Let me start by saying, I am not being muzzled but I recognise some of this and wanted to share my thoughts. I blogged about #JoyFE and the power of communities of practice. Then I was presented with my cringe question..."yeah...and so what?" I cringe because it is so powerful. If you don't have an answer that you 100% believe whenever you answer "yeah...and so what?" it quickly becomes clear that there are flaws in your thinking and you cringe! But I do 100% believe in #JoyFE and communities of practice so this should be easy to answer for me, and it was. But for another member of the group they talked about feeling muzzled. Instantly it cut right to the core. I know that feeling, I have experienced that muzzle before in education.
Have you ever been on a training day, teach meet or an event and felt a buzz from it? The enormity of the power you now have with the new skill or idea you have just learned pulsing through your veins. You can't wait to get back to work and get started! Then someone pops your balloon. Perhaps now isn't the time for your department to try this. Perhaps someone tried it before and it failed. The muzzle is that someone has stopped your buzzing pulsing idea because they don't have the appetite or they are treating you with mistakes from the past that they expect you to make. They have judged your idea and it is going nowhere.
In this scenario I ask one question. Who's responsibility is it to drive the change that you want to make? The person applying the muzzle or yours? If it is your idea and you 100% believe in it then try it. Obviously never go against rules/procedures or do anything that will get you into trouble. Try to negotiate the time and space to try your idea, short term, one group, one lesson, one starter activity. Whatever the size you can negotiate that is the win and the starting point. From there you can learn and build.
Imagine you try an idea and it gets stuck. It dies. No one joins in. You make a mistake. The muzzle is then applied by others to you or from you to yourself. Again, who is responsible for this idea? If you believe in it 100% drive the change, be the change. Now this is easy to say from here but one thing I can think of that may help you at all stages of trialling ideas is a community, a collective or a support network. Take your school or college blinkers off and look external for these people as they will bring fresh ideas to your thinking as to how best to remove the muzzle. If they are from the same team as you they may also have a muzzle and then you have a whole bunch of muzzles to remove!
You may naturally have this network through participants from the event that gave you the original idea. I was never a fan of swapping phone numbers at meetings or events but I always do now. I collect a network of people who may want to try the idea that I have in their place of work and together we can muddle through. You may find this network to support you via Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. You may see someone posting and like their trail of thought. Connect, don't just like and scroll through, retweet, follow, send a DM, be personal! You may find this network through a community of practice that meets in certain spaces. Don't be afraid of asking for an invitation to groups you see and think I would love to know more. Generally people are welcoming and supportive and, if I am honest a group or collective that is a clique and doesn't welcome new people in isn't somewhere I would want to be and I doubt you are missing much from such a closed set.
Now if you do find yourself in a community of practice you may find yourself with more ideas and things to try more regularly and your community is called upon more often to help you remove the muzzle. There is no shame in this but it would be nice if those applying the muzzle gave you a little more room. I never understand the idea behind applying the muzzle. If someone wants to try something new, one of 2 things will happen. 1 the new idea will be brilliant and everyone will be happy. Or 2 the new idea fails but everyone learnt from the experience. To me this is a win win, hence why I don't understand why you would ever apply the muzzle. SJ
