“The struggle is real!” I am sure we have all heard this before. But all too often it isn’t accompanied with what actions we can take to embrace the struggle. Don’t worry, I got you covered so stick with me on this one!
As I sat with a group of administrators at a table (pre-covid…) we, of course, got to talking about our schools and how we felt it was all going. Instead of just randomly talking about our schools, one of the leaders at our table asked the question, “what’s different about your school.” As I listened to all of the others talk, I was intrigued by all the amazing things happening in each of their schools. Each answer had a golden nugget that I could put in my own leadership pocket to consider. Answers like we have a growth minded culture, we collaborate, we have strong teachers, etc. However, when it came to my turn to talk, I told them that the best part of what made our school different was that we struggle. Now, as you can imagine, they all looked at me with confused looks and perhaps wanted to shut the conversation down right there because they immediately thought that I was going to go into the abyss of negativity. But hoooold on! I wasn’t going there at all. In fact, this was the best part of our community because it was the struggle that was productive and uncomfortable that gave us the best bang for our buck to get results and to engage and motivate our community of teachers.
Let me get straight to the point because I know you have a lot to do! Productive struggle is very strategic. As a leader, you have to value it, be patient, plan for it, look for it, and then support it. Productive struggle is purposefully reacting and dedicating to diving deep into an unclear challenge with the intention to move the learning forward and make progress. It can empower teachers, help them develop positive attitudes and confidence in their own efficacy. The ultimate golden ticket as a leader, is supporting them while they are deep in the struggle and giving them a framework to find clarity within their struggle so they can see the light at the end of the tunnel and yield results. We do this so they can make sense while they are in it. Unproductive struggle can cause us all to throw up our hands and give up and can backfire in a bad way. Hear me on this sentence coming up because it will help you to determine the difference between productive and unproductive struggle. When people consistently struggle and produce nothing, that’s when the train can go off the rails. They may even begin to question their worthiness or self efficacy and we don’t want that.
Worst of all, it can cause a teacher to fall out of love with teaching.
The struggle has to produce something in the end for it to be productive.
This year, our admin team decided that productive struggle in order to build self and collective efficacy was going to be our focus this year. We asked the questions,”How do we teach them a framework to solve a problem that matters to them? Next, how do we craft productive struggle and support teachers as they engage in it?” This all came from a conversation where we reflected on how we solved problems within our community and we found that we, as leaders, were sometimes doing it all for them. We wanted them to know how to sift through the struggle with our support and coaching alongside them in order to build a team of effective leaders who knew how to learn and find clarity even in the struggle.
I started with talking to our teacher leaders about struggle and how we might learn from it vs. get overwhelmed, frustrated, and tread in it. I read books on it as well and I gathered my own thoughts on how it all might go together. The behaviors that I noticed will help a leader to implement productive struggle are:
- anticipate where the struggle might be by listening to the patterns and trends of the teacher’s conversations
- give them time to struggle
- ask question that nudge the thinking or redirect/support
- do mini-lessons on how to solve problems and the feelings that come from the realization that struggle is hard, confusion is a common visitor, and mistakes will surface
- celebrate their resiliency and perserverance
- know your teachers individual strengths, needs, and fears.
- select tasks to provoke productive struggle within your meetings to model (we taught them a framework with four questions on how to determine one problem, set actions, measure it’s impact once you implement the actions, and how you coach a colleague with how you solved that problem.)
- plan for how your teachers will react to the struggle
- reinforce and coach them with using frameworks or next steps that that they can do as they begin to struggle
- debrief the struggle with them and help them to determine effective action steps for finding a solution
- participate in the struggle alongside them nudging them but not doing it for them
Ok, now that you have planned for all the behaviors that develop productive struggle, it’s time to teach them how to struggle by giving them some clarity through modelling and actions. Within your mini lessons to your teachers, (that you might do throughout the year) there are four actions that I would suggest you take to implement a productive struggle mindset. The actions are:
- Teaching them how to prioritize their struggles
- How to determine 1-3 actions to solve the struggle
- What type of framework they may need in order to plan, provide clarity, sustain/notice success, and reflect on how their actions are going – Download my free Leadership Formula Template for a sample of what this looks like!
- How they will coach others on how they solved that problem
I know this is a lot but we did this throughout the entire year and spent as much time as we needed on each mini lesson. We modelled, gave them research, and had conversations. We always allowed space and time for them to practice within our meetings so that they could experience the struggle before we left them to try it on their own. With some mini lessons, we spent multiple meetings and with others we moved more quickly through them and began to look at case studies of how teachers within our community were already solving problems.
After we planned as an administrative team the areas we felt they may come up with as a pain point for them, the reactions that may occur, the supporting questions we might ask, and how we would model our own problem solving methods. We got straight to teaching our teachers through the four areas of focus.
The first area was all about teaching them how to prioritize one problem to focus on. We showed them many ways to determine a problem and how to prioritize it through four main questions. If you are interested in how we did this, like I said earlier, you can download my FREE leadership formula template guide.
Next, we taught them how to choose actions that would get them traction. We modelled this within our mini lessons and gave them multiple opportunities to practice. The confusion came from what was the difference between an action and a norm. Guess what, my friends! That question became a mini lesson too! We focused on actions that determined what they did as teachers to move the learning forward vs. getting the students to do the actions. This was game changer for us!
Like I said earlier, we did not move forward until we felt the pulse of the community was ready to move forward. The third series of lessons consisted of teaching them how to use a framework and what types of frameworks that they might use. We taught them about checklists, swipe files, action steps, cheat sheets, worksheets, diagrams, etc. and how and what they were used for. We modelled for them how we used them to find clarity and build a roadmap to productive struggle.
Lastly, our mini lessons phased into celebrating how our actions produced a result. Remember what I said earlier, the key to productive struggle is to produce something. Therefore we need to pop the confetti when that happens! We use case studies from our teachers throughout the year as they find success and results and they coach each other within our meetings. We always provide a space for conversation and coaching so that teachers can learn from each other. We, (I know you have heard me talk about modelling before…) always model for them how to coach and learn from each other on the successes of their actions so they know the level of expectations we are looking for as they navigate through their own coaching conversations. Pretty productive hey!! Now the struggle is getting real because it is followed with actions inside the moment.
Ok I know that I threw alot at you in this post but seriously, this is soo soo good! Productive struggle behaviors do not come to us fully in place. We have to be aware of the struggle, embrace it, pay attention to, and plan for it. These behaviors must be taught and nurtured even with adults! This means that we must ensure that all stakeholders – leaders, teachers, and students are aware of what these behaviors are, look like, how to navigate through them, and why they are important. Words, effort, reactions, and actions must collide. We need to teach them how to take action. In other words, productive struggle must produce results.
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