S6 E16 - How to Know Whether to Quit or Persist

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Hello there. Welcome to the Structured Literacy Podcast recorded here in Tasmania on the lands of the Palawa people. I'm Jocelyn and I am very pleased to have you here. Right now, at the time of recording in the start of October, many teachers are on holidays and others are heading back to school after a two-week break. Every one of us teaches because we want to see great outcomes for students. We turn up day after day, often in challenging contexts, because we believe in the work that we do. We believe in the possibilities of education.

School Improvement

Today I want to talk about something that isn't discussed enough, and that is the long game of school improvement. And if you're a classroom teacher listening to this and thinking, oh, this is one of those episodes for leaders, just hold tight because there's something in this episode for everybody.

Here's what we need to remember: every small step matters. Small, steady improvements in practice ripple out into life-changing opportunities for our kids. But it can feel like we're working so hard and still aren't seeing the results we want. And I know that feeling. I've been there. I know exactly what it feels like to have worked every available hour, to have invested time and energy into making change stick, only to look up and see just how far we actually have to go.

It's a universal truth that progress, deep, meaningful progress, is slow. It can take time for the impact of our work to show up in the data. We all know this intellectually, but it's understandable to worry that we're waiting to fail, that we will continue down the road thinking we're getting it right, and then realising too late that we're not. Now that fear is real, it's also exhausting. This is precisely why short-term data is critical in any improvement journey. Data isn't just for deciding what to teach next, it's also an indicator of whether we're on the right track in our decision making. With sound, frequent check-ins, you'll know within a couple of weeks whether instruction is beginning to do what it needs to. From there, you'll be able to monitor, tweak, adjust, and check in again. Every time you do that, you're moving a step closer to the outcomes you're looking for.

The Impact on the Students

And remember, we're not looking for how many graphemes have we taught, how many morphemes have we covered, how many units did we get through. We're looking for the impact on student outcomes. When you see students move from consolidating eight graphemes a term to nine, do a happy dance. When you see that growth is being seen in a full range of students, not just your middle of the road kiddos, high five and split a block of celebratory chocolate. When you hear from parents, particularly the parents of strugglers, that their child is reading words around the house and is excited to help write the shopping list, do a little fist pump and recognise that you are getting it done.

The spreadsheet is not the only data set that counts, but it is a critical one. So if you can't answer the question right now about how many graphemes did the students in our early years learn in term three, and I don't mean how many graphemes you taught, but how many things did they not know at the end of term two that they now know at the end of term three, then there's some work to be done on your monitoring. All of the wins, whether they show up on the spreadsheet or not, matter. There are many things that are indicators that your work is making a difference, even when the big data hasn't caught up, or you don't quite have the minimum viable systems in place yet.

Perfection is the Enemy of Progress

We've all heard about other people's journeys, and it can feel like the only acceptable point to be at is perfection. But remember, perfection is the enemy of progress. The truth is that nobody has everything worked out. Not the teacher in the classroom next to you, not the school down the road, and absolutely not the one who's continually sharing on the socials about how fantastic everything is. Nobody has attained perfection. And just when you think that you're getting close, when you think that you've nailed it, we all know what happens. A new group of students comes along with slightly different needs, or we have a big staff turnover, so we have to start our training journey again. That leads us to be adjusting and tweaking all over again. The belief in the possibilities of our work isn't a pipe dream. The hope we carry isn't misplaced. It's not naive to think that every child in our school can learn and grow to their full potential. It's the core goal we work towards. Now we can achieve this goal, but not if we give up right when we aren't quite there yet.

A Metre From Gold

Let me share a story with you. During the Colorado Gold Rush, a man named R. U. Darby and his uncle went west to find their fortune. They staked a claim and they started digging. After weeks of hard labour with picks and shovels and all of the old-fashioned things, they struck gold. They were really excited by their discovery. They covered the mine up, went back home, and raised money to buy some big, heavy-duty, proper mining equipment. They shipped off the machinery to the goldfields and then they got to work. Now the first cart of ore was really rich with gold. They thought, wow, just a few more shipments will cover the cost of the equipment, and then the profits will roll in. But then one day without warning, the gold simply disappeared. They drilled desperately every day, but found nothing. Finally, discouraged and defeated, they decided to quit. They sold their drilling machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars and went home. But here's the twist. The junk man wasn't convinced the mine was worthless. He hired a mining engineer to get an expert opinion, and the engineer discovered that the vein of gold ore had simply shifted during a fault line. It hasn't disappeared. It would be found just one metre from where Darby and his uncle had stopped drilling. Say that again. The gold was one metre away. Now the junk man went on to extract millions of dollars of gold from that mine, all because Darby and his uncle quit right before they would have succeeded.

