OF Suckage, Growth, and Change

Change is hard.  But sometimes it's mandatory when we're keeping the students in mind and what's best for their learning. And sometimes the process of changing to what's good for students really sucks.  It especially sucks if you want to change and no one else around you does.  And the suckage increases exponentially when those who don't find ways to sabotage your path to change.
How do I know about such suckage, you may ask?  Because I changed my entire classroom from a point-collecting machine to one based on "what do you know and how well do you know it?" while also piloting a 1:1 program.  And I will tell you the first year of change sucked - A LOT.  But I learned so much from that year that if I had to do it all over again I would willingly suck just as badly, just so I could walk away with all of those learnings.
​I tell you, a little piece of my soul dies whenever educators make decisions in the best interest of adults without examining if that decision is good for students.  That decision may have started as a seed if an idea in a teacher's mind, who told others about that idea, which then got examined at a meeting, and then spread like wildfire, growing from within and taking hold and then being implemented throughout a building.  This, to me, is the preferred way to spark change.
But just because it originated in the right way doesn't make that idea the right thing for our students.  Just because we might offend those that think they don't need to change, we still have to ask people to reflect on their practice and change what needs to be changed...and grow.
It's the right thing to do, and we have to do right by students. Even if it sucks at first.