How Schools Thrive. Susan K. Sparks

The Causes of Unproductive Habits

      Teams become unproductive when members are unwilling or unable to do what must be done to ensure all students learn to high levels. Figuring out what is causing a team’s lack of productivity is one of the hardest tasks school leaders must tackle. Principals, coaches, and teacher leaders often feel they are left with a binary choice: either the problem is a lack of will or a lack of skill. We think there is another possibility. Maybe the problem isn’t a lack of will or skill; maybe the problem is a lack of coaching.

      Some teams are not willing to commit to the views and values necessary for all their students to learn to high levels. For them, the why is not clear and their beliefs are not yet aligned with those of the PLC process. When a team is not committed to the idea that all students can learn, when teachers are struggling with their belief about student learning or their own ability to influence student success, when a team is having problems with the cultural elements of the PLC process, it manifests itself as a lack of will. Coaches respond to a lack of will by guiding the team through a series of reflective conversations that help teachers examine the impact their current values and beliefs are having on student learning.

      Other teams may not have enough experience or a deep enough understanding of what must be done to ensure high levels of learning. These teams just don’t know how to do the right work and have yet to develop the habits necessary to successfully implement the PLC process. When teams are not confident they can do the work and teachers are struggling with the structural elements of the PLC process—identifying learning targets, creating common assessments, using data to drive instruction, or creating opportunities for students to receive additional time and support—it manifests itself as a lack of skill. Coaches respond to the lack of skill by creating a specific set of learning opportunities designed to promote mastery of the activities and tasks necessary to be successful.

      When the team does not have a sense of efficacy and the team is wrestling with both commitment and confidence, it manifests as resistance. Coaches can respond to resistance by supporting the team’s efforts to set attainable goals and celebrate short-term wins.

      What is clear is that whether the team’s lack of productivity is due to the lack of will, skill, or some combination of both, those in coaching roles are in the best position to diagnose, differentiate, and deliver the clarity, feedback, and support teams need to increase their productivity by developing the right habits of professional practice.

How Habits of Professional Practice Are Formed

      Without realizing it, we all practice a number of habits throughout the course of each and every day. For example, think about your morning wake-up routine. If you’re like us, your alarm rings and you immediately press the snooze button (sometimes more than once), but you eventually swing your feet onto the floor and walk to the bathroom. You brush your teeth, take a shower, and dress for the day before heading to the kitchen for your coffee. You have developed each of these habits over time. They have become second nature. You don’t have to think about them; they are a normal part of your everyday life. However, these habits were not always in place.

      At some point in your life, you developed each of these habits individually. You learned that you would be late for school if you didn’t set an alarm, so you started setting your alarm each night before bed. You learned the benefits of good hygiene, so you began taking daily showers and brushing your teeth. You also learned that caffeine helps provide the extra energy you needed to get your brain moving, so you bought a coffee machine to brew your morning java. One by one, you integrated each of these individual habits into your morning routine. You engaged in habit stacking (Clear, 2015; Kruse, 2017).

      Similar to the development of morning habits, teams begin developing habits by engaging in small, individual tasks that provide opportunities for quick, short-term successes. Teams then turn these tasks into routines that members repeat over and over until eventually, the routines become habit. Those in coaching positions play an important role in monitoring the work and redirecting teams back to their routines when the team begins to veer off course. The graphic in figure 1.1 illustrates how habit stacking works.

Figure 1.1: The process of habit stacking.

      Anyone who has attempted PLC transformation knows it can be an overwhelming process requiring a large number of cultural and structural changes. However, implementing the PLC process is far more manageable when we break it down into bite-sized chunks instead of trying to eat the entire PLC elephant in one big bite. As coaches of collaborative teams in a PLC, we can help teams engage in habit stacking as a means of improving their PLC practice.

      Individual tasks are the foundation of routine, and routines are at the heart of every habit. Habits form when people incorporate specific tasks into routines that they repeat regularly over an extended period of time. In a PLC, principals and coaches help collaborative teams identify the individual tasks that turn into routines that eventually develop into habits of professional practice.

The Role of Clarity, Feedback, and Support

      Best practice can be habit forming if the right professional practices are present within a culture of collaboration; but without the right amount of clarity, feedback, and support, teams may never know which kind of habits they are developing—productive or unproductive.

Clarity: Creating Routines Around the Right Work

      To bring greater clarity to the PLC process, principals and coaches should ask, “Are our collaborative teams clear about which practices deserve more time and attention?” If the mission is to ensure that all students learn at high levels, the first step in the process is to clarify which practices are critical to accomplishing that mission. Those mission-critical best practices are the tasks teams identify that turn into routines and eventually become habits.

      Team meetings are filled with routines. Simply convening the weekly team meeting is a routine that becomes so commonplace teachers notice when they miss a meeting. Within the meeting there are other routines like reviewing the norms, stating the meeting’s purpose, using an agenda, assigning roles and responsibilities, and relying on a consensus decision-making process. All of these routines help promote more productive team meetings.

      More importantly, teams establish routines in response to the four critical questions of learning. They routinely begin the unit planning process by identifying and unwrapping the highest priority standards, drafting a common assessment, analyzing data and evidence of learning, and creating opportunities for students to access more time and support when they do or do not learn.

      It is the role of the coach to help teams become clear and stay clear on what a team’s “right work” truly is. The most effective teams have a clear understanding of the work they are being asked to do and engage in habits that help them accomplish their goals.

Feedback: Reinforcing Routines Around the Right Work

      The right kind of differentiated feedback can ensure that a team’s individual tasks, routines, and habits align with what we know is best practice. Effective feedback can do wonders when coaching collaborative teams around their routines and habits. Intentional feedback can reduce the risk teachers feel when trying new classroom strategies, it can encourage teachers to engage in deep self-reflection, and it can challenge team members to step out of their comfort zones. If coaches and principals focus on reinforcing the right work with the right feedback at the right time, the likelihood that teams will replicate that behavior increases.

      Feedback from those in coaching roles can also confront behaviors that are counterproductive to the habits teams are trying to create and redirect routines when teams fail to engage in the right work. The goal should be to provide feedback that reinforces behaviors aligned with best practice, create routines that are repeated over an extended period of time, and encourage the development of productive habits of professional practice.