It's interesting how the more some things change there are still some things that stubbornly remain the same. I was in a day-long professional development session recently and observed an unbelievable amount of what I call "half-glassed" thinking."If only ..."
"We can't be expected to accomplish anything when ..."
"The problem is that ..."
"They shouldn't ..."
"They should ..." ("They" are almost never identified but are nearly always at fault!)
"If have no control over ..., we can't ..."
This was a tough group because all but a few were glass-half-empty folks. The one or two "half-full" participants tried gamely a few times to look for positives and possibilities, but they were drowned out by a litany of obstacles. Interestingly, the group represented a range from young teachers to those with lots of experience.
Now I'm no Pollyanna, but I have a hard time imagining what it must be like to focus on obstacles and use them as excuses rather than approaching them as challenges to overcome or work around.
But what do we do about those negative influences? Give up on them? Ignore them? I don't think so. I do think we need to keep the conversation with them going whenever possible and keep it as positive as possible. An even better approach is to find opportunities to share successes of colleagues that do overcome the obstacles and to share the results in terms of student engagement and achievement. Best yet is to share local examples in our own schools and district. We have begun collecting video and audio clips of such successes in our district that might be useful for this purpose. Capturing and cataloging success, then sharing it as often as possible might just be a powerful antidote for half-glassed thinking.
