Two experienced teachers who had been friends for years were chatting as they left the high school welcome back faculty meeting in August. The principal rolled out her big initiative for the school year: Student Discourse: Building Relationships that Help Kids Learn. “Can you believe it?” said one teacher to the other. 

“I know, right?” was the reply. “The same things come around every 5 - 7 years and they’re presented as new ideas. Remember when we called this ‘teaching the whole student?’” 

“You bet!” said the first. “And don’t forget the SEL training we went through three years ago. Whatever happened to that? You gotta laugh when the youngsters don’t know our history. Oh, well, I’ve always taught the whole student. Whatever PD they throw at us, it won’t make a hill of beans worth of difference to me.”

“Me either. It will provide a great opportunity to get my papers graded.”

The principal would likely have been dismayed by these teachers’ comments, but both sides are right.

The principal should be committed to supporting students’ affective development. And the teachers should be irritated by being asked to “buy into” old wine in new bottles that doesn’t acknowledge the work they have already been doing.

How did they get here?

The hypothetical teacher dialogue is evidence of layering–loading an ostensibly new idea for teaching and learning on top of everything else within teachers’ memories. Layering can hit teachers like a kick in the pants because it suggests to them either that they have been teaching wrong up to now, or that they are being expected to “do one more thing.”

A better approach would be to integrate improvements with the good work already happening. The principal might have started out by saying, “I am so impressed with how this school has made great strides with social-emotional learning. I think we can build on student confidence and the extent to which we have reduced implicit bias if we show them how much their voice–their perspectives and beliefs–matter in the learning process.” Even better would be for the principal to enlist teacher expertise and teamwork to design professional learning that helps to elevate student voice in the classroom.

Why are many teachers cynical about the potential benefit from professional learning?

And why is it so difficult for schools to make positive change?

Education historian Larry Cuban finds that few school reform efforts over the past century have had much effect on what teachers do and how students experience school. When writing about school reform, he uses the metaphor of life in the ocean. Winds can howl, riling up the surface of education policy–think about recent political rhetoric in the news from parents’ rights to the uproar over Critical Race Theory–while several feet below the surface of federal, state, and local policy fights life in classrooms goes on as before, largely undisturbed. In some ways, the resilience of teachers in classrooms is a good thing because it prevents education practice from getting whipsawed by transitory concerns. But the downside is that imperviousness to reform efforts also means that making positive change is hard to do.

In some ways, principals like the one in the opening vignette and their central office cohorts have only themselves to blame. Education leaders tend to get enthusiastic about good ideas (often packaged as “best practices”) and are so focused that they do not consider what has already been happening. In good spirit they think, “What can we do this year that will improve student performance?” Asking this question without careful consideration of what is already happening can lead to a situation where the initiatives pile up year after year without adequate follow through and teachers become cynical as they realize, “this too shall pass.” It can appear to teachers that their principals and others are peddling solutions in search of a problem, making the effort seem irrelevant to teaching and learning.

Some school districts we work with at TeachFX have moved away from layering into a more integrative process of educational improvement.

The first question they ask is, “How can we enhance our efforts to achieve the vision that unifies our purpose?”

For example, the Anaheim Union High School District has committed to teaching 21st Century Skills in pursuit of their mission to “elevate student voice and purpose.” Instead of assuming that all students are benefitting from this kind of affective development, they ask, “How can we help teachers incorporate 21st Century Skills across the curriculum?” The intent is for teachers to reflect on what is currently happening before attempting changes so that modifications to teaching and learning are appropriately targeted and meaningful, as opposed to merely adopting a new program. Professional learning is integrated into the affective skills effort, rather than layering something new on top.

TeachFX takes an integrated approach to educational improvement by first asking schools and districts to explain their instructional goals. We tailor our professional learning to help move those specific goals forward and introduce our app as a means to document implementation of techniques that support the goals and chart progress for teachers, schools, and districts. We have partnered with the Appoquinimink School District to help their schools apply their Principles of Instruction broadly and deeply across all seven secondary schools. In the process we are integrating collection and analysis of real-time classroom evidence with the aspiration that all students will be valued and, quite literally heard, in every classroom.

Tyack and Cuban wrote nearly 30 years ago about “the DNA of schooling.” Our mission to improve the quality of all students’ educational experiences is grounded in altering that DNA of schooling so that it is normal–even expected–for teachers to examine their teaching practices and work with colleagues to make improvements that benefit all students. When this kind of reflection and inquiry-based practice is part of schools’ DNA, teachers’ good ideas for improving teaching and learning that integrate well with the remarkable success already happening in classrooms will have greater influence and staying power.

Layering potentially good ideas has minimal effect over time. Integrating innovation means making positive change in classrooms, schools, and the central office.