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is a team teacher in the same school. "After observing the dismal results some districts have obtained from hiring 'change agents' who thrust new programs at teachers in the manner of faith healers, the pilot team involved with East's program insisted that teachers had to want it and had to ask for it before it would be expanded. The experiences of that team offered the encouragement necessary for embarking on a totally new seventh grade format." IN AN age that vibrates to the word &dquo;innovate,&dquo; educators are bombarded by a host of dramatic and radical changes. Time and time again, those changes as well as the reactions to them headline professional literature. Innovations which are gradual, modest, and methodical are frequently lost to the naked eye, and individuals involved in such quiet innovations may even overlook the significance of their efforts because they receive little or no fanfare. Yet these kinds of changes provide viable, stable patterns of implementation. East Ladue Junior High School is a place in which progressive change is planned step by step. The seventh grade interdisciplinary team approach described in this article is one such example. It grew out of the introduction of modular scheduling, varying time allotments for different subjects, curriculum improvements, physical plant modifications, and conservative but dynamic leadership.at UNIVERSITE LAVAL on June 28, 2015 bul.sagepub.com Downloaded from 48 In September 1965, four seventh grade teachers and Principal Charles Young began to investigate the practicality of an interdisciplinary approach to improving instruction at East Ladue. During the four subsequent years, a pilot team probed several potentials of a block schedule of roughly four hours and a group of 100 seventh graders. The block schedule corresponded to the time normally given to the four academic solids at grade seven: mathematics, science, social studies, and language arts. Based on the experience and observations of the pilot team teachers, in January 1969 the seventh grade faculty voted to expand a modified version of the team approach to all 300 seventh graders in the academic solids. Such a step meant a revision of certain features of the existing team program; however, it demonstrates the point of this article, that change can be orderly and carefully planned. Seventh grade teachers were not only involved in the change, but to a great extent stimulated it and made significant decisions about it.Of special value is the fact that a decision to modify the school's organizational pattern for grade seven was made not by the district's administration but by the faculty itself, &dquo;by the people who will actually cultivate the new program by what they do in the classroom.&dquo; After observing the dismal results some districts have obtained from hiring &dquo;change agents&dquo; who thrust new programs at teachers in the manner of faith healers, the pilot team involved with East's program insisted that teachers had to want it and had to ask for it before it would be exp...