How De-implementation Can Ease Overwork

Series 3 Leaders Coaching Leaders Podcast

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[00:00:00.82] MODERATOR: Welcome to Corwin's Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast with host Peter DeWitt. This podcast is from education leaders for education leaders. Every week, Peter and our guests get together to share ideas, put research into practice, and ensure every student is learning not by chance, but by design.

[00:00:19.73] TANYA GHANS: Hi, Peter. This is a special session, but welcome.

[00:00:24.68] PETER DEWITT: Yeah. Thanks, Tanya. I know, it seems a little strange, right? It's going to--

[00:00:28.81] TANYA GHANS: Yeah.

[00:00:28.85] PETER DEWITT: --be weird to be on our podcast together, but now I'm on the receiving end. So--

[00:00:34.55] TANYA GHANS: Yeah.

[00:00:34.97] PETER DEWITT: --don't ask me difficult questions. That's all I'm going to--

[00:00:37.07] TANYA GHANS: I will do my best, but I won't hold any punches. Not that this is a punches podcast.

[00:00:42.35] [LAUGHTER]

[00:00:46.13] So yeah. We're doing a little role reversal today, guest and listeners, and I'm really excited because I think or I deeply feel in my bones as a as an educator that the topic we're going to discuss on deep implementation is a critically important one for us to not just discuss for these times, but in general.

[00:01:07.28] That it really should be vocabulary that is part of everybody, especially every leaders discourse. And as they think about whatever next steps they're looking to do, the implementation is a part of it. So before I say any more because obviously I want the floor for you to be the one to share and tell us all about this. The implementation is ironically a six syllable word, but it's about simplifying. [LAUGHS]

[00:01:35.03] PETER DEWITT: I never thought-- wow, that's really good. I never even thought about--

[00:01:37.61] TANYA GHANS: Yeah. But it's about simplifying. So we always begin our podcast with really trying to define the terms, and so I want to keep with that tradition. And so Peter, one, what is the implementation, and why does it matter and particularly why does it matter now?

[00:01:54.53] PETER DEWITT: Good question. So I never thought about the syllable piece that was good. So the implementation is the abandonment of low value practices, that's exactly what the medical research says. I was introduced to the topic from Aaron Hamilton, who's out of cognition education New Zealand. He and I were talking about it a long time ago, and I just couldn't get it out of my head.

[00:02:19.58] It's important because as I was writing a book on collective leader efficacy and the eight drivers necessary for a school team to come together, I was reading research from NASSP in the LPI that talked about 42% of principals wanting to leave their profession. And I started looking in the UK, and there's a great deal of research about teachers and leaders being burned out. Australia, same thing. It's a worldwide issue.

[00:02:48.39] And even when I wrote Instructional Leadership a few years ago, it was about why is instructional leadership so difficult to practice? It's because our workloads have increased over the past 20 several years since things like NCLB and increased accountability. There is no better time, especially after COVID and the mental health and social emotional issues that we've seen, to be able to at least engage in a conversation about what really matters for us. What really has an impact and what is just stuff that we're doing because we've always done it before?

[00:03:26.72] And as you know, because this is the first book in your editing cycle for Corwin. I wrote a blog about it, and you contacted me and said, yeah, that. That's what we--

[00:03:40.55] [LAUGHTER]

[00:03:41.45] So it's your fault that I'm writing about this because you're like, that. That's what I want you to write about. And I was amazed at how quickly I could. So--

[00:03:50.74] TANYA GHANS: Yeah. I think, if I may say, maybe part of your quickness is your just to piggyback on what you were saying before about how urgent this is, is that innovation needs a place to thrive and it needs a place to come in. I don't think this is about stopping that, and you know I feel you would agree. But it needs to have the room to be able to do that, and it can't frankly if the space is just-- it's too cluttered.

[00:04:19.06] PETER DEWITT: Yeah. That's why you and I chose the subtitle, right?

[00:04:22.90] TANYA GHANS: Yeah.

[00:04:23.56] PETER DEWITT: The space because of the fact that we do need that space to be innovative. If we're just doing things all the time, then we don't get the opportunity to really step back and conceptually think about what is it we should be focusing on? Where should we be spending our time? What's going to give us the most impact?

[00:04:42.73] And yeah, I would think that one of the miss perceptions of the implementation is it's about just getting rid of stuff when you and I both know that it's not. The implementation in what I put together was a partial reduction or a replacement action. And you can have an informal implementation or a formal de-implementation.

