In his parable, Who Moved My Cheese? (G.P.Putnam’s Sons, 1998), Spencer Johnson exposes many human behaviors as four characters (two mice and two Littlepeople) live in a maze searching daily for their cheese.  Cheese is used as a metaphor for things we work for, need, and desire in life.   It makes us happy.

The two Littlepeople find a cheese station filled with lots of cheese and they return to it day after day to enjoy the cheese that has become theirs.  But then, one day they mosey over to their cheese station to find it’s gone!  They are confused, angry and hurt.  The disappearance of their cheese, this major change in their livelihood, has completely taken them by surprise.

It doesn’t occur to them that the cheese has not been taken away from them, nor has it just…disappeared.  “Later, as Haw looked back on things, he realized that the Cheese at Cheese Station C had not just disappeared overnight, as he had once believed.  The amount of Cheese that had been there toward the end had been getting smaller, and what was left had grown old.  It didn’t taste as good.

Mold may even have begun to grow on the Old Cheese, although he hadn’t noticed it.  He had to admit however, that if he had wanted to, he probably could have seen what was coming.  But he didn’t.

Haw now realized that the change probably would not have taken him by surprise if he had been watching what was happening all along and if he had anticipated change.” (p. 51)

I learned so much as I pondered this idea, realizing how much this relates to our education system.  To put it bluntly, our education system is getting moldy and we need to look for some new cheese!  The signs have been there for quite some time.   Our children are not equipped fully for the workforce.

I know there are exceptions and there are plenty of kids who “make it”(I’d like to think I’m one of them), but the world is buzzing with the issue of workforce preparedness (and I’d like to also emphasize the need to instill positive culture into our children).  Our world is different.  We live in a world of overflowing information.  Change occurs in drastic measures daily and yet, our education system does not.

Johnson reminds us, “If you do not change, you can become extinct.” I would hate to see this happen to public education.  Public education is too important!  But there needs to be change.  (Thankfully there are wonderful examples of this change across the country.  Please share those stories!)

And then there is the issue of testing… that’s like taking a piece of molding cheese and putting it on a stale piece of toast.  Hungry now?   Well, neither are our kids.

I was reading an article from AFT’s summer 2010 American Educator which features an article called “In Need of a Renaissance” by Diane Ravitch.  Ravitch is a former Assistant Secretary of Education (2005) who once fully backed NCLB.  Now, she sees its ineffectiveness and is working towards change.  (You can make your own opinion on how well she’s doing with that.)  But, one thing is for sure:

She smells the mold.

This is thinking grandly, and you may feel very detached from the real goings on in education “reform” at the national or even state level.  But we teachers have the ability to sniff out the mold.  In fact, I believe we are the real proponents for change!  We, the teachers, are the means for real reform.  Teachers are with the children and families that make up our communities and teachers have the power to advocate for what education should be.

Change from the ground up can start in our own schools and classrooms.  Johnson encourages us to “Smell the cheese often so you know when it is getting old.”

How do I take this and apply it to my teaching?  I plan to look more closely and more regularly at what I do in my own teaching.  Are the students involved? Motivated? Owning their learning? Asking me questions?

There have been times when I look out at my class and see that what I’m doing just isn’t good enough.   Sometimes I need to change on the spur of the moment, sometimes it is something I need to plan for, and there are some times when find myself not changing.

“The more important your cheese is to you, the more you want to hold on to it.” Those lessons and activities that have worked so well in the past, the ones that I have designed myself, put so much thought and effort into…they don’t work every year, with every class and in order to benefit my students, I need to remember not to give every student the same cheese.   It’s at those times where I’ll need to remember, “The quicker you let go of old cheese, the sooner you find new cheese.”

Teachers always need to be on top of their game and often that means change.  Well, it looks like I’m going to have a lot of sayings going through my head this summer as I prepare for next year, but I think I can simplify it by posting a one word sign in my room – Cheese!

How do you know when your cheese gets moldy?

Related posts:

1. Cheese, Fear and Laughing at Yourself

Fear

The Unknown.

