The Biggest Challenge: Time to lead, or that leadership takes time?

On balancing technical and cultural schoolwide change

👋 Hi, it’s Matt. Thank you for being a reader. I post weekly about literacy and leadership. If you are interested in more opportunities to learn, check out my upcoming webinar on March 5th, available to full subscribers. It’s based on my free guide, What School Leaders Need to Know About the Science of Reading.

I recently asked readers what was getting in their way of achieving their literacy leadership goals.

Here are the results:

My prediction was wrong. I thought a lack of time along with leadership confidence would be the top factors. That mandates from above, resistance from within, and time to lead were the biggest obstacles that had me examining my original assumption.

Here’s my revised thinking: The obstacle is cultural as much as technical. Both areas have to be attended to when leading a literacy initiative. For example, one reader replied back to the poll by noting that “there is so much information and so many directives that it is hard to know who to listen to or what to do.”

I see this in my work as a systems coach. Supporting one school in an ELA curriculum acquisition process has been as much about pausing the conversation, asking questions, and examining the information about the resource as it has been about setting up a pilot. Questions we’ve considered include:

• How will students perceive the resource?

• Are we selecting a program that will motivate students to love reading and writing, to see themselves as readers, writers, and critical thinkers?

• How will this resource help teachers reach all students so they get what they need when they need it?

This reader also shared that “we need time”, but not as we might initially think. “We always seem to miss the mark when it comes to monitoring progress, providing quality feedback, coaching, etc.” In my experience, change at the systems level takes a minimum of 5 years. This is a tough sell when the next expectation for change is just around the corner.

Complex Problems, Simple Solutions

Schoolwide change at both the technical and cultural levels are intertwined. Examining what we do (technical) reveals what we believe (cultural). Conversely, reflecting on what we believe helps us understand our behaviors and hopefully leads to improved practice. This takes time and patience.

Because of this complexity, along with the pressure to increase test scores, schools often opt for a simple solution: buying a curriculum program without evaluating whether it’s a good fit. No multi-year implementation plan. No investment in ongoing professional learning, including coaching. They expect the program to just work, as if they bought a refrigerator off the store floor and all they need to do is plug in the appliance.

When some teachers eventually struggle with implementation or resist the resource, administration may push back with mandates to follow the script. This can go to the extreme. For instance, an educator shared with me that a principal in one school requires teachers to get prior permission for the books they choose to read aloud to their students.

Anthony Bryk and colleagues refer to this phenomenon as solutionitis.¹

“Solutionitis is the propensity to jump quickly on a solution before fully understanding the exact problem to be solved. It is a form of groupthink in which a set of shared beliefs results in an incomplete analysis of the problem to be addressed and fuller consideration of potential problem-solving alternatives. When decision makers see complex matters through a narrow lens, solutionitis lures them into unproductive strategies.” (p. 24)

One unproductive strategy that is common in education is “to formulate a solution based on their past experience, professional knowledge, and beliefs about what seems appropriate.” (p. 24) When I step back and examine this approach objectively, I can see how illogical it is. If we believe we need to improve our schoolwide literacy instruction, then why would we rely solely on what we currently know, believe, and have done in the past? What got us to today isn’t going to get us to tomorrow.

The Cure for Solutionitis

How do leaders navigate all this complexity and resist the simple solutions offered by educational companies? To be clear, I am not anti-resource. As a principal, I co-lead a curriculum acquisition process in my last school and selected a resource with a team of teacher leaders. Rather, I am pro-learning.

Next is a practical step for engaging in professional learning that attends to cultural change, not just a technical solution. It can help corral all this complexity and make the improvement process a better experience.

Identify Your Shared Beliefs and Values

Most school districts have a mission and vision. It’s usually boilerplate language, e.g. “preparing our children for a global and changing world”. How does this translate to the team and the individual level?

Shared beliefs and values put into words how we want to act and make decisions collectively. They serve as guiding principles when simple solutions rear their head.

