Roland Barth (1991) asks important questions to teachers and school leaders in regards to school restructuring:
- What is the reasoning driving change at your school?
- Do you believe in the need for change in your school?
- Are you prepared to make profound changes in your own assumptions and practices?
- Do you believe in your own and your school's ability to change?
- Do you have the skill and will to work in a team as needed to affect change?
- How can you become an insightful observer in your own school?
- Do you have the capacity for creativity and innovation in response to critical evaluation?
- How well can you sustain the drive for ongoing change?
- How much are you prepared to take risks?
Despite its bureaucratic, tectonic, and remote sound, restructuring is an individual as well as a collective and institutional matter. A sample of one is considered a shaky construct in the research community. Similarly, each of us may feel inconsequential as an agent of serious change in our school. But we should take heart and draw strength from Eliot Wigginton of Foxfire, who, in a recent letter to me expressing some discouragement, concluded, "I draw hope from the knowledge that even a tiny insect can make its presence felt in a dramatic way to a very large animal." We can work to change the embedded structures so that our schools become more hospitable places for student and adult learning. But little will really change unless we change ourselves. Let go of the trapeze. Think otherwise. Be come an independentv ariable. Lick the envelope. Bell the cat. Fly the cage. Make your presence felt. Leave your mark on your school -and have some fun -while this window of opportunity is admitting fresh breezes.
Barth, R. (1991). Restructuring schools: Some questions for teachers and principals. Phi Delta Kappan, 73(2), 123–128.