Today’s post continues a series on exploring what can be taken off schools’ and teachers’ plates so they can focus on more important things—like teaching students ...
Fewer New Initiatives
Neven Holland is an educator, Ph.D. student at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, a contributing writer for Edutopia, and has served as a tenured elementary teacher in Tennessee’s Memphis-Shelby County schools:
The power of doing less seems counterintuitive but will benefit students in the long term. Let me explain. In Justin Reich’s book, The Power of Doing Less in Schools, he states, “When the system isn’t working, and the people in the system are exhausted and overwhelmed, you can’t fix those problems by adding more things to the system and making it more complicated.”
To further bolster this argument, researchers also found that people tend to add components when trying to transform their situations, overlooking the benefits of subtracting components instead.
Additionally, in the book, Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better, part of this process of doing less is connected to improvement science in educational settings where doing less means doing more for students with more clarity and preciseness to improve their educational outcomes.
Principals and district leaders shoulder the hefty responsibility of guiding students’ educational journeys. Amid their bustling schedules and the pressure to boost student achievement, system improvement can sometimes resemble an overseasoned dish. Understandably, the cognitive load, effort, and time required to decide what to strategically remove make it challenging to subtract elements. To alleviate this, one area worth refining and “subtracting” is the implementation of excessive new initiatives.
I’m not against new strategies, curriculum, or rules to boost teacher effectiveness and student success. At times, it’s necessary. But before introducing and adding that new, fancy data-tracking method or unique way to introduce the lesson objective, for example, leaders should consider how these can lead to implementable actions that simplify teachers’ responsibilities toward long-term success.
Is it better to add complex data trackers at this moment, or can one examine existing school and district rules that can be subtracted first that are clogging up progress no matter what is added?
Often, in efforts to improve schools, new initiatives are added by default without removing old ones, burdening us teachers. I suggest that before adding any new protocol, leaders should consider existing teacher tasks and delegate some responsibilities to other staff. The work of teaching should have a clear runway to perform the job at a high level.
While administrative tasks such as taking attendance or updating the grade book are expected, it’s crucial not to unduly overwhelm a teacher’s primary mission of preparing and delivering high-quality, standard-aligned lessons. Having focus groups with teachers of varying experience levels to share feedback on adding new protocols could be beneficial too. This could help gauge the impact from new initiatives on teachers’ effectiveness and student learning.
Rapper and spoken-word artist Propaganda once said, “Multitasking is a myth. You ain’t doing anything good, just everything awful.” I will disagree a little to say that teachers are experts and grow daily at multitasking because it is in the natural craft of the work. But I believe there are limits where giving this one, two, or three extra initiatives or tasks for teachers to do can backfire so that they are doing everything awful, which does not benefit kids.
Overall, seasoned teachers are not foreign to independently implementing new ideas in classrooms. Often, these come in the locus of our control and bandwidth based on what we have learned through experience. However, I caution against the risk of adding too much busy work without subtracting, where teachers are overly performative to check a box where piling on does little to improve student outcomes. The appearance of good teaching cannot outweigh good teaching.
As Reich argues, “We need to find as many things as possible that we can take off the plates of overworked educators. At its heart, the art of subtraction is clearing away peripheral parts of a system so that we can better focus on the most important things.” This means first taking intentional time and effort to understand what teachers do not need to be doing to improve the system.
‘Some Curriculum Simply Isn’t Relevant’
Dale Ripley, Ph.D., has taught for over 40 years at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels, primarily in high-needs, Title I schools. His latest book, The Tactical Teacher: Proven Strategies to Positively Influence Student Learning & Classroom Behavior, shows teachers 58 ways to improve the negative classroom behaviors of even their most challenging students in order to increase student learning:
The pressure placed on schools to do more seems constant. State government keeps adding more curricular outcomes. Parents want more help for their children than teachers can possibly provide. School boards add policies to be followed and at times seek to extend the school day or the school year. “Teach more content, teach more students, teach longer hours, and things will be better” is a common refrain.
Educators work in a profession characterized by limited resources of money, time, and energy—and also characterized by the unlimited wants and needs of students, parents, school boards, and governments.
When I served as a teacher, principal, or superintendent, and more was asked of me (which was often), I would typically respond with something along these lines: “I can do many things, but I can’t do everything. What do you suggest I should remove from what I am currently doing in order to make room for this new task?” Most often, my query was met with silence or at best, “I don’t know.”
There is a concept I use in my work that I call educational triage. Like the admitting staff in a hospital emergency room whose job is to prioritize incoming patients based on need, educational triage helps me prioritize my work, to establish clearly what is essential from what is nice but not absolutely necessary. This is often an exercise in subtraction.
Let me give you some examples of educational triage in action. I have frequently seen teachers who post a lengthy list of rules in their classrooms. Over the course of my teaching career, I reduced my classroom rules to two.
