Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching

[00:01] SPEAKER_01:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_02:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined on the podcast once again by my friend, Dr. Robin Jackson. Dr. Jackson is the founder of Mind Steps and the host of School Leadership Reimagined, which you should definitely be listening to. It's a podcast for school administrators, instructional coaches, and teacher leaders. Robin is the award-winning author of 10 books, including the best-selling Instructional Leader's Guide to Strategic Conversations with Teachers, Never Underestimate Your Teachers, and Never Work Harder Than Your Students, the second edition of which we are here to talk about today.

[00:49] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:51] SPEAKER_02:

Robin, welcome back to Principal Center Radio. How are you?

[00:54] SPEAKER_00:

I am great. It's always fun to talk to you.

[00:56] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I'm excited to talk about this book because the first edition takes me back to when I first heard about this Robin Jackson character who was publishing an ASCD member book. I think probably tens of thousands of people out there have this book because it was selected as an ASCD member book and mailed to people all over the world. But this idea of never work harder than your students, which is one of several principles for great teaching that are included in the book. I wonder if we could start just by having you tell us a little bit about where that idea of never working harder than your students comes from.

[01:30] SPEAKER_00:

So, you know, it's a very cheeky title, never work harder than your students, and people love that. So when they pick up the book, a lot of people think that the book is going to be full of tips that tell them, how to work less. So the principle is not really about working less, but it's really about letting the students do the cognitive heavy lifting in a classroom. And that's a shift that will leave you less exhausted at the end of the day, but ultimately leave you more fulfilled and satisfied as a teacher because your students are the ones who are doing the thinking. Your students are the ones who have become kind of co-creators of the learning experience in the classroom. So Principle itself came from, you know, my work as an instructional coach and then my work as an administrator.

[02:15]

And I would go into so many classrooms and I would see teachers burned out and teachers overburdened, especially around like doing things like differentiated instruction. And they were creating three and four and five different lesson plans. And they weren't getting the bang for their buck that they needed to out of those extra lesson plans or those extra hours they were spending trying to craft these lessons. And I started asking teachers, who's doing the work here, you or the kids? And a lot of the teachers had to start admitting to me, I'm doing the work. And then I would ask them, well, what results are you seeing with the kids?

[02:47]

And they're not seeing any results at all. And that's what leads to a lot of burnout. So that became one of the seven principles of effective instruction that I explore in the book. But it's the one that I think we rarely as a profession talk about, who's doing the work in the classroom.

[03:03] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And it goes back to the old idea that whoever is doing the most work is doing the most learning. And as a professional learner, it can be great if you're doing a lot of work. But if student learning is what we're ultimately here for, then maybe we shouldn't optimize for our own learning. Maybe we should optimize first for our students' learning. And we will learn along the way.

[03:23]

And I think even in Harry Wong's book on classroom management, you know, the first days of school, the book, I often mention it because even, you know, probably pushing 15 or 20 years since I first picked up that book, you know, some of those things still stay with me. The idea that, you know, every little routine and procedure of your classroom doesn't need to be run and micromanaged by you. as the teacher. But Robin, you're actually going farther than that and saying this is not just about classroom jobs. This is about the cognitive work that students are doing. Take us into that a little bit more.

[03:53] SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. It's not just about, okay, someone's in charge of the homework folder, although those things are important as well. It's really about something more than that. And then the second edition, I go into a lot more detail about that because the first edition, I was just kind of introducing the idea, but we've learned a lot since then. There's personalized learning that's happening now. And there's project-based learning that's happening now.

[04:16]

We know a lot more about how important it is to get kids intimately involved in constructing the learning process. I mean, the model of learning is shifting away from the teacher imparting, you know, we used to see kids' brains as we'd open up their heads and we pour knowledge in. And now we're seeing learning as something totally different where kids can become co-creators of that process, and they really should. You know, a lot of teacher evaluation instruments emphasize student ownership, but as much as we acknowledge that student ownership is important, we really don't spend a whole bunch of time thinking about how do we foster that in the classroom. And so rather than looking at tricks and strategies that make it look like they're student ownership, but the teacher is still tightly controlling the classroom, what if we explored what real ownership looked like where students were able to not only be engaged and involved in thinking about what they were learning, but how they learn, working as partners with the teachers to make sure that they're learning so that, you know, we talk about lifelong learning and yet school doesn't create lifelong learners in part because people never learn how to manage their own learning.

