Here comes the pivot.
What I love about these things is also what I hate. The feeling of excitement and happiness is always a little short lived because I get back in my car and the cynicism creeps over my shoulder and whispers in my ear, "you know this is never going to work right?"
Here's why that happens.
Every time you get a bunch of people together you have the same conversations with the same pepole. Each person identifies a problem and then people drink, brainstorm, laugh, and then usually nothing else. What comes out of these is often "nothing" only because they are the same ideas that have either already been tried or already exist.
Dallas doesn't lack good ideas. We have an implementation deficiency, not an idea deficiency.
Talking isn't action. Unless you are able to get people to commit, in the moment, with a signature and some sort of enforcement mechanism. If there isn't something in it for them, they will skip it when they get busy, tired, or find something more fun to do. Whether you think Dallas and DISD are headed in the right direction, you do this. It's not a progressive v conservative or reformer v anti-reform issue. It's a human thing.
People talking is a start. It's potential. That's what gives me hope at possible change. This is the challenge that if I had the solution I'd be rich. What I do know is that nothing gets done when the same 10-15 keep getting together to talk about the problem.
That's not progress, that's happy hour.
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