Taking that first step.

Fear

Can be debilitating.

There are fears in life and fears  in education.  A fear of trying something new, changing with the times,  giving it your all (even if it’s different) and giving something time to work.  Chances are, if your reading this you may not be one of those teachers who is seen as extinct and unwilling to change, but we all feel this fear with things here and there, and it’s important to reflect on that from time to time.

Fear is a theme addressed in a short story Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson, M.D. (G.P.Putnam’s Sons, 1998)   This parable about four characters living in a maze, trying to find cheese is a very eye opening story that exposes some truths about human nature.  One is fear.

After becoming comfortable with their daily routine of going to one cheese station to eat their cheese, two of the characters, Hem and Haw (the Littlepeople) are struck with a horrifying surprise: their cheese is gone!  But instead of moving on to find more, they get stuck in their own complex thinking.   “Why is this happening to us?”  “It’s not fair!” “Who moved my cheese?”

For quite some time, these two wallow in their own misery, continuously returning to an empty Cheese Station.  But the idea of going back out into the maze frightens them.  It is the unknown, getting out of their comfort zone.  This fear makes them doubt themselves and it keeps them right where they are.

Sound familiar?  Of course!  That’s why this story is so powerful!  We face these fears in our work and in our lives.  Things change and we may not want to.  We are in denial of change, we are comfortable with what we are doing (“It works just fine.”) or we tend to over think the situation which, in turn, keeps us right where we are instead of venturing out into a maze full of possibilities.

I see this often in education.  A new curriculum is purchased, new administration comes in, teams are reconfigured, new people are hired and it overthrows things teachers have been doing for years.  But it’s much more than a fear of change in the structure of things.  It’s also a fear of the changing student in this ever changing world.  And often teachers are stuck in what they are doing.  “It’s always worked.”  “These students just don’t get it.”

Sometimes I can get hung up by a fear of doing something different.   Years ago, I had a group of middle school students that were not interested, not involved and not motivated by what I had been doing successfully with other classes.  I dreaded the group and I knew they dreaded my class, but I plugged along and pushed myself to do what I had planned and had taught the other classes.

It was treacherous, but I feared changing what I was used to doing.  Would I be able to pull something off?  Would these kids respond to something different?  Would I be wasting my time anyway?   Why fail at something different?  These kids were hard!  Maybe I should just suffer through this one year and call it a wash.  (Woah!)

I’ll never forget the ride home from school one day after having the class that just wasn’t getting it.  It was one of those moments when I was in deep thought and all of a sudden I burst out and yelled at myself, “Of course they don’t get it!  What are you thinking?  You don’t get it!”  And then I started laughing.  The other drivers on the road must have thought I was a looney!  Once I had that good look at how ridiculous I had been insisting that this class do things in a way that was not right for them, I decided to try something different.

Humor, or more specifically, “laughing at yourself” is one way Johnson illustrates to overcome your fear.  After realizing “he had been held captive by his own fear,” Haw, one Littleperson does this and it helps him take his first step into change.

My moment in the car was my moment to laugh at myself.  And it was the first step in me making change for that class.  I decided to plan something different for them and to just do it.  Instead of working traditionally out of the text, I forced myself to come up with other activities that were much more stimulating.  After a short time, these students were actually enjoying themselves as they learned.

Not only did this positively affect this class, but it helped me evolve as a teacher.  In fact, I ended up using more of the activities made for this class in my other classes with wonderful results.

Never underestimate the power of laughing at yourself and what you are doing (or not doing).  Sometimes, when you take a step back, it seems ridiculous and that’s when you know it’s time for a change.  Laughter can be the push you need to move away from the fear that immobilizes you.

“Finally, one day Haw began laughing at himself.  ‘Haw, haw, look at us.  We keep doing the same things over and over again and wonder why things don’t get better.  If this wasn’t so ridiculous, it would be even funnier.’ “ (p.43)

Have you ever laughed your way out of fear?

Click one of the tags from this post to find related posts.