As a 20+ year educator, I've learned more about what doesn't lead to schoolwide literacy change than what does.

Over the years, I have discovered that the biggest reason teachers and leaders don't grow, even when they want to, is their ego. They think of change as buying a resource, or adopting a practice. What they never realize is, it's their beliefs and identities - attachments to the past - that are holding them back from realizing a better future.

This is a lesson I've personally learned.

If trapped by our ego, Jennifer Garvey Berger offers four questions to help foster reflection, by being honest with ourselves when considering new ideas that compete with our potentially limiting beliefs.

• Question #1: What is at stake for me here?

• Question #2: What is the hardest part about this?

• Question #3: What is the best part about this?

• Question #4: How do I know this is true?

To go deep with this reflection and reduce your ego, ask "why" three times to your response for each question.

"Knowing about where we are in our developmental map and thinking about who we might become next allows us to release some of the pressure of depending on where we are, and encourages us to look with curiosity at the way life is supporting us to grow into the next version of ourselves." (p. 111)

Curiosity > Certainty