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Jeffrey L. Jones, editor
jjones@fayette.k12.ky.us
 Humans
are basically conservative. Not necessarily in the political sense,
but in the sense of not wanting our personal circumstances and the
demands of our lives to change. Men cringe when their wives change
their hairstyle. Older folks find the new clothing styles ugly. Once
"over easy" is established as the breakfast habit,
"scrambled" just stops being interesting. While visiting a Louisville restaurant lately, my
wife and I discovered, to our dismay, that a favorite offering had
been removed from the menu. Of course, these kinds of changes are, at worst,
irritants. Recently, in Fayette County, there have been lots of
things pushing big changes - departures, retirements,
terminations. As creatures of habit, we tend to look at all of these
changes, and the
"agents" that force them, dimly.
But what exactly is a "change agent?" Even though the phrase has passed into common usage, defining it is tough. Dictionary.com shows no entries, nor does the tech-oriented Webopedia. The latter defines "agent" as... "A program that performs some information gathering or processing task in the background." Google and other search engines gather data using agents. Webopedia adds, in a discussion of artificial intelligence, that "...there is a school of thought that believes that the human mind essentially consists of thousands or millions of agents all working in parallel..." The implication is that a "change agent" might be one of those internal routines which promotes or forces change. Such internal "change agents" are necessary, allowing us to improve our effectiveness and adopt to outside things. Unfortunately, most change is forced from outside - some person, some event, some imposed decision, some disaster or personal tragedy. Those are the "change agents" that can turn our life upside down. In education, there are lots of them - political winds, economic cycles, reform movements, community pressures. And of course, many of those agents are people. To add insult to injury, a few of the lost positions are, themselves, change agents - folks hired to help teachers confront issues of educational reform, including technology integration. To counteract superimposed (and often-times negative) changes, the best strategy is to seek and find the supporters to your internal "agents." Since educational change is inevitable, the best support for your inner "change agents" are the professional organizations, a few of which are listed below. The wonderful thing about such organizations are that they are run by and for teachers/educational professionals like you, and they are there not to impose change, but to facilitate change you control. My wife and I asked for, and received, the recipe to our lost menu item. Although our work is still not done (the recipe is for a quantity sufficient to serve 50 people!), we survived this change unscathed. With help, you can too. --Jeffrey L. Jones, Editor p.s. Don't forget - there are state and local organizations for many of the following!
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