Peer Pressure: It's Not Just for High School Anymore

Cricket Buchler outlines several strategies for harnessing the power of peer influence to create behavior change.  I recently experienced this on campus - we have a school garden that I wrote a grant for many years ago.  Each grade level has their own raised bed that they are (supposed to be) responsible for, but I coordinate the effort. I sent out the spreadsheet and asked all grade levels to request what seeds/plants they wanted to plant this year.  *Crickets*  Two days later, I got my first response. I shot an email out to the campus: “5th grade is growing tomatoes and peppers! Who wants cilantro and onions so we can  make salsa?”   Every grade level had responded with their vegetable choices within 15 minutes.  Just the knowledge that someone else had responded motivated them to participate.  Kind of like the teacher saying “I love the way Bubba is standing so quietly in line” results in a quiet line way more quickly than asking individual students to be quiet. 
In thinking about my organizational motivators and enablers... If I remember correctly, Dr. Grenny refers to them in the Influencer book as the ‘early adopters’, NOT the innovators!  I have a few innovators on my campus, but as suggested by Grenny and company, they have less influence due to their radical thinking and practices which can be intimidating.  So the target audience for my innovation plan will first be those early adopters.  When that one teacher at each grade level steps up to plan project-based lessons, it will encourage the others to try as well. 
I realize that social motivation is the least of my worries with this project.  I think the majority of teachers on my campus are ready for this type of change and will embrace it when they feel it is safe to do so and they have the tools they need to implement PBL. The other sources of influence I will need to accomplish my goal are personal ability, structural motivation, and structural ability. ​