Last month, I explored an aspect of the dilemma of how we can do the best for each and every one of our students.

This month, we will look at a totally different manifestation of the same question. That is the amount of time it takes to develop passionate, trained teachers.

Even when utilizing the best practices of professional development, such as continuous teacher engagement in sessions, one-on-one coaching, and having a pedagogical expert embedded in the school, such training requires an investment of a minimum of two to three years. But how about the kids who are students right now? Can we accelerate the process so that we don’t lose the opportunity for those students to benefit from better trained teachers? Every year that passes without improving teacher practice is a year that we didn’t maximize our impact on the children in our charge. So we need to act quickly! On the other hand, we know it takes time to make true change, and better it be done more slowly and sustainably than quickly and slipshod.

So what’s the solution to this dilemma in which we are not serving our current students in the best way possible?

Once again, step one is to embrace the idea that Life is Messy. I often struggle with maintaining patience for a process because I want the results right now, especially if those results will help our students. I need to remind myself on a regular basis that change takes time and enduring change takes even more time. That’s one of the reasons that JEIC pushes so hard to get things done sooner rather than later: why we regularly convene big thinkers to develop ways to broaden the teacher pipeline; why we so often take on exposing educators to the ideas of Intrinsic Motivation, alternative assessments, and spiritual lessons and conversations; why we take our wares from city to city across North America, so that multiple communities and their day schools can participate in dialogue with us across various topics.

Individual teachers can also elevate their students’ learning while developing their own better models for teaching. One suggestion is for teachers to take something very small that they have learned and apply it to a class to see how it works, following which they can refine it to make it better. For example, perhaps just try out using an exit ticket for a formative assessment. Or try having kids hold up white boards with responses to a thought question in order to engage the entire class simultaneously rather than dialoguing with only one or two students. These are simple, minor applications that can be tried while teachers are doing their own deep learning on new methodologies.

Life is Messy and Progress Takes Time: I am speaking to myself as much as to you, reminding all of us to keep moving forward, putting one foot in front of the other and taking baby steps as needed. As Aesop said, loosely translated, “Slow and steady wins the race every time.”