One way to surface educators’ beliefs and values is by asking them what’s bothering them in their work. For example, I invited the ELA team mentioned previously to share what emotions and feelings came up for them as they examined their current student assessment data. Here is what they shared:

• “Isolated”

• “Disappointed”

• “Anger”

• “Defeated”

• “Confusion”

• “Frustation”

• “Defensive”

This activity does two things. First, it normalizes what people are feeling in the group. Shame declines. Openness to new ways of thinking and acting increases. Second, whatever emotions and feelings come up can be mapped to the values educators hold. As Julia Cameron notes:

“Anger is meant to be listened to. Anger is a voice, a shout, a plea, a demand. Anger is meant to be respected. Why? Because anger is a map. Anger shows us what our boundaries are. Anger shows us where we want to go. It lets us see where we’ve been and lets us know when we haven’t liked it. Anger points the way, not just the finger.”²

With the ELA team, I once again invited them to share what values might be showing up in their expressed emotions and feelings. Here is their list:

• “Balance”

• “High expectations”

• “Support”

• “Caring”

• “Cooperation”

• “Development”

• “Contribution”

These are noble values. Channelled through a process like this, they can become the guiding principles by which they view any decision they make on behalf of their students - not just a curriculum acquisition, but their day-to-day actions. We can now begin to craft belief statements based on these values. For example, “When students struggle, it’s our responsibility to examine our instruction first, not the student’s motivation or effort.” We stop trying to fix kids and start looking at our practices.

Cultural Work as a Bridge to the Technical Work

As previously shared, cultural work — surfacing emotions, naming values, building shared beliefs — isn’t separate from the technical work of improving literacy instruction. It’s the foundation that makes the technical work sustainable.

When the ELA team paused to examine what they felt and valued before they considered a program, they began building the conditions for implementation instead of compliance. Teachers who named their values around “caring” and “support” will ask different questions about a curriculum resource than teachers who are simply told to follow a scope and sequence.

But beliefs alone don’t change practice. Schools need technical tools to test whether their shared values actually translate into better outcomes for students.

This is where improvement science provides a practical methodology. For example, instead of buying a program and praying it works, teams can use plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycles to test small changes that align with their stated values.

Consider:

• If a team values balance, they might test: What happens when we reduce intervention time and increase independent reading time by 10 minutes daily for six weeks? Measure: student self-reported engagement scores and average books completed per week.

• If a team values high expectations, they might ask: What happens when we remove leveled library bins and let students choose any book to read for three weeks? Measure: percentage of students selecting books beyond their assessed level and number of pages read per week.

• If a team values support, they might explore: What happens when we add 15 minutes of co-planning time weekly between classroom and intervention teachers? Measure: percentage of students receiving appropriate support and teacher-reported confidence in meeting individual student needs.

The discipline of improvement science — specific aims, measurable outcomes, rapid cycles of learning — keeps the cultural work honest. It prevents “we believe in student choice” from becoming empty rhetoric while also preventing “implement with fidelity” from becoming oppressive mandates.

Cultural work creates permission to be humble and curious. The technical work creates the structure for continuous learning. Together, they can help schools resist solutionitis and build systems of support that actually serve students.

As you head into next week, here is a question for you: When you think about your current challenges, what feelings/emotions come up, and what values do they represent? Full subscribers can post their thinking in the community comments, and anyone can hit reply to this email. I read all responses and reply as time allows.

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What I’m Reading: AI and Anxiety

I recently paired this blog post by Matt Shumer on how he sees AI disrupting work and society with Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter article on putting all this felt urgency around AI in perspective.

It’s easy to get caught up in predictions about these recent technology shifts. While I explore these new tools and consider how they might be value-added in my life, I also do my best to attend to my beliefs and values around a fulfilling and balanced life.

1. Bryk, Anthony S., et al. Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better. Harvard Education Press, 2015.

2. Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Pathway to Higher Creativity. Tarcher, 2016.