Spring is a time for rain, wind, and.....weeds. You'll likely see yards full of dandelions pop up right around the time of the Kentucky Derby. Some yards full of weeds, some with a few and some with no weeds in sight. Two lawns right next to each other, yet one looks like Augusta National, and one looks like a garden salad. One could spray the garden salad lawn with weed killer, but the only thing you'll end up with is dead weeds and, if you aren't careful, dead grass too. The truth is the best defense against a yard full of weeds is thick and healthy grass. As a bonus, a focus on pushing growth instead of squashing weeds often involves fewer chemicals and is better for the environment.
In a post-pandemic (fingers crossed) landscape with many schools facing low morale and teacher burnout, it will be important for leaders to prioritize growing the grass and not killing the weeds.
In the last year, educators have faced their "burning platform" moment, where there was no choice but to innovate. It's not a given that the habit of innovation will stick around. "We know from past disruptions-such as earthquakes, floods, strikes, and wars-that we often learn little as we rush back to the comfort of our previous schooling hierarchies..." says John Hattie (2021).
Leaders going forward will face the challenge of keeping the innovation snowball rolling while building back up any social capital that was perhaps depleted during this high-stress school year. Undoubtedly there will be a few ideas and habits learned during the pandemic that pop up in the future and aren't effective. It's going to be important that leaders don't immediately reach for the weed killer and blanket spray the entire lawn just to squash a few dandelions. Focus on growing the grass, and the impact of these weeds will be negligible.
If we want innovative thinking to continue after the pandemic, it's crucial to be mindful of the challenges that existed pre-COVID. These challenges will certainly appear again, but this time we'll be equipped with some lessons learned from teaching in a pandemic. If we can identify the hurdles that may be encountered and offer support along the way, we can unlock more self-directed improvement in a post-pandemic landscape.
Focusing on the positives (i.e., growing the grass) and helping educators identify areas of competence and innovation in their own practice will help leaders make deposits in the social capital bank. Fostering these self-improvement habits will help with any upcoming building or district initiatives as well.
Let's look at some of the hurdles to innovation that existed pre-COVID and how we may approach them going forward.
Hurdle #1: "Do no harm."
Educators want what is best for kids. Their current strategies are often effective. Reluctance to innovation can spur from taking a chance on trying something that ends up not being as fruitful. Educators worry that if they try something new and it fails, they've given a subpar learning experience to those students. In restaurant terms, no one wants a bad meal. I've had this worry in my career several times, as well as several bad meals.
The medical field faces this dilemma on a much greater scale with clinical trials. In the race to find a COVID vaccine, many companies relied on volunteers for their trials. There was certainly risk involved for those participants, but the result was a massive win for the public. The fear of the unknown can often spur inaction, but it doesn't have to.
Innovating inside the classroom doesn't involve life or death decisions, and the risk is often minimal. Leaders need to communicate and model permission to innovate and look for volunteers similar to the COVID vaccine trials. Skepticism has shifted to optimism for many with the vaccines, not just because of the overwhelming data but because they've seen family members, colleagues and neighbors go through the process. Keeping with the lawn care theme, one person starting their lawnmower can prompt a whole neighborhood of mowers over the next several hours. It's not a coincidence; it's the chameleon effect in action. Humans have a natural inclination to mimic those around us, and as educators, we can use that to our advantage.
Pockets of innovation can expand rapidly in schools and districts when we permit innovation from the ground up and ask for volunteers to get the ball rolling. Keep the ball rolling and avoid the implementation dip by giving consistent feedback and encouragement through frequent informal observations and walkthroughs.
Hurdle #2: Experience
Many financial advisors will encourage an investing strategy that gradually becomes more conservative over time as retirement age nears. As the window of investing closes, there is not as much time to realize the rewards of additional risk, and the prudent thing to do is to shift focus from growing your assets to preserving your assets.
As an educator's career nears the end, there is less time to exploit recent innovations in their classroom. It is natural for an educator's pedagogy to become more risk-averse in the twilight of their career. Pardon me as I continue this financial analogy a bit further.
