To be honest, I have been struggling with the idea of ‘maintaining’ of late (although I had never actually thought of it like that.) My current role started life as a ‘transformation coach’. I was going to work with school leaders to identify learning opportunities associated with our technological solution and support them with implementing this. Based on where the project has ebbed and flowed, I have now ended up supporting timetabling and reporting.
A lot of things that I read would say that I should leave, go find something that drives me or something like that. The problem with this is that so much of the ‘innovation’ that occurs in the system that I am in depends on certain foundations around things like timetabling and attendance being in place. It is not the most exciting work, but it is still ‘real’ work. As I recently pondered:
The work that I do has many focuses. Sometimes it is about supporting simple transactions, other times it is about everyday efficiencies. Sometimes it is about helping schools reflect upon particular workflows to ease their workload, other times it is about improving a process, such as the creation of timetables. All of this though is real work that has some sort of impact on student learning in the end.
I am reminded of your questions about ‘revolutions‘ from a few years ago and the belief that sometimes we need to focus on strengths. I sometimes think that the notion of innovation haunts like spectre and that sometimes the best thing we can do is support and encourage each other.
Also on: Read Write Collect
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Aaron Davis