Crystal Clear

WHY WOULDN'T YOU ENJOY A CLEAR PEPSI? 

In the summer of 1992 while in Grand Rapids, some type of event was going on and Pepsi had a presence. It may have had the presence because they were launching a new product called Crystal Pepsi. A representative gave me a two-liter and we decided to try it out. IT WAS TERRIBLE.

They did what? 

I remember the discussion that ensued revolving around "Why would Pepsi do something so stupid?" and similar thoughts. I was young then, probably 21 or so. I hadn't begun my teaching career yet, but something about Pepsi's attempt was interesting to me. I said something like, "Well, this isn't some strange marketing ploy like New Coke was a few years ago. I think Pepsi really wants to compete in the clear market." I didn't really know why they wanted to but clearly they did ...

What happens when you don't change with the tide? The Packard Corporation form Detroit, Michigan, went out of business. If a car company can fold, even a major department store change like Sears could be in danger. 

Failure Begets Failure

So many companies have failed to try something because they are satisfied with their environment, their status, or whatever. There is a comfort zone. A couple of years later in a college class, we had to research and report on this coming technology called digital photography. If we wanted to at the time, we could buy one from Sony for about $5000. At the time, I later learned, Kodak had the rights to digital photography — apparently, they had some patents — but they did not think that traditional film photography would go away anytime soon. Kodak, a behemoth, has basically not stature today. At one time, they were the powerhouse. When you needed some film, you could go to K–Mart and stock up. You would probably be going to K–Mart forever, anyway. They would never go out of business … I would say that K–Mart relied too much on the Blue Light special and not enough on creating loyal customers.

Ramifications

Now, here we are several years later. Education functions much like it did then, and the previous 50 or 100 years before that. My thesis for today's post is that we have to learn to work with change and make change part of our arena. In the last 20 years, one could argue that a lot has changed in education, but the major change initiatives really have revolved around professional learning, focused curriculum, and (to an extent) technology. At the same time, the worlds of the students and families we serve have drastically changed; that's a conversation for another day,

Professional Learning, Curriculum, Technology

Professional learning has gone from the one shot "sit and get" to somewhat more structured and focused. More schools need to be better about a longterm PD plan; however, it's much better than it used to be. In the early days of my career, the curriculum framework had not yet been released in our state, so we spent a great amount of time "aligning" curriculum using the available sources. Later research by Marzano and others highlighted that most curriculum frameworks would take about 22 or 23 years to cover in a 13–year educational career for a student. Much learning happened, and documents were changed, updated, discarded, etc. Again, we are better with curriculum, but probably no where near where we should be. Finally, many people think that technology has changed education.

Technologically Speaking

Technology has integrated itself into education but it hasn't "changed" education they way it has changed other industries. Keeping, compiling, and sharing grades and other data is much more effective, efficient, and effortless than in the old "do it by hand" days. Systems have made keeping track of student attendance, behavior, and achievement easier. Much, much, much professional learning time has been spent in the areas of word processing (e.g. the Microsoft Office suite), appropriate use of the Internet, and how to effectively use your laptop, as well. Yet, technology has not had the great transformative effect on education. For example, industry has Uber, Airbnb, and every store (digital and mortar) has an app to track all of our shopping habits; education, hasn't flawlessly integrated.

Integrating Change 

I'm not sure why there hasn't been more change regarding the make-up of the school day, the make-up of the school year, the lack of appropriate funding, ways to integrate technology seamlessly into the educational structure, or even more focus put on the value of a quality education. Education is one field that touches the future every day. Our field has to learn to engage in the change process because things are going to change whether education likes it or not. In fact, we only have to begin to "try" some of the change ideas — some will work, others won't. More schools are working in teams of professional learning communities. For many districts, this has changed things greatly. Others have incorporated more career learning. Some schools have tried things that haven't worked. It's okay that things don't work, because we have to get out of our comfort zones. There's no need for change for change sake, but we have seen that things are not working necessarily well in the status quo, so we have to challenge the status quo.