Wolves are pack animals, and truth be told so are teachers. We don’t always operate this way, sometimes preferring to stay cloistered behind classroom doors or to organize collaboration strictly along content lines, but this is not the “natural habitat” of the thriving teacher.
Can lone wolves survive? Of course. Do they have to deal with the dominance politics of the pack? No, they get a free pass there and sometimes they can even lead to renewal by breaking the mold, but that is the exception, not the rule. Without a pack a wolf must survive without group protection and without pooled hunting resources. Life is harder, and often ends sooner, for a loner. Period.
The same is true for teachers. The lure of avoiding school politics is attractive to many, and there is the possibility to survive or even lead change by acting alone, but this is the exception. Teaching isn’t just a full-body sport, it’s a full-life profession, and as such teachers need an appropriate support system if they are going to avoid crashing and burning. Finding a healthy “teacher pack” used to be more difficult – something grown within a single building, or through professional journals and conferences. Enter mass Internet use and social media, and today’s teachers have many more tools they leverage towards this end. Creating a pack and forming a professional learning network (PLN) have never been easier.
But the ease of activity doesn’t ensure it will happen. There’s still the need to act and integrate the pack-mindset into our own professional growth and teaching. Here’s a mind map of my own pack or PLN at the moment.
As I completed this activity, I realized it could/should be much larger and more nuanced. I am reminded of the need to fight against lone-wolf syndrome. Working alone always seems easier in the short term – long term it makes much more sense to rely on my pack, my network.
The Ice-Cream Coffee Teacher 