[05:22]

So the cognitive heavy lifting that I'm talking about is where kids really become much more involved and engaged in in learning how to learn, learning how they learn individually, advocating for themselves, being a part of the process of thinking through and reflecting on what learning is happening, managing and tracking their own grades, their own scores, thinking through how they're performing in different areas and ultimately owning their learning and being able to take that with them as they move from grade to grade to grade and then beyond the K-12 setting to wherever they're going in life.

[06:00] SPEAKER_02:

Well, I love that idea of, you know, the kind of transferable skill of learning that students can take with them. And if we think about either not very engaging activities, you know, textbook driven, drill and kill, do the activity to get the grade to make the teacher happy, but not because it's worth doing or because it's something that you would do on your own as a learner. If you were just curious, you know, as we think about those differences and what does create ownership, you know, it just makes sense to hand more of that over to students and not say, okay, well, the standards are something that I'm aware of as a teacher, but I don't need to, you know, let my students in on the standards. You know, I just need to give them activities. You're actually pushing teachers to give more over to students, including those standards and where they're going. And as you mentioned, how they get there.

[06:44] SPEAKER_00:

But I don't want it to be abdication, right? Because it doesn't mean when I hand those over to the kids that I wash my hands of it. There are still things that I have to do as a teacher. And that's really important to recognize as well. And so it's really a matter of understanding what's the work that I have to do. And a lot of that happens before I ever go into the classroom.

[07:04]

And then what's the work that kids need to do? And a lot of that happens while we're in the classroom. And then together, we both have work that we need to be doing to follow up. I tell a story in the book about how when the first edition of the book was published, I was at a conference presenting and I was getting coffee or something and I was standing in line and the woman in front of me had a copy of my book. And I'm a new author, so I'm feeling really great. I'm like, oh, look, there's my book.

[07:28]

She has a copy of my book. I'm all excited. And another woman turns around and says, oh, never work harder than your students. Is that book any good? And she says, well, I don't know. I just bought it.

[07:38]

And then another woman turns around and says, oh, I have that book. So I'm eavesdropping. I want to hear what they have to say. And then they said, well, is it any good? She goes, I don't know. I haven't read it.

[07:47]

And they're like, you haven't? She goes, no. I mean, my principal, the book says never work harder than your students. And since my kids never read, I didn't feel like I needed to read it. And they kind of laughed. And I tell the story and it's a silly story, but For me, I think it cements the mythology around never working harder than your students.

[08:06]

And a lot of people say, okay, I'll hand it over to my kids, but they can't handle it because they're too young. Or I'll hand it over to my kids, but then they won't do anything with it. And the problem is there's a difference between delegation, abdication, and true collaboration. And when I'm talking about never work harder than your students, I'm not saying I'm going to delegate certain jobs to kids, but I'm going to maintain and control of the entire process. I'm not saying I'm going to abdicate my responsibility to the kids to say, here are the standards. Now you do something with it and it's your responsibility.

[08:41]

I'm talking about true collaboration. So I'm not letting go. I am inviting kids to be involved and to become partners. And that also means that especially because so many schools don't do this, you're going to have to teach kids how to handle the responsibility. And I think a lot of times people make the mistake, okay, I'm going to do this. I'm not going to work harder than my kids.

[09:03]

And then they hand things over to the kids and the kids don't know what to do with it because they've never been asked to do anything with it before. And then they say, see, it doesn't work. Well, no, the handing over process is is a process. And part of it means that you have to teach kids how to handle the responsibility that is theirs. You have to teach kids and constantly support kids as they grow and become true collaborators and co-creators in the classroom because it's something new to them. It's a skill just like any other skill.

[09:32] SPEAKER_02:

I remember Dr. Amy Bader talking about project-based learning and the different skills that students will need to complete their projects and how often we allow students to show their work or we expect students to show their learning using, say, presentation skills that we've not taught them. And we have to be really thoughtful about, you know, one of her points as you're planning a project or, you know, outlining the parameters of a project and outlining a project based learning unit, you have to identify when you're going to teach the skills that students will need to be successful with the freedom that you're giving them. So if they're not just going to take a test, if they are going to do some other type of, you know, demonstration of learning, that's going to require skills that the types of assessment we were using before, the types of learning activities we were using before didn't require. And we've got to think through how to teach that.

