The River

We spent most of yesterday in the cellar of the office as it is quiet and under a hundred degrees. Central Asia in June is hot. As we worked with our colleagues we began to develop a metaphor for educational change as that of crossing a river.

In general schools are like the river bank, comfortable, familar and for the most part reasonably safe, at least in terms of expectations and performance. The rub comes when the teachers and the very infrastructre is in need of change and teachers, administrators are required to cross the river to a new river bank on the other side. The key then becomes, what is required by those of us in the development community and educational support team to make the crossing a pleasurable wade instead of a swim for your life. We have ideas and do our work, but we are not the ones who cross the river. How do we make the river seem narrower, and the currents less threatening?

Thus as we work through our tasks out here, we keep returning to our metaphor as a barometer from which to judge how successful or not ideas will be at the implementation stage.