Building a Culture Open to Change

In the Fall of 2022, I got a phone call from a parent who was also an AI executive, explaining that in a few weeks, OpenAI would release a powerful large language model. “Do you think we’re prepared as a school?” he asked. 

I raised him two questions: 1. What exactly is a large language model? 2. Based on the first answer, was the WORLD prepared?

It might be hard to remember that time before ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and all the rest, but the feeling I had was not dissimilar to a moment in June of 2020 when someone asked me if the school was ready to undertake contact tracing for COVID when we reopened.

There are moments when the big change is staring you in the face, but the truth is that we live in an ever-changing world. Based on the good questions people ask me, it is also obvious that they expect school to change and adapt quickly to outside forces.

As school communities, it is then incumbent upon us to look within and make active decisions about how we become cultures that can respond to change with intention. At Field, we've built a culture that's nimble enough to evolve yet grounded enough not to chase every shift. We don't change for change's sake, but we also refuse to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that things are the same as yesterday. We’ve built this culture by nurturing curiosity over certainty, collaborating, and modeling ongoing growth.

Field educators have taken an inquiry-based approach of continually asking ourselves how we can meet the moment. In answering this question, we have found that there is a more foundational question to be answered first: "How do we define this moment?"

That question is about what we see, what we hear, what we think, and what we feel. Defining the moment is actually hard. There's noise everywhere—political theater, sensationalist headlines, AI-generated junk. But there's also substance—sweeping policy that impacts millions, journalists uncovering untold stories, and AI-assisted medical discoveries. 

How do we distinguish what matters?

We commit to the conversation. We resist rushing to simple answers. We stay open to changing course mid-stream, and perhaps most importantly, we are transparent when our thinking evolves. There are questions that are painful for us to explore while also recognizing their necessity.

You can see this in our approach to AI and how it is used in schoolwork.

You see it in our approach to the 2024 election and continued political polarization.

You see it in our approach to dialogue about global conflict, human rights, religious freedom, and privacy.  

Where You Really See It: Faculty Culture

I've worked in schools where you can walk into a respected teacher's classroom and see the same experiment, project, or lesson that was taught last year and the year before, where it could be 1999, 2009, 2019, or 2026. Where time seems frozen except when you look around at the students, what they are wearing, and what they are talking about.

That is the antithesis of Field.

When we hire teachers, I speak with them about the demands of teaching here. 

I have found that it is important to be explicit. We shift summer reading based on current events. We reevaluate course content as global economies and alliances shift. We adapt skill development as technology reshapes the workforce. We are relentlessly collaborative in all the best and worst ways. If you prefer to work in a silo, teach in your classroom, and go home, you'll be unhappy here. We have worked to create a culture of teaching faculty who are constantly looking for ways to connect course material and align skills across disciplines, and over the years.

I talk to them about the bilateral brain and what it means to teach students not just how to read fiction and nonfiction, but also the differences between digital and paper reading. I probe the why of the things they consider sacred and push to understand under what circumstances they would change their mind about the importance of that content. Why? Because flexibility and nimbleness and a willingness to evolve are what allow us not to be overwhelmed by the change that floors us.

I wish it were simple to create a culture conducive to change, but it isn't. In fact, for many people, the idea of change inspires anxiety or even fear. What I have learned over the years of intentionally embedding a friendly attitude towards change is that setting expectations matters. Being clear that change is actually what we expect. 

Why Being Change-Friendly Matters: 

The most important reason that we work so diligently to embrace and maintain a culture of change is that our faculty are role models for students. Gone are the days when the simplicity of numerical test scores and averaged semester grades told the story about what students learned in school. At Field, our teachers have changed just about every aspect of their teaching over the last five years, from assessment tools and models to content and skills. And we aren’t finished. It is a process we will undertake many times over the length of our careers and the coming decades. It mirrors what our students will be asked to do in the broader world. We have made a conscious decision for ourselves and our students—that we will be change-friendly. 

This means your student won't just learn to navigate the world as it is; they will also learn to shape the world as it's becoming. They'll graduate with faculty who model intellectual humility, critical discernment, and the confidence to evolve. In our world today, that kind of adaptive thinking isn't optional. It's essential.