There is an old joke that goes something like this…

A young girl was watching her mother prepare a ham for Sunday supper and noticed that she cut the end off of the ham and threw it away before putting it in the pan and then the oven. 

“Why do you cut the end off the ham mom,” the young girl asked. She replied she didn’t know but that’s how her mother did it so that’s how it is done.

A little while later she was at her grandmother’s house and asked the same question, “Nan, why do we cut the end off the ham before cooking it?” Her grandmother replied much as her mother had, that it was how she was taught by her mother so that’s how they did it.

Finally, the little girl is able to connect with her great-grandmother to try and solve the mystery once and for all. “Great-Grandmother, why do you cut the end off the end of the ham before cooking it?” To which the response was “because I didn’t have a pan big enough for it to fit.”

While this is meant to be a light-hearted joke, we tend to do exactly this in many of our schools when we use the phrase “that’s the way we have always done it.” 

This particular mindset is common in many schools, where policies and practices are explained and justified with this phrase. The unfortunate part is that this tends to be accepted as a response all too readily rather than engaging in dialogue or deep thought as to why we do what we are doing.

Granted, at some point the things we were doing probably made sense and were relevant to a situation at the time. They were likely well-reasoned and brought in to fix a problem or to make something better. It is also possible that they remediated the issue so well that we can’t even identify what the problem is anymore! However, it is also possible that your school or organization may have outgrown a use for that particular practice, and as such, it is important to reflect to see if it is still useful or should it be revisited and updated.

This is especially true for schools. By not advancing our practices to adapt to the changes in society, we widen the gap between our teaching techniques and the learning needs of our students. It is important that we continue to try new things, to adapt and evolve our practice constantly and consistently because schools are microcosms of society. As such, we need to try to keep pace with societal changes to better serve our school communities.  

We tend to hold on to these practices tightly at times (we may even call them ‘Traditions’ for the ones we are really tied to) and much of this is because there is comfort in the known and the routine. Unfortunately, this means that we ourselves can be the biggest barrier to change in our organization. There is comfort in the familiarity and some fear in the unknown. When we try something new, we don’t always know how it will go, if it will work or how it will be received. By not taking the leap to try something new, we stagnate which is problematic. 

None of this is meant to say that you have to change all longstanding practices in a school, far from it. Some of these things may be working well or may be a bedrock of your school or culture. Being student-focused because we always have been is a thing to be proud of. What I do want to challenge and push back on, is the idea that something being around for a while is a sufficient  reason to keep doing it. If you can’t point to reasons why something is still a thing, then maybe it’s time to revisit it. 

How might we change and grow, if we are willing to release our grip on the way things have been, and imagine how things could be?