There's a revolution underway -- and no, I don't mean in Egypt or Tunisia.
I mean the growing, hopeful, tech-savvy and solution-oriented tribe of educators who attended last weekend's EduCon 2.3 in Philadelphia, an annual event that bills itself as "both a conversation and a conference" and a place where people come together "both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools."
Hosted by the Science Leadership Academy -- an inquiry-driven, project-based high school focused on 21st century learning (what a concept!) -- EduCon was as much a revival meeting as it was a conference. To spend time there was to bear witness to the development of a different sort of tribe: A confederacy of educators from across the country united by inquiry, connected by social media and committed to solving the intractable riddle of public education.
See for yourself -- scroll through the #EduCon tweets -- and you'll find two things in abundance: a communal language of potential and partnership and a rapid-fire establishing of new relationships based on possibility and hope.
This is, in short, the essential recipe for bringing about a paradigm shift in any profession or organization -- and it's painfully rare in contemporary conversations about public education. As Dave Logan explains in his must-read book "Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization":
"Tribes emerge from the language people use to describe themselves, their jobs and others."
When a person looks out at the world, he sees it filtered through a screen of his words and this process is as invisible to him as water is to a fish... Instead of people using their words, they are used by their words and this fact is unrecognized."
Logan goes on to characterize five tribal "stages" -- informal groupings in society, a field and/or an organization -- based on an individual's predominant worldview (as constructed through the language s/he uses and the types of relationships s/he forms). The extreme stages range from a complete sense of hopelessness about the world and its possibilities ("life sucks"), to a transcendent space of endless possibility and collaboration ("life is great"). And, of course, the bulk of us fall somewhere in between.
I share this because I was struck by the clear contrast in tone between tweets from EduCon attendees and tweets from the leading voices of the two main Edu-Tribes when I returned from EduCon -- also known as the "reformers" and the "status quo-ers," although I tend to think of them more as the Old and the New Guard.
As Logan would explain it, the EduCon Tribe is operating at the crossroads of Stages Four and Five. While its members pay almost no attention to organizational or regional boundaries, the only thing that matters is that people contribute meaningfully to the discussion. The language of this tribe is hopeful, solution-oriented and obsessed with things like collaboration and communication. And its members are all aligned around EduCon's five guiding principles:
The power of these principles is key. A high-functioning tribe always identifies and leverages a core set of values and uses them as guideposts to align around a noble cause. That clarity, however, is a contrast with the Old & New Guards, still engaged in bitter warfare to influence the mainstream media and shape the Obama administration's federal education policy priorities -- albeit at slightly different cultural stages.
To borrow Logan's terminology, the Old Guard is operating at a Stage Two level -- most simply described as a "My Life Sucks" worldview. Logan describes people in this cultural stage as:
"Passively antagonistic; they cross their arms in judgment yet never really get interested enough to spark any passion. Their laughter is quietly sarcastic and resigned. The Stage Two talk is that they've seen it all before and watched it fail. The mood that results is a cluster of apathetic victims, united in their belief that someone or something is holding them down and standing in their way."
Any of us who live and work in education have seen (or been in) this stage throughout our careers. On Twitter, it's reflected in a lot of negative, oppositional language: words like "skewer," "dupe" and "debunk." And in articles and Op-Eds, it's reflected in pieces that are primarily about what the other side is doing wrong -- and only secondarily about what its own side is doing right.
Meanwhile, the New Guard is primarily made up of people operating at Stage Three -- most simply described as the "I'm great and you're not" worldview. As Logan explains:
"The gravity that holds people at Stage Three is the addictive 'hit' from winning, besting others, being the smartest and most successful."
Not surprisingly, the New Guard uses words like "innovation," "scalable" and "results." Its members love the spirit of programs like "Race to the Top" and because they over rely on intellect and the technocratic answer, their characterizations of schools and schooling can come to sound dehumanizing for adults and children alike.
To be sure, these descriptions cannot provide full accounts of any individual or tribe. All of us defy such efforts at easy explanation and the current debates about public education cannot simply be reduced to whether we're pro- or anti-union, reform or status quo or old guard and new guard. Still, in Logan's descriptions I see sufficient echoes of the world I inhabit and the conversations I observe, and I've become even more aware of the words I use and the types of relationships I form. For me, that means refusing to contribute to the cynicism and hopelessness of Stage Two and insisting on an expansion of the "coldly cognitive" worldview of Stage Three.
I want more inquiry. I want less demonizing of those I disagree with. I want more community. In short, I want my EduCon and I want it all the time! Who's with me?
Follow Sam Chaltain on Twitter: www.twitter.com/samchaltain
I see education reform as including all these things . . . and I see folks who fight against these things as a common enemy of teachers, administrators and students. I do sometimes see it as a war and I am prone to smug verbal smack downs. But there is are real enemies of public education in schools -- the do nothings and the miscreants and those who fight to preserve their right to be there - who harm students as well as thier teacher-colleagues. They need to be driven out from among us.
Sam says that the folks at Educon "transcend" the old and new guard. The new guard is stuck at level 3 -- and loves Race to the Top. The "tribe" represented by Educon (and a much broader community than just the 600 at the conference) is closing in on level 5.
[Stage Five: Tribes that attain this rare level are characterized by a sense of "innocent wonderment." They apply themselves to the creation of things no one has dreamed of and are frequently incredibly successful. These tribes say that "Life is great."]
I can say that I agree almost completely with the author...of course, I would - I was there. My only disagreement is that he forgot about the large contingent of Canadians!
One minor disagreement: we aren't necessarily talking public education; we are simply talking education.