Falling Out

I follow many good blogs, but I don't keep current with reading all of them.  (There are only so many hours in the day.)  There is one blog, however, that I read faithfully every day:  Seth Godin's Blog.  When asked what his occupation is, Mr. Godin replies, "Teacher."  However, his posts aren't specifically written for teachers, and are often more business related.  That being said, I have found that many of his ideas are pertinent to education.

A couple of months ago, he wrote a post called "Falling Out". Here is the entire post:

"The hard part isn't coming up with a new idea.

The hard part is falling out of love with the old idea.

That's why editing work is so difficult.  In order to make the new thing, to make the old thing better, you need to destroy it first.

Situation switching, acting as if, loving the idea enough to sketch it out and then caring enough to stop loving it... that's where the tension often lies."

This post helped me to pause and reflect on my work with coaching teachers.  How often do I see teachers doing the same activities year after year?  Even when I share some newer, maybe even better ideas with them, I often hear "The old ways just work." The hard part is falling out of love with the old idea.  So maybe the reason that teachers are hesitant to try new ways of teaching is not that they think that the new ideas are bad, but that they're not quite ready to let the old ones go.