[00:05:03.22] The informal de-implementation doesn't need a team. It's something you can do on your own. Formal de-implementation is something where you need a team. And we explored. You as the editor, me as the writer, we explored the idea of things like zero tolerance policies and how discriminatory they can be. And in some cases, how racist they can be.

[00:05:23.59] And we looked at exploring the idea of getting rid of zero tolerance policies, but replacing them with more culturally responsive discipline issues like restorative justice or something like that. But it was also the idea of replacing traditional grading with standards based grading. So de-implementation is in some cases about a partial reduction, but in other cases, it's about replacing what we're doing with something that's going to be much more impactful.

[00:05:54.16] TANYA GHANS: Yeah. And so to continue that just a little bit because I do think people might hear de-implementation and it's about reducing. And that while sometimes it is about just stopping something, it is more nuanced than that. So can you really bring forth-- especially to leaders and even superintendents who are thinking about this, there is a plan that is needed behind it at times. It has to be a very thoughtful process. It's not just you know pulling a switch and saying we're done with that.

[00:06:22.24] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, for sure. Because when I was doing the research-- and I've done the research for the past year just because I was planning on adding it to the book on collective leader efficacy, which I did, so I started really researching it over a year ago. And when I started using Mentimeter, which is an online engagement tool, in my in person or remote workshops, I was doing research for that and surveys and everything else.

[00:06:45.64] And so when you're looking at formal de-implementation, it's really about the idea of the partial reduction or the replacement action. Replacement action in general is about getting together and starting to look at this cycle of de-implementation, which is going to be, what are we inquiring here as far as where we want to spend our time? What's giving us the most impact?

[00:07:07.93] And the cool thing now is that districts are starting to engage this work, so I'm starting to get informed by what they're what they're doing. But it's the idea of, let's look at all of our initiatives and get an understanding of which ones are actually impactful and why they might not be. And then inquire-- that's the inquiry part where we develop a theory of action, if we do this, then this is what's going to happen.

[00:07:30.85] And then you jump into the planning aspect. And in the book, I have the program logic model, I have a pacing chart, which is something I've never done before, and you were really great with going through that process with me, but it was also about I created a implementation checklist that is for district and building leaders as well as teachers to be able to go through.

[00:07:53.95] And I know that sounds daunting, but it's not. The implementation checklist is just like most of my work. It's very practical and something to go through, but it engages us in a conversation we need to have about is this impactful? Why hasn't it been? What do we need to do?

[00:08:12.25] And then you go into de-implementation process, and that's where the pacing chart really comes in to start thinking, so if we're going from traditional grading to standard based grading, here are the things we have to be able to think about. Here is the pilot group that's going to be starting this.

[00:08:28.78] And then you go into that whole you know evaluating the impact of the actions that you're taking. So there is definitely a process, probably the most comprehensive process than any other book that I've ever written because I wanted to be thoughtful. Because I heard people say things like. what if teachers just go in tomorrow morning and start getting rid of stuff?

[00:08:52.78] And I also-- when I was doing the research behind it, I would do these Mentimeters where I would go through all the research and talk about partial reduction, replacement action, informal de-implementation, formal de-implementation. Here's the criteria for de-implementation because that's even a part of it. Which is, it's not as impactful as it could be. We found something that's more impactful. In some cases, it causes harm, so we need to do something different, or it's just not necessary anymore.

[00:09:19.99] And there's that criteria from farmer which comes from the field of school psychology. And what I found is even after going through all that, the very first question I would ask in the Mentimeter is, so what would you de-imlement first? And every time I did this-- and I've done this with 100 and 100 of people by now. Every time, it was always something that people felt was coming down to them, that was being forced upon them.

[00:09:45.43] TANYA GHANS: OK.

[00:09:45.91] PETER DEWITT: That really caused me-- because I always look for common themes, that gave me the understanding that I needed to be much more intentional.

[00:09:53.19] TANYA GHANS: Yeah.

[00:09:53.50] PETER DEWITT: [INAUDIBLE] through and created that process and all that stuff because we wanted to-- what I wanted people to get to understand is yes, we do need to do something about that stuff that might be forced upon us, absolutely. And that's going to take us all to be a part of it. But what about the things you're doing that might not be impactful that you really do have control over? And that's a part of it as well.