[10:23]

And at the same time, this came up recently on one of our webinars, the kinds of students who struggle with that freedom often are not the students who don't have the skills academically across the board. They're the students who have always gotten good grades and don't know what to do when they're not told exactly what to do at every moment throughout the unit.

[10:44] SPEAKER_00:

I feel like that's the main reason that project-based learning often fails is because people say, okay, I'm going to do this and they expect that they're going to hand it out to the kids. And then there's just going to be this miraculous thing where kids take it over and run with it. But you really have to create a classroom culture where that's going to happen. And you have to think through what I call the soft skills, the skills that aren't in the curriculum, but that are necessary for kids to be able to demonstrate their learning. And if you don't do that, It's going to be an abject failure and not just with project-based learning, with anything. I mean, even with Harry Wong's, you know, first days of school classroom routines, one of the things he talks about is you have to drill that and work that and develop that skill so that kids can now own it before you let it go.

[11:29]

You know, he talks about how you have to walk kids in the classroom and turn them back around and have them walk in the classroom again. And a lot of people get really impatient with that part. They're just so eager to hand it over. And they don't realize that the handing over process requires planning on our part. And that's part of our job. But the more we do that, the more students are able to take over ownership.

[11:50]

So it's not an instant exchange. It's not like, oh, I read this book and now I can go home and not be so exhausted at the end of the day, which is what a lot of people, when I look at like the bad reviews of the book, a lot of the reviews are like, I thought I was going to get some tips so that I wouldn't work so hard. The book title isn't Never Work Hard. It's you're not supposed to be working harder than your kids. And the process of evening out that work and passing on some of that work to the kids is a process and it's going to require work on your part. But the reward is that at the end, kids take ownership.

[12:22]

At the end, your classroom is much more vibrant. At the end, you love what you do much more. And at the end, ultimately, kids are learning, and the act of learning becomes in itself a transferable skill.

[12:34] SPEAKER_02:

And that planning, that designing a situation where your students are working harder than you, it does require the work up front. But in the moment, I'm reminded of the cliche, be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage. If that's going to be something other than, OK, you guys get to work, and I'll just circulate and help out as needed, which could become kind of the abdication that you were talking about. I mean, it really does require thinking through, where do I want my students to go? As you say in the book, what support are they going to need to get there? And how can I help them develop the skills and have the resilience to push through, to revise their work, to get help where they need it so that they do get to where I want them to be?

[13:16] SPEAKER_00:

Here's something else. I often see the same thing happening with regard to the way that administrators support teachers. So if you look at our evaluation process, it's very centrally controlled by the administrator and the teachers are not invited to be co-creators of their own professional learning. So sometimes I see that that unwillingness or that inability to let go of control in the classroom is mirrored by the way that teachers are being held, and I'm using air quotes here, accountable for reaching certain school goals. That Teachers are not being supported in that same way. And so in the new edition, I've created another chapter that really talks about how you can take these principles and as a teacher, use the principles to take control over and ownership of your own professional practice so that you don't feel like you're being a victim of your evaluation system.

[14:13]

But instead, you can become a self-advocate. You can design a professional learning plan that's meaningful and makes sense and that helps you become a master teacher. And you can also respond when you get an evaluation back and interpret what feedback you're getting from your administrators and use it or leverage it to help you grow as a teacher. And I think the more that teachers take ownership over their own practice, the more that they'll be able to give students more ownership in the classroom.

[14:42] SPEAKER_02:

Oh, that's a great connection and worth mentioning our previous conversation about never underestimate your teachers, your other book that school administrators should definitely read. But yeah, I think that idea of self-evaluation, you know, I think we worry that people will have an inflated opinion of themselves. And I think, you know, we all know people who do. But I think we also have to recognize that teachers have dramatically more information about their own practice than we do. And if we have clear criteria, we can talk about those. We can triangulate and we can fill in each other.