The first was: Respect the teaching and the learning. This covered essentially all of the behavioral expectations I had for my students. The second was: Never lie to me. If you do, then I am dealing with something that isn’t real, and I can never be successful in solving a problem or correcting an issue that is fictitious. Don’t tell me the dog ate your homework when in reality you stayed up playing video games until 3:00 a.m. That way we can address the real problem.
The second subtraction I did had to do with student-dress codes. While there is certainly a place for restrictions on student dress (gang symbols, racist T-shirts, and so on), some teachers do things like ban baseball caps or hoodies in their classrooms. My guideline was simply this: If a student’s clothing is not taking away from teaching or learning and isn’t vulgar or racist, why should I be concerned with it?
My last, and perhaps most significant subtraction, has to do with curriculum. While I often did my best to teach all of the objectives in the program of studies, I just as often did not. After getting to know my students and their academic levels and their interests and needs, I would judiciously select which elements of the program of studies were most important and most relevant to them.
I would also tell my students in the first week of class: “If I am ever teaching you content that you don’t think is relevant to you, ask me to justify why I am teaching it. And I will never answer that I am teaching it solely because it’s in the curriculum. If I can’t justify why you need to learn that content in a way that satisfies you, then I will stop teaching it, and we will move on to something else.”
My students loved this subtraction move. It gave them a lot of power over what we were exploring. And while they rarely challenged me in regard to content, when they did, and I couldn’t appropriately justify why I was teaching this particular content, we dropped it and moved on. It didn’t happen often, but often enough that my students knew that I was a teacher who kept his word, and that some curriculum, even though it’s been authorized, simply isn’t relevant.
Integrating Curriculum
Judy Wallace has over a decade of experience as a literacy coach:
One effective way to support teachers in trimming down the curriculum is through a deliberate integration of the curriculum.
Integrating the curriculum more intentionally offers numerous benefits for both teachers and students. By focusing on integrating the content, educators can dedicate more time and resources to exploring topics in greater depth, providing students with more meaningful learning experiences. Additionally, this approach encourages interdisciplinary connections, enabling students to make meaningful links between different subjects and apply their knowledge in real-world contexts.
Recently, during a professional development session, a science coach and I, as an ELA coach, presented this concept to our faculty. We tasked teachers with investigating the factors that contribute to some volcanic eruptions being explosive while others are not. Through a series of experiments designed to simulate volcanic activity under various conditions, teachers observed firsthand how the viscosity of magma influences eruption explosiveness.
Teachers recorded their findings, noting the variations in eruption behavior based on the variables they manipulated. This hands-on approach not only reinforced fundamental scientific concepts but also fostered critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Following the experiments, teachers engaged in academic discussions to analyze the results and develop hypotheses.
Subsequently, teachers were given an article to read, along with a specific note-taking strategy. The experiment activity aimed to build background understanding and actively engage teachers in the reading process. Furthermore, the reading helped teachers develop vocabulary related to geological processes and phenomena, enhancing their ability to discuss and write about the topic academically. The session culminated in a writing task, integrating the scientific and literacy elements explored.
Feedback from teachers indicated high levels of engagement and enthusiasm for integrating science and language arts more extensively in their classrooms. This integrated approach not only deepens content understanding but also underscores the real-world applications of literacy skills. Rather than adding to the curriculum load, this activity demonstrated that thoughtful integration subtracts time while simultaneously enhancing learning outcomes.
By integrating reading and writing activities with hands-on experiments, educators can provide a holistic learning experience that caters to diverse learning styles and interests. This approach not only enhances students’ comprehension of scientific concepts but also fosters a profound appreciation for the natural world and its processes.
To effectively implement this approach, schools must provide teachers with adequate support and resources. Professional development opportunities can equip educators with the skills and strategies necessary for intentional curriculum integration. Additionally, collaborative structures with content specialists can facilitate ongoing dialogue and decisionmaking regarding curriculum priorities.
In conclusion, advocating a more intentional integration of curriculum presents a promising solution to the challenges faced by educators. Prioritizing depth over breadth not only enriches students’ learning experiences but also alleviates the burden on teachers. Collaborative efforts at various levels are imperative to ensure the successful implementation of this approach, ultimately empowering students to become critical thinkers and lifelong learners.
Thanks to Neven, Dale, and Judy for contributing their thoughts!
Today’s post answered this question:
In The Power of Doing Less in Schools, Justin Reich suggests that for schools to do better, they should do less. What are things related to communications, curriculum, rules, and/or other areas you think can be “subtracted” from what teachers, principals, and/or schools as institutions do now?
In Part One, Darlshawn (Shawn) Patterson, Alison J. Mello, and Keisha Rembert shared their suggestions..
In Part Two, Jo Boaler, Chandra Shaw, and Michele Caracappa contributed their responses.
Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.
You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.
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