It’s no secret in the education world that every teacher’s school year is likely to begin with several new top-down directives, some -or all- of which could directly contradict the previous year’s directives. The worst part is the way we’re all expected to embrace whatever it is and implement it immediately, as if we were all sitting around with no plans, no goals for our students and scads of time to learn yet another new way to…whatever. Buzzwords abound; collaborate, innovate, aligned, evidence. And we start using them. Sometimes we buy into it, incorporating morning meeting or small group rotations into our days. Sometimes we resist as I did with “inquiry” until I was forced to use it. I still find it creepy and off-putting in some situations, but hey…I need high scores on my evaluations don’t I? So how do we fight the power? How do we decide what’s best for us and our students? How do we keep our sanity in the face of the next education phenomenon…the new black? I’m not sure we do…