[15:17]

You know, everybody has blind spots. You know, teachers don't realize things. You know, I certainly know as a teacher, I was doing things I didn't realize I was doing until someone told me, hey, you're, you know, you're always doing this. You're looking down when you give directions. Don't do that. Or, you know, there's always room to raise awareness.

[15:31]

But at the same time, an outside observer is simply not going to know what's happening behind the scenes, what's happening when they're not in the room. And when we can come together and make that a professional conversation that says, okay, here are our expectations. Here are our criteria for teacher evaluation. Where are we on this? And let's figure that out together. I think that is such a powerful conversation.

[15:54]

And I think it's a great parallel, as you said, to teachers work with students.

[15:58] SPEAKER_00:

I feel like a lot of teachers don't believe that they have the power to be co-creators of their own professional process. And One of the things that I want to do in the book is to use the principles as a way to empower teachers to take more ownership and to see themselves as partners in their own evaluation process. For teachers to be able to sit down and to respectfully explain where their goals are and where they see it, to be able to hear and receive and act on that feedback, and to not see their evaluation system as something that's very threatening. But to take that and turn it around and turn every post-observation conversation into a really powerful means of supporting their own journey towards mastery.

[16:49]

So I feel like the more that we empower teachers to be able to do that, you know, I know that the work that you do, Justin, is really around helping administrators begin to start having those conversations and to recognize those as professional conversations and to start treating them that way, to start inviting teacher voice into you know, even looking at the evaluation instrument where parts that don't make sense for a pre-K teacher, for instance, or for an art teacher and being able to invite teacher voice to say, what does this look like for what I do? I think that the more that we begin to have those conversations and not just with administrators, but to say to teachers too, you should be, you have a responsibility to take over and take ownership over your own professional practice and to empower them with tools to be able to do that in a conversation and The more we do that, the more we as a profession grow in our professionalism.

[17:39]

And I think the more we move the practice of teaching forward. And, you know, my goal is I really want every teacher to be a master teacher. And I know that we are scared of that term. I was just talking to a client today and they were like, I don't like the term master teacher because it makes teachers feel like they're done. And I said, well, if you're saying that you that's the top of your evaluation instrument, but you're also saying that nobody will ever get there. then what's the point?

[18:04]

It's not real, right? So unless we turn master teacher into a term that becomes not just, you know, this akin to sainthood, you know, when you die, maybe then I'll call you a master teacher, but something that's achievable for every teacher in the profession. And unless we get every teacher on the journey towards mastery, then I don't think the profession moves. The moment that we decanonize masterful teaching, the term master teacher, The moment we make that something that is truly obtainable for every teacher, then when teachers are working towards that goal, it doesn't mean that once you get to master teacher, you're done. It means your work looks very different than it does when you're at the novice or the apprentice or the practitioner level, but it's still work and it's still meaningful work. If we don't do that, how do we move the profession forward?

[18:51]

And so a lot of what I'm trying to do in Never Work Harder in the second edition is really to call teachers in. to this idea of being a master teacher, to decanonize the term so that it's something that's not only accessible, but aspirational for everybody. And then to talk to teachers about how this is not something you wait for somebody to crown you as. This is something that you're working towards and that you can invite your administrator to be a part of that journey and to support you in that journey so that together your goal is to get you to mastery.

[19:22] SPEAKER_02:

That just hits a point that, for me, I think is so overlooked in our profession, this idea that teaching is professional work. And we've unlocked a Justin Bader rant here, and you've got your version of that that we've already heard. This idea that teaching is professional work, it is not hamburger flipping, it is not let me come into your classroom and tell you what you're doing wrong and what to do differently. it is work that teachers own. And we shoot ourselves in the foot as administrators when we try to own that work for teachers, just as teachers shoot themselves in the foot when they try to own student learning in terms of the part that students have to do themselves. You know, when we try to kind of scaffold out any opportunity for failure for students, you know, we end up scaffolding out the opportunity for learning too often.