[00:10:15.94] TANYA GHANS: Yeah. I mean, the intentionality of this is such a-- is a big part. And I want to talk about this two sides of the same coin with implementation and de-implementation, which really comes up in your book as well. But as you were speaking, I thought about where this research came from the medical field. And why they understand it's so important is because you know what's-- there's a lot riding on the medical field not being very clear about what's working and not working. And I think in the medical field, it shows up in your face very quickly or it can.

[00:10:49.36] PETER DEWITT: Yeah.

[00:10:49.60] TANYA GHANS: And so there is a very strong need to make sure you're not doing harm or even wasting because there's only-- the same 24 hours is what everybody is competing with or the 8 hours that you have while you're at school.

[00:11:00.61] PETER DEWITT: Yeah.

[00:11:01.54] TANYA GHANS: It's just as urgent in schools. It may not show up in your face as quickly. That's understandable. I think maybe that's one of the reasons it can-- it's so easy to add on, but the impact can be just as devastating for children and students and families if we're not sure that we're focusing on the stuff that really, really works in giving it time to thrive.

[00:11:23.14] So going back to this de-implementation and implementation, in the book, you really talk about both of these. Can you talk about why that implementation part is such a big part of de-implementation?

[00:11:37.00] PETER DEWITT: Yeah. And it's because when I was looking at the medical research, I found an implementation model called prism. And what I thought was really interesting about it is that on one side, it talked about the characteristics or the perspective of the doctor, the nurse, the medical professional. And on the other side, was the patients, the perspective of the patients. And then you had the characteristics of the doctors, the nurses, and the other medical professionals and then the patient's characteristics.

[00:12:12.61] So what I did was I adapted that to schools and put in a school leader and teacher. And then obviously instead of patients, it's the students. But going through, when you look at the perspectives and characteristics of all of those-- let's call them stakeholders in a school, then you go into the whole idea of the implementation part. But one of the words that came out in that prison was maintenance.

[00:12:40.42] And they even had-- like on each side, there was outside influences. So people can look at that as their school board or their school community or situations that happened. But that maintenance piece came up. And I remember the first time I talked about it, it was with a large group of directors of teaching learning from across the state of Washington where I'm a lead advisor.

[00:12:59.92] And they overwhelmingly said yeah, the hard part of implementation is the maintenance part. And I remember just doing a lot of thinking about that because when we implement, it's interesting as a writer and maybe as the researcher side and just somebody who reflects way too much. Is that when you start to think about the maintenance and the implementation, it makes me start thinking about, so where does this come from?

[00:13:26.62] And asking questions about, so when you-- you know I run workshops. I give keynotes. And people have really-- I had a conversation with the superintendent a few weeks ago because I had said, we have to be careful when we go to conferences and workshops that we're not going to get the new shiny toy because we know there isn't one. And we've been saying that for years.

[00:13:48.82] And a person came up to me after the conference, and he said, I just want to tell you though, I feel a lot of pressure to bring back something new because my school board paid for me to be here for three days. And I was like, wow. I work with a lot of directors across the country and around the world who have talked about the idea that they go to conferences and workshops to find something new, and it's caused me to really think about, do you go to a conference and workshop to get a new strategy or do you go to a conference and a workshop to inform the practice of what you're doing already?

[00:14:20.98] Those are the conversations that we need to be able to have. So this is--

[00:14:24.16] TANYA GHANS: Yeah.

[00:14:24.93] PETER DEWITT: --a holistic issue that we have to confront. And it means that when we're thinking about implementation, how are we asking those questions already about, how does this look in our school district or our school already? Because I can guarantee you that there are teachers within the school or school district that are doing the work already. They just don't call it the research-ey term. [INAUDIBLE] You should talk to them if you ever go and make it seem like you're bringing back a brand new idea. So there's even that part of it that I think we have to be able to address and understand, do we really need to do all the things that we're doing?

[00:15:02.50] TANYA GHANS: That's important honest conversations that you need to have in your building. You made me think about incentives and how you have to think about how you're incentivizing things. Because you may think it's-- again, maybe it's for innovation and to improve, but if what it actually feels like is I must do something rather than the goal is making sure we're every day giving the best we can to our students and families, those are those are two different things.

[00:15:29.26] And I just want to say, what's also true about the maintenance piece that you brought up-- in my research on schools, especially high performing schools-- high achievement, high well-being, schools that are doing really well, there isn't a lot of change. They figure out what works, however their methods are, they get that clear, and then they keep at it, keep at it, keep at it, they really refine it.