While they may encourage shifts to more conservative investments, those financial advisors aren't going to recommend cashing out all of the equities in your portfolio and putting it under your mattress. How could you possibly sleep on that pile of cash?! They will likely still encourage keeping a small portion invested in riskier investments such as stocks, maybe even Dogecoin. It's important to encourage bite-sized innovations with educators nearing the end of their careers while encouraging them to exploit the findings of their explorations from the past several decades.
Innovation doesn't always have to be an improvement in teaching practice. Helping veteran staff continue to model a growth mindset can involve them taking a risk in another way, such as serving as a model teacher or leading a TQSA class for teachers in your building and district, or encouraging them to publish their reflections on how their teaching practice has changed over time on a blog or social media. The goal is to help spread their findings from years of first-hand research in the classroom to other areas of the building or district. Focusing on successes and aiming to scale them can be a refreshing option compared to consistently looking to fix failures (Hattie, 2021).
It's also possible these educators don't view what they're doing in their roles as innovative, especially if it doesn't involve the latest technology or the acronym soup of the day. What is obvious to them may be amazing to others, and it's important to give them an outlet to share. Other educators benefit from this learning and having the chance to replicate it in their own classroom. When educators are recognized for having a nice lawn, they are more willing to share the fertilizer they are throwing in the spreader.
Hurdle #3: Knowledge Gap
When we bought our first home, I knew very little about lawn care. I mowed way too short and often when the grass was still wet. I even tried to rid my yard of weeds with RoundUp, which I found out kills more than just weeds. Needless to say, I suffered from a severe knowledge gap in lawn care. Over time I closed that gap and have won yard of the year (an award I just made up) in the neighborhood several times. Knowledge gaps are temporary, and leaders need to approach them as opportunities for growth.
These gaps can appear in a few different ways across a staff. They are not unique to beginning teachers. Sure, beginning teachers do not have the experience veteran teachers may bring to the table. However, they have just spent the last several years intensively studying the subject. Thus, leaders must look across the whole staff to identify potential knowledge gaps. Addressing knowledge gaps means increasing exposure to good teaching practices (green, thick grass) and tweaking current practices that have been proven not to be effective (dandelions).
While one-size-fits-all professional development has some benefits (i.e., coffee and donuts), I think we can start smaller or, as Chip and Dan Health like to say, "shrink the change." In our case study salad bar lawn, many areas need attention and/or elimination, but once again, the biggest impact comes from focusing on growing thick grass.
Educators are already doing great things without even realizing it. One place to start with this hurdle is collecting positive observation data. Whether the positive teaching practices identified were accidental or intentional is irrelevant. Help them identify these details as a good teaching practice and then plan to come to see it again to encourage replication.
If an observation is not in the cards, this could be done in a conversation with educators self-identifying areas of strength. There are many resources to help educators name their positive teaching practices, including the Optimal Learning Environment from the New Teacher Center. Observers can also use this during observations to work with a common framework on what good teaching looks like. While the focus is on the strengths, this process also unearths many entry points and helps educators self-identify areas of their practice they'd like to improve.
Two studies, one with hotel maid weight loss and the other with car wash loyalty programs, help support the impact of identifying positives.
The first study looked at a group of hotel maids and their perception of how much they exercised. Many indicated they didn't exercise at all. A sub-group of these maids were told how many calories many of their daily, work-related tasks burned. They saw decreases in weight, blood pressure, and waist-to-hip ratio after just one month. Whether it was a placebo effect as Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer believes or a kick-start to stacking healthy habits as this washed-up math teacher believes, the theme remains consistent. Closing a knowledge gap can begin by identifying the positive things we are doing that we didn't previously realize.
This strategy also gives educators a sense of progress, which is a mighty thing, as it turns out. The second study mentioned earlier highlights the endowed progress effect. This study found that customers were more likely to complete a car wash loyalty card with two out of 10 punches already completed than a card with just 8 punches but no punches completed. Both of the cards required eight more paid car washes to earn a free one, but the one with artificial progress had a much higher rate of completion. Helping educators identify positive things they are already doing essentially gives them two free punches on their car wash loyalty card. Building on individual strengths is a great way to ignite lifelong learning.