[20:11]

And I think that's doubly true with with teachers when we try to micromanage and say you know i want to see this and this every time i come into the classroom and it's such a long list that we can't even keep it straight you know teachers have to own their practice if that practice is going to truly be professional practice you know it cannot simply be do all of the things that i told you all the time and then you'll be a great teacher i just think it doesn't work that way oh amen i love that and i think that's a good way to end the interview i think that's the whole point i mean

[20:41] SPEAKER_00:

As much as we talk about never working harder than your students, we also need to talk about the fact that we have a sense of learned helplessness in the teaching profession. And the first step to overcoming the learned helplessness with our kids is to really overcome it in ourselves, to go back in and take ownership over our own professional practice. And then In the act of doing that, we find ways to help our kids to be able to take ownership over their own learning. That's where we're going to see the growth. And that's where we're going to take our profession and put the professionalism back into the profession of teaching.

[21:21] SPEAKER_02:

And as you say in the book, you know, we can put our heads together by focusing on quality and not just letting go of accountability for results and saying, well, it's your, you know, it's your problem. You're responsible, whether it's administrators saying that to teachers or teachers saying that to students, when we agree on criteria for quality, you know, what does quality professional work for teachers look like? What does quality student work look like as demonstration of, of learning or demonstration of mastery toward the standards? That, I think, is where that conversation becomes very valuable and where it becomes very clear what role we can play in providing support when we have a clear definition of quality.

[22:00] SPEAKER_00:

The chapter on quality versus quantity, it's really about focusing on the quality of the kind of work you give kids rather than trying to fill up the time with quantity. And it's also really about getting out of coverage mode. And I know that a lot of the teachers I talk to are experiencing a lot of pressure to be on page 47 by day 33 because there's a state testing standard. But in the process, we stop becoming curriculum creators and we just become curricular doers. And so we don't want to do that. We want to make sure that the work that we're doing is truly quality work.

[22:39]

And we have to make curricular decisions that are in the best interest of our kids. That's what master teachers do. So instead of focusing on just how much do I cover, it's really about making decisions about the quality of the learning experiences that kids have. And then making sure, yes, we have to hit the standards, but we as professionals need to make decisions about how we meet those standards, to what extent we meet those standards, how much time we spend working towards each of those standards based on what our kids need, not based on what a pacing guide says we need to do.

[23:16] SPEAKER_02:

And I think a great parallel for us as administrators is if we have a 24-criterion teacher evaluation rubric, we're not going to see all of that. I don't want the teacher to show me every criterion every time I visit. We're going to drive ourselves crazy if we try to see everything every time. And if we get away from that kind of quantity, the more check marks I can put on my rubric, the better. If we get away from that mentality and really focus on quality, great things happen.

[23:42] SPEAKER_00:

The bottom line is this. Everything that we say we want for kids, we have to first start with ourselves. So even though those seven principles are really about what it means to be a great teacher and provide a quality learning experience for kids, they can also be turned on ourselves, right? They can also be turned in. when we're thinking about our own professional growth, that it starts with us. You know, I always say to people, the fish rots from the head.

[24:07]

And the same thing is true with our professional practice. What I find and what I don't often talk about, but I see it intuitively, is where teachers are struggling in a classroom is also the place where they're struggling in their own professionalism. So if teachers are not letting kids take ownership over their own learning, in some ways they feel disempowered themselves in their own professional growth and development. if teachers are not focusing on quality versus quantity, it also is reflective in the way that teachers are thinking about their own professional growth and the experiences that they're choosing to participate in to grow as professionals or the way that they're thinking about that evaluation instrument. Like I have to hit every check mark on the evaluation instrument. So a lot of what's happening with kids when you get down to it is also reflective of what's happening as we approach our own professionalism.

[24:58]

And so it becomes a really, it almost becomes like a two-way mirror that when, you know, there's an assessment in this book and people love the quiz because they want to find out what principle they need to work on the most. But I would go beyond just thinking about what does that mean for my instructional practice? And also thinking about what does that mean for the way that I manage my own professional practice as well? And I think that that can be a really powerful way to not only improve as a professional, but to be reflective and to demonstrate that ability to be reflective when you're going through an evaluation process and when you're working with your administrator to identify where you need to grow professionally.

[25:34] SPEAKER_02:

So the book is Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robin Jackson, PhD. Second edition is out now. Robin, thanks so much for joining me again on Principal Center Radio. Really great to speak with you.

[25:48] SPEAKER_00:

It's always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[25:50] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.