And I'm pretty sure the lesson is clear here. Sometimes we give up right when we're closest to the breakthrough. Now, in schools, we don't sell our equipment and all go home, never to return, but we do change things. We get a new program, we retreat to our comfortable practices and structures. We stop doing what is impactful, sometimes right before the success is about to begin. Now, of course it's possible that the program we have in place isn't robust enough, it doesn't support cognitive load well enough, and it doesn't reflect the evidence as much as it needs to. And this is as true of some of the longest-standing programs as it is for random things we might find on the internet.

Now, sure, every phonics program does the basics of teaching graphemes, phonemes, reading words, and writing words, but it's the structures both within and across lessons that make the biggest difference.

But how do we know if we have it right?

How do we know if what we've got is good?

How do we know if success is just a tweak or two away, or if we do need to make change?

Well, it depends on how long we've been persisting with the work we're doing. It also depends on where we are. And if you're a leader or you're a teacher who's leading the work, it depends on our experience and our knowledge. In our story about gold mining, the junk man called in an engineer. Now, you don't need an engineer because you have us, and we have two podcast episodes that will be really helpful in evaluating your practice. They're called Tier Two Instruction That Hits the Mark and Tier One Instruction That Hits the Mark. And these two episodes look at the elements and principles of instruction that are critical for you to get success in your classrooms.

And did you also know that we offer coaching to leaders in schools to support them through their journey? Now, if you have one of our programs, this coaching is a standard part of how we help. But you can also grab a coaching package, even if you're not using our programs. We'll pop a link in the show notes so that you can check that out.

Seth Godin's The Dip

I have another idea to share with you now, and it's called The Dip. This concept of being close to success but not seeing it yet is explored beautifully in Seth Godin's book, The Dip. In this little gem, Godin talks about three different curves or situations we might find ourselves in in any endeavour. Now you can buy the book, but if you have an Audible subscription, you can also listen to it. And he, as the author, narrates it, which I always love. It's only an hour and a half long, so shorter than some podcasts.

Seth Godin talks about three possible situations when you are encountering a difficulty. First, there's the dip. So you start something new, it's exciting and fun, you see rapid progress, but then comes the dip. The long, hard slog between starting and mastering. And this is where most people quit. Now, the dip can be a good thing because it does kind of act as a filter and it sorts out the truly committed from the tourists, but we need to be aware of when we have run into something that's insurmountable and when it's just a dip, and we'll cover that in just a moment.

The second concept is the cul-de-sac or dead end. And this is when you're working hard, putting in effort, but nothing is changing. You're not progressing, you feel like you're going around and around on a hamster wheel, getting the same outcomes every time. And I might suggest that the way that we as a profession handle change is unfortunately structured as a cul-de-sac. This idea of quick change imposed from above, fast, fast, fast, do it overnight, get a new program, get this right thing. And we don't do what needs to happen so that we actually get the outcomes before we decide that nope, this is stagnating. We need to start all over again. And this makes us change weary.

But how do we know if it's a system-driven cul-de-sac or an instructional-driven cul-de-sac that we can do something about? Well, let's talk about that. A cul-de-sac is not that it feels hard or that there are some students who it's difficult to shift the data. A cul-de-sac could be a phonics approach that will never lead to better data, no matter how hard you work, because there is a fatal flaw in the systems or structures you're using. When you realise you're in a cul-de-sac, Godin says, you need to get out quickly because it's keeping you from investing your time and energy into things that will actually lead to success. So have a listen to those two episodes about Tier 1 and Tier 2 instruction that hits the mark, that will help with some pointers about whether your practices have a flaw or whether you just need to keep going with doing what you're doing.

The third thing is called the cliff. This is where things get better and better until there's a sudden dramatic fall. Think of addiction. So the more you engage, the harder it becomes to stop until it destroys you. It's a bit dramatic for teaching, isn't it? And fortunately, we don't see this one very often. But one of the areas that I can see this applying in education is that the effort that it takes to make the rapid big change happen, the emotional and physical investment needed to do what is being required of us is so great that it breaks the team. Yes, you may get data bumps. Yes, you might have nice posts to put on the socials, but the toll of poorly managed change that demands huge change without input quickly can just be too great for the team. This represents a cliff. Keep going the way we're going, and we're going to fall off the edge.