[00:15:52.36] And only until that stuff is really at mastery for many people in the building do they start to bring on new things. They really do treat their front doors is like, they're the gatekeepers. Only the best can come in. So I just I just wanted to say that about the maintenance piece. It's really true. So--

[00:16:12.93] PETER DEWITT: I remember John Hattie and Aaron Hamilton have a book that just came out. And we--

[00:16:20.23] TANYA GHANS: Impact.

[00:16:21.31] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, Impact with Doug Reeves and Janet Clinton. And when I was reading the review copy before it was published, they talked about in there the fact that there's a discrepancy between what the research says about a strategy and how it's practiced in the classroom. And some of that is because if I'm a teacher and I've been doing some method or reciprocal teaching for a really long time, I can convince myself that I'm doing it the exact way it's supposed to, but that's not always what the research says.

[00:16:50.59] And also, sometimes what's hard about the research is that the researcher might not have a lot of experience within a classroom. I was a first grade teacher for seven out of 11 years, and you have 31st graders in a high poverty city school. Your day to day operations can be just very different. So it's even understanding those nuances are really important, and that's what I try to explore within the book. It's not just about what the research says and the and how we as teachers and leaders implement, it's about that space in between where we have to be really clear and there needs to be a great deal of clarity where that's concerned too.

[00:17:31.21] TANYA GHANS: Yeah. And having a conversation like this is the important first step. [LAUGHS] OK. So school leaders, in particular, I'm thinking about superintendents or just district leaders or central office leaders or even principals. I think you alluded to earlier that they can be a little fearful of this term and what it could mean let loose in their buildings or in their districts.

[00:17:53.20] PETER DEWITT: Mass dumping out everywhere.

[00:17:55.72] TANYA GHANS: How do you begin to assuage their fears? How can you help them understand-- it's all of what you've shared already to some degree, but for that, no, we don't have time to have more teachers and schools saying, no, we don't want to do something. We feel like we're already pushing back against-- we don't want to do this. Why do they have to pay attention to this?

[00:18:18.46] PETER DEWITT: So I think there are a few reasons why. Number one, the research around mental health and social emotional learning is telling us we have to pay attention to this because people are burned out. People are leaving the profession. There is just a high level of burnout because people are doing so much. And I can't imagine that all of it is worth doing.

[00:18:41.41] Part of what we have to be able to do is create a climate and a culture within our school where there's a safe space that we can-- we always talk in group work about psychological safety. This is why I started to talk about the implementation and the collective leader efficacy book because it's how a team comes together to engage in this kind of conversation is really important. We have to do that prep work, and then we can we can create that safe space where we can be open and honest.

[00:19:09.67] I know of a district that I'm working with that is actually looking at-- they put all their initiatives up on the up on the wall, and they're starting to go through and process which ones are going to be the most impactful or why haven't some of them been impactful? And having that kind of conversation. And it does take time. This is not a one conversation.

[00:19:32.50] For me, I'm a big fan of reflecting, which means that if I'm going to be at a meeting where this conversation is going to come up, I need to know the basics about it. I need to know the formal versus informal. The partial reduction, the replacement action, all of that kind of stuff. And then I need to be able to walk away and think seriously about where would I start when it comes to the implementation?

[00:19:55.21] And engaging in those conversations is really important. I think that if I was a school leader during this time, I would probably be one of the first school leaders ever to walk into a school and look at teachers and say, I really want to have our committee-- our instructional leadership team, look at taking stuff off of our plate. I really would love to be that person having that conversation because I can guarantee you, that doesn't happen very often.

[00:20:25.66] TANYA GHANS: No, it doesn't. And I can I can hear the exhale in the room.

[00:20:29.89] PETER DEWITT: Yeah.

[00:20:30.34] TANYA GHANS: Right? And so what your book does though is give people a frame and a shape and a process. Again, the free for all-- I don't want to-- maybe you start there, you get it all out, but there has to be an intentional process for really thinking about this, particularly if it's at the school level.

[00:20:49.85] All right. So we're coming to our closing. And there's been so much good information here, but I guess I want to end with, there's a spectrum of the implementation that you've mentioned-- partial replacement, maybe you are just taking some things away. There's a variety of ways to go about it. This is important at the classroom level all the way up to the district level.

[00:21:09.77] So maybe even thinking about any teachers or, again, principals who are listening, what are some things that they could start to de-implement on their own or really think about or get started with next week in their schools or maybe this summer as they're thinking about the following year?

[00:21:27.08] And I think we mentioned some of the larger ones that they could-- maybe a quick reiterating that a bit-- again, about what are the big things you can think about? But there are some things that you could get started doing that's happening in your school right now that could begin to turn down just the level of pressure that educators feel.