Hurdle #4: What does it look like?
There was a time when my mindset was more fixed than growth-oriented. I can think back to a goal to incorporate a math workshop model at the middle school level. Elementary teachers have long used small-group learning strategies for reading and math with great success. This was not all that prevalent at the secondary levels, which in some cases, the favored re-teaching strategy was to repeat direct instruction louder. Instead of putting my efforts into thinking of ways to work, I thought of ways it wouldn't. To no one's surprise, there was little shift in my instructional practice.
It's important to realize that we've all been resistant to change at certain points in our careers. Whether we realize it or not, this resistance is often a lack of clarity (Heath & Heath, 2011). My shift in thinking with the workshop model didn't occur until I saw it in action in an elementary classroom. With a clear picture of this strategy, I finally grasped what this could look like if I returned to the classroom. Educators need to get into other classrooms, and while this pairs nicely with our experience hurdle, veteran staff can also pick up great skills from newer staff.
Leaders can help by clearing the path. Many times these visits fall through in the logistics phase. We know from other contexts that creating an "opt-out" environment instead of an "opt-in" environment is much more efficient. Generating a plan where the details (times, dates, coverage, etc.) are already ironed out creates this optimal "opt-out" situation, and classroom visits are more likely to occur.
This visual representation of innovation and growth isn't just effective for specific teaching practices. Leaders can model the growth mindset itself for their staff. When educators become vulnerable, share their failures, discuss what they are reading and ask for feedback, it fosters a culture conducive to growth. If leaders want their educators and students to embrace a growth mindset, it's important to model the way.
Hurdle #5: Fear of Failure
Professionals want to feel competent. The school system has brought a lifetime of successes and a sense of competence dating back to their days as students for many educators. Over the past year and a half, those in education have struggled with this very concept. Trying new things, especially when trying them with a classroom or screen full of kids, can feel clunky. We've noticed every dandelion in our teaching practice this year without taking the time to step back and look at all of the healthy grass we have grown.
Leaders need to be mindful of this all of the time, but especially in the years ahead. Embrace failure and reframe it as a positive. Trying new things and knowing it will be messy is a sign of competence, and when leaders recognize it as such, educators will grow.
"You need to create the expectation of failure-not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route," says Chip and Dan Heath.
Here are a few ideas to start growing thick grass in your building or district.
Potential Action Steps:
Encourage staff to reply to a weekly update or bulletin with small wins or 1% improvements they've recently experienced. Send out a compiled list in the next bulletin or a separate form of communication.
Have a new strategy you'd like to implement? Ask for volunteers or guinea pigs, as educators like to call them. Pockets of innovation tend to expand.
Hold a "science" fair for educators. Educators can highlight an issue they wanted to explore or improve on, their strategy for addressing it, and the results. If we want to raise the stakes, bring in their children or parents to see their hard work.
Cover a class or duty for a colleague next week to allow them to observe another educator. Tip: Include a specific day and time you are available to lessen the load of logistics.
In an upcoming observation or conversation, focus solely on identifying the positive practices already in place and planning to use them again soon.
Veteran teachers may be in the exploitation phase of their careers. Invite them to share their tips and tricks in a PD session or during a staff meeting. If they aren't comfortable presenting, see if they would be willing to put their thoughts in writing or record a video of their teaching.
Start an upcoming PLC, grade-level, or staff meeting with the opportunity to share favorite failures over the past week or month. Follow it up with favorite successes.
As a staff, identify new strategies implemented during the pandemic. What makes sense to continue doing? What should go away?
References:
Griffiths, T. and Christian, B., 2016. Algorithms to Live By. New York: Henry Holt and Co., pp.48-58.
Hattie, John. "What Can We Learn from COVID-Era Instruction?" Educational Leadership, May 2021, pp.14-17.
Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Waterville, Me: Thorndike Press, 2011. Print.
Nunes, Joseph C., et al. “The Endowed Progress Effect: How Artificial Advancement Increases Effort.” Journal of Consumer Research, vol. 32, no. 4, 2006, pp. 504–512. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/500480. Accessed 7 May 2021.
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