My career in teaching began when I was in 8th grade.\u00a0 The previous year, a teacher in our school started an afterschool program, teaching group guitar lessons to about 40 students.\u00a0 I asked if I could help, since I had taken guitar lessons from the time I was in first grade.\u00a0 I became the “assistant,” and learned the value of “students helping students.”<\/p>\n
The following year, the teacher was no longer at the school, but most of students wanted to continue guitar lessons.\u00a0 Further, there was a whole additional group of students that wanted to start.\u00a0 Because it was an afterschool activity, our principal asked this 8th grader if he wanted to teach both groups of students.\u00a0 I was young and naive, and said, “Yes!”<\/p>\n
Even though I had to create lessons plans for two groups, one beginner and one intermediate, I was dealing with not just “ability to learn” issues, but “talent” issues as well.\u00a0 It was way back then that I started thinking that classroom education was not necessarily the way for students to learn to their potential, since it’s the equivalent of group music lessons.\u00a0 It’s great for beginners to lay the foundation for learning, but individualized instruction was the way for students to really excel and achieve to their potential.<\/p>\n
As I progressed through high school, I learned not only what was taught in the classroom, but paid particular attention to how the scheduling of classes had an effect on students, and how the classes were organized.\u00a0 When I enrolled in college for music education, the expectation was to not just learn your major instrument, but learn to play all instruments, learn instructional pedagogy, strategy and techniques, gain a perspective of music history, compose and arrange new music pieces and interpret the works of others, and observe current learning environments present within schools in the area.\u00a0 It was a totally different experience than taking a calculus class and applying the proper formulas to solve equations or word problems.<\/p>\n
My first learning after that school year was that a fundamental change was necessary in education.<\/p>\n
My other learning was that even though educators were instruments of fostering change in their students, and experienced constant change due to changing schedules and students from semester to semester, teachers “hated” change.\u00a0 The life of a teacher, then, becomes oxymoronic, struggling with a concept that is germane to their chosen field.<\/p>\n
Today, over 40 years later, many faith-based and private schools in some parts of the country are struggling with shrink, mergings and closures, while other schools are dealing with unprecedented growth issues.\u00a0 While these seem like two different problems, they’re actually symptoms of the same issue – doing things the way things have always been done.\u00a0 While our worldwide pandemic created a “new normal,” there is significant discussion about “going back to the way it was.”\u00a0 Unfortunately, that’s called “regression,” not “advancement.”<\/p>\n
If you’re reluctant to change, realize that you’re reading this article on a computer or a mobile device, not a book or a memo typed on a Remington typewriter and copied on a spirit duplicator (and for those of you that remember the ditto machine, you’ll also remember students inhaling the papers that were produced with this technology).<\/p>\n
Change is constant.\u00a0 It’s perceived as macro (since headlines that refer to change usually refer to “big” changes), immediate, and threatening.\u00a0 While it’s also perceived as just happening once, we all know that just one change will lead to other changes, which is why it’s feared.\u00a0 There are specialists today that deal with change management, and there’s a series of articles on my personal site at www.mikeziemskimed.com that deals with the subject.\u00a0 It helps, however, if change is planned for.\u00a0 Then change is viewed as “transition.”\u00a0 But then there’s the “big” issues…so let’s consider a “shift” rather than a “change.”<\/p>\n
With that in mind,\u00a0there are five shifts that need to take place to solidify a school’s financial foundation today:<\/p>\n