[00:21:45.83] PETER DEWITT: Yeah. One of the places that I would start is informal de-implementation where we don't need a team because that's probably going to be the grassroots effort, the ground up kind of thing. If you go in and say to people, this is what informal is. You don't need a team, and you can either-- you can do a partial reduction of how often you check email.

[00:22:07.73] And I'm a little shocked at how much email has actually come up over and over and over again over the past more than a year now. We are so tied to email. We are so afraid to not be instantaneous in how we answer email. And so a partial reduction would be, you know what? I'm going to set boundaries around email. I'm going to have an automated response for my email that says, I check email at 7:30 noon and 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

[00:22:40.14] And after that, I go home to be with my family. And set a boundary like that. If those times don't work for you, figure out sometimes they do. But I'll answer you in the next 24 hours or so. Something like that. So you have the ability to breathe. And as a leader, if you do that, you can get up and get into more classrooms and that kind of stuff I think is really important.

[00:23:01.85] Meetings. Do you really need to have the number of meetings that you have? That's not a-- that's not something that's a formal de-implementation. That's an informal de-implementation. Do we really have to meet as much as we do? Or if we are going to meet. Let's make it worthwhile where we have a focus on learning.

[00:23:22.79] One of the replacement actions that I offer is the fact that I put in success criteria. Every time I'm going to run a workshop, give a keynote, or have a coaching session, I start off with success criteria to say, how are we going to know at the end of this meeting we're successful? And I actually ask the audience, even in keynotes, I've asked the audience, give me your success criteria so I can tie it in to making sure that everybody finds this time to be very valuable.

[00:23:46.61] Those are really easy things that they can do right away. Teachers can actually look at the number of assessments. And this did not come from me even though I wrote it in the book, I had teachers who actually said, I don't have to give the number of assessments that I'm giving because I don't check them.

[00:24:05.70] So why did you do it? So even looking and saying, I can reduce the number of assessments that I'm giving to my students because I'm not keeping up with them anyway. If I give fewer, I'm actually going to be able to do something productive with them. So those are some really great places that people can start.

[00:24:23.61] TANYA GHANS: Yeah.

[00:24:23.81] PETER DEWITT: [INAUDIBLE]

[00:24:24.65] TANYA GHANS: I would absolutely agree that everyone can likely find one meeting that they can get rid of. Do a survey, get some sense of where your people stand, but something will show up on that survey about a meeting that people don't need. I put my money on it. Peter, talking to you about this again reminds me of how excited I got about it when I first saw you write about this in Ed Week.

[00:24:45.83] It's the same feeling months later about this on some level seems so obvious, but yet not. It is so needed yet no one talks about it. There is no formal language to speak about it to give it the earnest seriousness it deserves. It's not a flippant thing. But if we don't inject this kind of thinking into the conversation, I'm always thinking about the children on the ground. That third grader only gets that year to get what he or she needs.

[00:25:15.35] And so we have got to be doing everything we can to make sure that every all of that time is used as efficiently and as effectively as possible. So I take all the credit or the all the whatever you want to give for putting this book out into the world.

[00:25:33.17] PETER DEWITT: Well, thank you, because I do. I remember that email with a link to the blog and you said, this.

[00:25:38.81] TANYA GHANS: Yeah.

[00:25:39.17] PETER DEWITT: This should be your next book. And I'm thinking, oh, I just finished collectively [INAUDIBLE] came out a month ago. There's no way I can write a book. And then I think it was like three days later, I contacted you said, OK.

[00:25:50.11] TANYA GHANS: Here it is. And the world needs it. So in all kinds of spaces-- but we're talking about education, so Peter, what a joy. Pleasure thinking about this with you again today and just learning about it again, and I really hope our listeners get a lot out of this and feel empowered to go back to their spaces and say, OK, let's just wait a moment and see. And that that's OK to say too.

[00:26:14.74] PETER DEWITT: Well, I'll tell you, thank you. Thank you for your partnership on it because it was the first time we got to work together. And that to me was just an amazing experience, and people will know when they open up the cover that it was during a very difficult time in my life. So you were just amazing during the whole entire piece. But I will now love to turn the hot seat over to another guest so I don't have to sit-in it. But thank you.

[00:26:39.97] TANYA GHANS: All right. You can get out of the light now, [LAUGHS] go cool off. Peter, enjoy the rest of your day until we learn again together soon.

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