The Courage to Change the Things I Can… Overcoming the Immunity to Change

Brett Schneider • Cahn Fellow 2019

The year of action research pursued as a Cahn Fellow focused on leveraging adult learning and professional development as the chief means of increasing student learning outcomes in a K-12 public school setting. This is consistent with my belief that educational leadership requires a focus to decolonize education and center students as the subject rather than the object of our focus. Many times under the seemingly equalizing veneer of speaking of “closing the achievement gap” we are actually trained to objectify students as somehow historically deficient rather than truly holding a larger historical system responsible and making genuine change. It places centricity on test scores and achievement rather than research, writing, oral defense, and other critical thinking demonstrations. It blames students rather than acknowledging a gap in teacher practice.