The key insights from The Dip is this: winners quit all the time. We think oh winners never quit. But I like the way that Seth Godin challenges this idea. He says that winners just quit the right stuff at the right time. Strategic quitting is not the same as giving up. It's not the same as being scattered. It's about making conscious decisions based on the options available to you and being able to put your time and energy where your efforts will have the greatest impact. So are we in a dip or at a dead end? How do we know? How do we know whether we should push through or we should change? Well, there's a couple of questions we can think about. First one is, am I panicking? If you're panicking, it's the worst time to decide whether or not to quit something. Wait until you have information and you can think clearly. The second question is, who am I trying to influence with what I'm doing? If we're trying to convince just one person, maybe a difficult parent, a skeptical colleague, or a small faction of people somewhere who are getting in the way of progress and they're simply not budging, well, that's different from trying to reach an entire cohort of students or the entire staff. The former might not be worth persisting in. If that individual is never going to change their mind and they begin sentences with words like, I don't care what you say, then maybe it's not worth putting our energy there. But the latter almost certainly is. So where is my energy influencing? Where can it do the most good?

Measurable Progress

The second question is, what measurable progress am I making? And this is where that short-term data becomes crucial. If you've ever seen small improvements in student outcomes, better phonemic awareness, more phoneme-grapheme correspondences mastered, increased engagement, then you're in a dip, not a dead end. Keep going. But if you're not seeing the progress, or you're only seeing progress for some students, then some things might need to be tweaked or changed.

Is It Possible?

The third question is: have other people done what I'm doing and made it through the dip? If other people have done it, if it's not impossible, just hard, then keep going. If nobody has been able to do what you want to do ever, well, there might be a good reason for that. And maybe you look at it as have other people teaching in a context similar to mine been able to make this work rather than has anyone ever been able to make it work? Because context matters. We have to have solutions across the literacy block, across all of the grades that are contextualised for our school.

Here's what we know about dips in school improvement. Structured literacy implementation is hard. It requires changing deeply ingrained practices, learning new content, and managing the discomfort that comes with being a beginner all over again at something. But schools all over the country, all over the world, have successfully made this transition. The path exists. I have seen it in my own schools and in some of the schools I work with. And I say some because many people they get the bump and think the job is done, so they pull back. Be prepared that you may have elements of practice that differ in whether they are in a dip, a cul-de-sac, or a cliff. In one thing, you might be in a dip. In another, you could be in the cul-de-sac and just going around and around. And in something else, you might be approaching a cliff. Pull your strategy apart and evaluate each item: dip, cul-de-sac, or cliff. That will give you the guidance you need to know the actions that you need to take. You won't have to start everything from scratch. No one's starting this work at zero. You just need to tweak the right stuff.

The Work We Do Matters

As we approach the final term of the year, I want to remind you to celebrate how far you have come, no matter where you are in your journey. The work we do in schools matters a great deal. Every lesson you teach with greater clarity, every grapheme your students master, every sentence they write, every book that they read with growing confidence, all matters. Go gently into term four. Know that the pressure to change instruction at the flick of a switch runs the very real risk of overwhelming everyone. And if you're feeling that way, that you're working so hard and it's still not enough, know that you're giving your students a tremendous gift. Know that your efforts are seen and that everything is going to be ok. Nobody quits a marathon right before the finish line. Most people quit when they're in the middle, when they can't see the end and the going gets tough. But that's exactly when pushing through matters most. But the pushing through must be sustainable. You might be a metre from the gold. You might be closer to the breakthrough than you realise.

If your students are learning more than last year, you are getting it done. What we need to do is plan so that next year's students are learning more deeply and better than this year's. Your teaching, if you've been working on structured literacy, I guarantee you, is more effective than it was 12 months ago. And your school systems are stronger than they were at the start of the year. That's not nothing, that's everything. Keep teaching with intention. Keep monitoring your data. Keep celebrating the small wins. Keep adjusting and tweaking as you go. Who is still not being served? When you find the answer to that question, then you know where to put your energy. Above all, keep believing in the possibilities of the work that we do, because it's that belief that carries us through to the other side of the dip that keeps one foot being placed in front of the other.

All right, everyone, that's it from me for this episode of the Structured Literacy Podcast. Remember, when you try new things, you won't break the kids. But just make sure you don't break yourself either. Thanks so much for listening. Until I see you next time, happy teaching. Bye.

Useful Links: 

Tier One Instruction That Hits the Mark

Tier-Two Instruction That Hits The Mark

References: 

Godin, S. (2007). The Dip. Penguin Publishing Group. 

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