much time had passed. “The best laid plan…”, right? I think that the big “problem” with a lot of topics is lack of “buy-in”... How many people actually look forward to being asked to do something else/new/different/on top of what they already do? Not nearly as many as those people that drag their heels to the auditorium grumbling under their breath things that I won’t type here. It’s unfortunate because all trainings, etc are meant to help us all to be better humans and help our kiddos to be better humans. This article identifies this, too, with the traps and tropes that it mentions. I hope that, in our heart of hearts, every one of us wants to “do right” by others but that, maybe?, our levels of stress and obligation prevent us from always “doing right.” As we are asked to “do better” we need to actually buy-in and -both- want to “do better” AND do it well and do it right… we can’t just “want” it to happen in order for it to be successful, it needs to be a concerted effort. It’s a long, steep climb… but I’m hopeful that we’ll get there someday soonish.
