S6 E13 - We Fall to the Level of Our Systems

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Hi there, welcome to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast. My name is Jocelyn and I am so pleased to have you here with me on this episode recorded in Tasmania, the land of the Palawa people. You might think that the name of this episode is a little odd. What do we mean, "we fall to the level of our systems?" Well, that's something that a good friend of mine, Jenny Cole, has often said to me. When things are going right in a school or any organisation, they go right. The planets align, things happen the way that they need to, and all is well. And then something happens and things are no longer going right, the planets are no longer aligned and, all of a sudden, nothing is well. In a school context, this can happen with many things, but I want to give you one example that your school may be working through at the moment. And the example is the explicit teaching structures that we are currently working to implement.

What Happens in Schools

I'm going to use the example of daily review for the purpose of this podcast episode. So what usually happens in schools is that we recognise that something like daily review is a good thing to do and we know its purpose. Leadership says we need to have that happening in every classroom. So we provide professional learning for our teachers around the concept. We may even get someone in to model what that looks like in the classroom, and then we discuss it at a meeting. It might be a focus for a little while and then we leave it. This is how we do things in education, this is the status quo. We introduce something, we talk about it briefly and then we let it go, falling into the same trap of we've done that that teachers do in the classroom. This doesn't happen because we don't understand the importance of deeper implementation. It simply happens because there is so much pressure to do all of the things all at once. As a former school leader, I get it. I know how difficult it is, particularly in a time of teacher shortage. We know what we want to happen. We are developing a vision for instruction and have the path set out in front of us, but when we look up, the things that we thought had been implemented are not happening.

So let's get back to our scenario. After our initial implementation, we might be looking for daily review in walkthroughs, and we're happy to see it when it's happening, but we notice that it's only happening in some classrooms. It's really common and really easy to quickly lose touch with what's actually happening in classrooms. There's an inevitable dip that comes when the shine of the new wears off and teachers now have to embed the new practice for the long term. It's really easy and really common to look up and say, "Wow, we thought that was happening and now maybe half, if that, of our teachers have followed through with the practice," or the practice is present, but it's not effective, it's not done in a way that achieves the goal of making learning stick for students.

As a teacher, it can feel really frustrating and it can feel like leadership isn't following through with anything. As a leader, it can be frustrating because we feel like teachers aren't taking the work seriously. The reality is that everyone takes the work seriously and everyone feels like they're following through, and where the wheels have fallen off isn't intent or commitment, it's that what we didn't do was make the new practice, the daily review in this case, an embedded, baked-in part of our system.

Systems

Systems become the way we do things around here. They reflect the culture of the work. When something is truly systematic, it doesn't require constant reminding or checking, because it's simply how we operate. It's like brushing your teeth, you don't need to be reminded to do it, because it's part of your daily routine, your personal system, and it just doesn't feel right to go to bed without having it done.

One of the mistakes we often make as leaders is to assume that because we think we've communicated articulately about what we want to happen, and because we've shown examples, because we've provided resources, that that's enough for all team members to jump on board and use the practice well. But one thing that we know is that there is as much variation in our teachers and in our colleagues as there is in the students in our classrooms. So different people need different amounts of support and different amounts of direction and follow-up, and they need the leader to have a different role in their development depending on where they are currently sitting in their professional development as a teacher.

Schools in LLS

Schools in our Leading Learning Success program learn about how to think about professional development from the perspective that everybody is doing the best they can based on the knowledge, experience and skills that they have. Some people will need a trainer, other people will need a coach, others will need a mentor, and for your very experienced, highly skilled teachers, they don't need any of those things. The leader is there to help them be a collaborator and to help them deepen their understanding so they can help others. If we expect every teacher to respond in the exact same way to the initiatives we have in our school, we will be very disappointed with the outcome. Because, just as it's not realistic to think that we can treat every student in the same way, we also can't treat every adult as if they all have the same needs. This understanding of the way we learn and what we need at different phases of our development journey forms the foundation of the coaching system that our schools implement, and they have tools and support to make the work stick. Leading Learning Success is a holistic whole school approach to creating a system that works.

Not An Extra

One of the significant shifts in clarity that we need when we are learning and embedding new practices is in moving from a view of success that is framed around ticking boxes for compliance to using a practice to achieve a particular outcome. When the finish line is declared once a practice is visible in our classrooms, we shouldn't be surprised when it drops off again. Going through the steps and implementing a practice as an extra, that we do because it's something we should do, stops short of creating the conditions for truly embedding it in our systems. That means we're not taking the additional step of helping teachers really understand how the new initiative (daily review in this case) connects to the goals we have, which is to make the learning stick. If daily review or any other practice, is a bolt-on, it's going to be dropped when teachers get distracted, stressed or tired. Making the practice an integral part of our system of instruction, however, where it's built in and truly becomes the way we do things now, means that it's more likely to hang around in the long term without leaders having to follow up every five seconds.

We Need the Infrastructure

Think of it this way: our current, usual way of introducing a new practice gets us to supported and independent practice in the explicit teaching model. We know how to use it, we get to feel a bit good about it, but we don't take it through to contextual application in a way that really helps teachers understand its value. In the case of daily review, it becomes another way we go through the motions or drops off completely. And this same thing applies to students in their learning. If we introduce a skill or a behaviour and get students through to independent practice, but don't help them move through to embedding the skill in context, we shouldn't be surprised if the outcome is shallow at best, but I think that's a conversation for another day. So here's what I want you to take away from today's episode when we fall to the level of our systems, it's not because we don't care or because we're not trying hard enough. It's because we haven't yet built the infrastructure that supports the practice we want to see. Daily review, or any other evidence-based practice, needs to become part of the fabric of how we operate, not an add-on that we hope will stick.

The most successful schools I work with understand that implementation is a long-term process, not a short-term series of events. They build systems that support teachers at different stages of their development journey. They create the conditions where the practice becomes easier to do than not to do. They measure success not by compliance but by the impact on student learning.

So, as you're thinking about the initiatives in your school, ask yourself,

Are we building systems that will hold this practice in place when the inevitable pressures of the school year hit?

Are we supporting our teachers in the way that they need to be supported, based on where they are in their development? And, most importantly,

Are we connecting the practice we want to see to the outcome we're trying to achieve, so that everyone understands why this matters?

Remember it's very likely you already have everything you need to make this work. You just need to build the systems that will support you when things get challenging, because they will get challenging. That's not a failure of the system. That's exactly when your system needs to be the strongest. If your systems are built on rock-solid foundations, when things get tricky and people fall, they're not going to fall very far. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast. I hope it's given you some food for thought about how we can move beyond hoping practices will stick to actually building the conditions that makes that happen. Until next time. That's all from me. Happy teaching, bye.

If you'd like to come from the perspective of everyone doing the best they can based on the knowledge, experience and skills that they have, click here.