If you are gonna talk the talk…

You better walk the walk. In other words, if I walk down the street looking for a candy store, see a candy store sign, and go inside…and find a hardware store. That is a false advertising. The store just wants to lure you in with a false store front.

Every, single day…many school systems have thousands of students and staff as vocal eye witnesses on the “inside.” They know how many assessments are given, and they experience the various forms of instructional delivery. If the sign on the outside says experiential learning, but hard core, data accountability is going on inside….there are thousand of witnesses who will report the disconnect between reality and what is advertised.

Many people are exceptionally good at spotting counterfeit motives. They are also smart enough to know that tigers don’t often change their stripes. For example, here is a question to ask. Are teachers being placed into tiered accountability groups? If so, that is just gross. I wouldn’t work in a place like that, and if you find yourself in a place like that as a teacher…run!!! At what point, do middle management personnel (from any given central office) get held accountable when their support intervention measures run afoul? Instructional design teams and central office personnel can’t keep blaming building administrators if their intervention ideas fail at the building level.

Many teachers will soon return to school for initial meetings. If those meetings are predominately about data accountability, then experiential learning has been set aside yet again. Great instructional delivery cultures take years to implement and only weeks to destroy. If the focus is building lessons which are teaming with critical thinking skills, nearly every discussion will be about lesson design and assessment grounded in real-life. Anything else is just window dressing. It reminds me that every tree will be known by the fruit that it bears. To quote a colleague, “Don’t look at what people say. Look at what they do.”

In closing, I am reminded of the movie, Catch Me If You Can(2002). Frank Abagnail. played by Leonardo DiCaprio, takes on multiple identities in order to steal people’s money. It was all a series of scams. He relied on the trust of the consumer and their lack of education in catching him until it was too late. He would take-on an entirely new identity such as an airline pilot, or a lawyer, or a doctor. Underneath he was none of the above.

So, if you are gonna talk the talk…you better walk the walk. Why? At some point, people are going to see any potential scam for what it is.

More later….

Licensed thumbnail photo by Alona Horkova

ProTip: How awesome would it be to hear Frank Abagnail at a beginning of the year convocation? He could teach us how to spot a fake…Plus, he would just be an interesting person to hear speak. Think about the great information teachers would take back to their schools and share with students.