The Beginning of the Beginning!

Ready, Aim, Shoot NOT Shoot, Ready, Aim!
Many times great thinking and change initiatives have been rolled out and made operational without setting the stage or building capacity. Not laying the foundation or addressing the human emotions change brings creates false starts, wastes resources, and kills momentum. Change takes courage and energy.  It means building trust and relationships, creating urgency and casting a vision of what is to be done.

Emotional Energy = Change 
It takes a significant emotional experience to generate enough energy to cause a person to change.

This significant emotional experience can be something positive like getting married or the birth of a child. Or it could be something bad like the death of a loved one or getting fired from a job. Bottom line is, the event has to be significant enough to generate the energy to cause a person, or an organization, to reflect, rethink and go in a different direction. 

In managing complex change the pieces all need to be in place: Vision, Skills, Incentives, Resources, and Action Place. If one of the pieces are missing it causes a human emotion. Without vision you have confusion. Without providing training to acquire new skills you have anxiety and fear. Without urgency and incentives there is resistance to move forward. Frustration happens if the resources are not in place and without actions plans there are false starts. 

100 Days of Fact Finding 

Happening now at TCS, through February 8, the focus and priority is assessing current conditions, build capacity for change and begin to define "mile markers" to make the District Mission statement operational.  THINK, LEAD and SERVE

"Wildcat Well #3 roughnecks" (teachers) drilled last Friday, January 4. Representatives from the elementaries, middle schools, high school as well as the preschool, 24 teachers, collaborated, captured and shared thinking digitally. Virtual conversations amongst participants continued days after the "face to face" meeting. 

Dr. Trace Pickering, executive director and co-founder of IOWA BIG, Cedar Rapids, Iowa  and Travis Lape, Innovative Program Director for the Harrisburg School District, Sioux Falls South Dakota video conferenced with the roughnecks. Dr. Pickering shared project based programing for secondary students at IOWA BIG and Mr. Lape explained Harrisburg's Freedom Elementary Schools where learning is individualized on mastery and ability, not age. It's EXCITING to see what is going on "over the horizon" and to add to our TCS design thinking.

Learning Transformed written by Eric Sheninger and Tom Murray, is a powerful blueprint for transforming teaching and learning.  Going forward it will also be part of the TCS design thinking and serve as a base "playbook".  TCS has a growing relationship with the authors. Mr. Murray video chatted via SKYPED in November with TCS School Board members when they were creating the Mission Statement and Mr. Sheninger has connected with TCS educators at local conferences in Murfreesboro. 

Building capacity for change means moving from isolated silos to building relationships and outward networking. It means exploring over the horizon to bring new knowledge and findings back to Tullahoma to add to our design thinking.  

This is "The Beginning of the Beginning!"

This is an EXCITING time at Tullahoma City Schools. 

Be sure to follow the adventure on Twitter at #TCSPublic.