Responding to ResistersEdition 1

Principal must be aware that there are individual teacher resistors who have a reason to voice their concerns about a proposed instructional change or reform. Therefore, a critical question must be contemplated: “What’s a principal to do?” Does the school leader dismiss resistors as whiners who are forever griping? Or, must a principal seriously contemplate the voices of discontent? Are the campus grumblings, within the context of change, real in nature? If so, what is the message that a principal must be attuned to, and then, in response, handle, if not overcome? These serious queries are the underlying basis for the seven principal tactics addressed in the book.

Typically, teacher resistance is a function of disruption aimed at a change employees believe will alter their current work habits and impact teaching or instructional patterns. Teachers, in general, are accepting of the status quo. The more variation or modification to the status quo, or to the current working process and/or the teaching and learning environment, the more resistance. Responding to Resistors: Principal Tactics that Work! is purposefully written to aid the campus leader in answering the school leadership call when confronting teacher resistance as related to essential, if not critical change.