Thursday, March 9, 2017

Ch ch ch ch ch changes (David Bowie)

An open letter to a former student at Woodford House:

Dear Zoe


A big howdy from a REAL New Zealand town. As you turn off State Highway 1 onto State Highway 12 you'll see a sign for Maungaturoto and underneath it is the legend - A REAL NZ town. So it's official.

Mr Semmens for lemons sent me your winning entry in the wide reading standard and I enjoyed, as always, reading your thoughts. In this case - your thoughts about my earlier post on the concept of change.

Change is a BIG thing in my current school. Change is the new normal here. 

Curious thing I've noticed when there is lots of constant change - some people love it and thrive off it (picture me with a cheery thumbs up), a few are resistant (paradoxically - the older, the more resistant, generally speaking), and many go with the flow (Mr Semmens is a great go with the flow exponent).

All this change has been great for me because it means we are all learning at the same time. A few times, I've assumed something has always been done that way but then people quickly set me straight, which is great!

Why? is a great question, Zoe. Why is it done that way? Why don't we...?

What if? is also an excellent question. What if we pulled down those walls? What if we changed the timetable structure?

Most change/decisions start off with a what if or a why.

I urge you to adopt these questions, Zoe. You will be leading change (rather than reacting to someone's imposed change) before you know it.

Anyway, loved your written response to my blog post. Say hi to all my friends at Woodford House and keep reading the blogs!

Love and peace - Purdzilla

2 comments:

Greg Semmens said...

Nice! Zoe just found this, and read it aloud to the class.... :)

Unknown said...

Wow! I've been slacking with keeping up to date with your always insightful blog posts and just came across this! Honoured to get a feature in a post to say the least.