I do not subscribe to all of what Kohn prescribes, but there is a great deal concerning the use of either the carrot or the stick that concern me. I do not think that students should be taught to look for extrinsic measures for success. We should be encouraging students to do their best rather than being the best. However, we do live in an economy where competition is reality as are rewards and consequences (I really don't believe anyone should be punished other than those who commit horrific crimes)  I think we need to make sure students as well as those we work with, reflect and personally evaluate their own work. I think we would be poor teachers if we did not provide some evaluative feedback and exemplars to help the student judge the quality of their efforts. Comparison, even the use of standardized assessments, is not a bad thing as long as we look at the results as a reflective tool to aid us in our efforts for continuous improvement. Unfortunately we are in a time when punishment and rewards are popular among our constituents. We want to have villans and heroes.  We want to have winners and losers. Wouldn't it be great if as in the early Greek olympics the participant who is honored was not always the runner who ran the fastest, but rather the one that ran the most gracefully?  Or better yet, we were living in a time when instead of building tremendous Olympic stadiums under the guise of establishing a better world we spent that money to feed the millions of starving people around the world and to erradicate diseases which would not exist if medicines which are now sitting in pharmacutical company warehouses were distributed to the masses who can not afford them.

I'm considering using the Influencer worksheet from the web site to help design a simple influencing project that I can use to gain some influencing practice. Nothing that's going to change the world, but something worthwhile. I'm hoping the worksheet will give me enough structure to develop a plan that incorporates the fundamental Influencer concepts.

Changes in the physical environment have been discussed and Fullan would suggest that a simple structural change will not change the culture, but I think when you consider resources, there is not one more critical than time.

We need to shift our paradigm on the use of time in our schools. We still operate on the period model at the secondary level and "chunk out time"  We might not give equal time to each subject, but we are not nearly flexible enough in our distribution. 

Does each class need the same amount of time?  Does each student?

I remember back in the "good ole" flex mod days. Classes met for varied amounts of time, with large groups and small groups used for instruction. Students were in classes for a limited amount of time with resource labs available for those students needing additional time on a subject, while other students can spend the same time either workign on another class or possibly taking another class.  Students were given flexibility as to how to structure their day. 

We tended to move away from this model as we found it very difficult to schedule and we did not like the fact that some students were not responsible in making good use of their time. With the new scheduling software and student management systems which would make monitoring student whereabouts much easier, I think this is a model we might want to consider again. Time is a resource that must be carefully allocated to ensure all students are getting what they need in the limited time avaialable.