Did you ever get a random-seeming marketing email with exactly what you needed in it?
This morning, I got one from the folks at Blue Ocean Strategy. They’re a business strategy consulting firm, and I’m not sure exactly when or why I signed up for their email. But I’m grateful I did!
Today’s email had a link to this Harvard Business Reviewarticle that they wrote back in 2003 about a concept called “Fair Process.” As I read it, I felt my understanding and awareness shift in some really important ways. “Outcomes matter” to people, say Kim and Mauborgne, the authors, “but no more than the fairness of the processes that produce them.” And fair process, as they define it, has three key elements that they call
As soon as I saw that list, even before I read their definitions of the terms, it hit me: that’s the missing piece!
If you’re a teacher, and you’re feeling Stuck and frustrated and unappreciated by your administrators, colleagues, parents, and students – if you’re pretty sure or very sure that you want out of education as a field – at least one of those elements is probably missing. If you’re a language teacher and you – or your students – are Stuck, Stuck on a particular concept or Stuck at a particular level of proficiency, at least one of those elements is probably missing. If you’re a homeschooling family and you’re Stuck, with a child who wants to learn a particular subject and “can’t” with the tools and resources you can access, same issue: at least one of those fair process elements is probably missing. Same issue if you’re an adult learning a language on your own and you’re Stuck on a concept or Stuck at a level of proficiency.
Stuck usually means at least one of those three elements is missing, or there isn’t the right amount of it to meet your needs.
Sometimes all three are missing and the situation is almost intolerable. If you read the whole article, they have a long, painful Story about that. Sometimes two are missing and it’s “just” painful and unpleasant. Sometimes one is missing and it “just” hurts to deal with.
Since you’re reading this, I bet you feel in your heart that expectation clarity is missing from your problem situation. When there isn’t expectation clarity, an IT – a seemingly unsolvable problem or unachievable result – is right around the corner. And as we discovered earlier in this blog series, where there’s an IT, there’s usually a missing Spark. And where there’s a missing Spark, the pain is deep – it’s an Identity-level pain because the Spark lights the way to the identity-level gift that is yours.
Are you ready to locate that Spark and see where it’s leading you?
Q, a Latin teacher I’ve known for a number of years, had an important “How do I …?” question this morning in a Facebook group for Latin teachers, and she got some good “This is how” answers. I gave her a pretty detailed “This is how” response, which she appreciated. But I realized there was something deeper going on – something that will probably resonate with you whether you’re a teacher or a transitioning teacher or a homeschooling parent or an adult language learner or any combination of the above.
Like so many of us, Q knows what to do, and she knows how to show her students what to do. She also knows what to do if she runs into something she doesn’t know, and she knows how to do that. She asks the what or how question in a Facebook group where other teachers will see it, and she knows that someone will tell her what or how.
But Q, like so many of us, doesn’t necessarily know why we’re asking students to Do That, beyond “it’s on the exam” or “it’s on page 73 of the textbook” or “it’s in the curriculum guide.” And she doesn’t necessarily know what for – the bigger-picture desired result that This Thing is expected to lead to.
Meanwhile, D and I have been working on the next-step program for her now that we’ve found (or at least started to find) the new flow for her classes. D had many things to celebrate and just a few concerns when we met the other day. Her biggest concern wasn’t about what she’s doing or even how she’s doing it; it was about making sure that she and her students were clear on the why and the what for. D isn’t just changing things about her classroom structure and procedures; she’s aiming for a much more fundamental shift where she gets to be the facilitator, not the controller, and her students move from consumers of information to something more like co-creators. D has a very clear sense of the why and the what for behind this change, and she can already see that her students are intrigued and curious. So our new program focuses on Flipping the Role Definitions – her own and that of her students – over the next three months or so. She’s eager to get started, and I’m eager to see what will emerge in the coming months.
Meanwhile, Q gets stuck when the why and what for aren’t clear to her. E has the seed of a great competency-building, interest-based, semi-independent strand of class for her students … but E is stuck with mountains of grading because there’s something in the why and what for that isn’t quite aligned with the current what and how. M is stuck with an old-normal approach to teaching grammar that isn’t working for her students, but she can’t quite see how to change it … because there’s something in the why and what for of Latin grammar instruction that has never been clear to her, even though she’s a pro at the what and how.
I’ve been stuck. You may be stuck … and if you’re stuck, you may be stuck in that gap between what to do and how to do it (the things that Old Normal School and teaching focused on) and why and what for (the things Old Normal School really didn’t need to address because they seemed so obvious). Good news: you don’t have to stay Stuck, but it’s hard to get Unstuck by yourself. Let me know if you’d like some help getting Unstuck or finding and taking those Next RIght Steps.
My friend Alan sent me this Facebook post by Terra Vance and wanted my perspective on it. If you know me well, you know I grew up in but not of Appalachia, born and raised in East Tennessee but with both parents “from away.” And I very quickly realized that Alan and I had were using the same words but the words had different meanings.
For Alan, shame is the feeling you feel when you realize that you’ve done something bad, something that hurt someone else, a feeling of remorse and regret that motivates you to stop doing the bad thing and start doing something better. But for me, shame is much deeper, more existential. Guilt, for me, is the feeling that I have done a bad thing, and shame is the feeling that I am actually a bad person … and when shame deepens and festers over time, a bad person whose badness can’t be changed.
That’s a terrible feeling! I hope no one reading this post has ever felt that way!
And yet, when I think about teachers I know and love, I realize that far too many of us have felt that way. Far too many of us, especially when our professional identity says “I am, or am supposed to be, a good, experienced, effective teacher.” We discover something – something we didn’t know, something we don’t know how to do. Our professional identity tells us “But I am a good, experienced, effective teacher. I should know this! I should be able to do this!”
None of that is “bad.” But what comes next?
For Alan, “OK! Now I know, so now I can do better.” That’s a healthy and growth-oriented response. But sometimes we go in a less healthy direction. Sometimes we go from “I should be able to do this!” to “What’s wrong with me that I can’t do this?” And sometimes we go from there to “I must be a bad person after all.” And then shame – the kind I was talking about with Alan – comes along … and we know the rest of the story.
Good news: it doesn’t have to be that way! You don’t have to have “my” kind of shame. You don’t even need to have Alan’s kind, the temporary remorse and regret that leads you to make a change. It’s not your fault that you didn’t know, that you couldn’t do … but you don’t have to feel bad about that. In Robert Dilts’s language, you’ve discovered a behavior-level issue where you need some coaching, or a capacity-level issue where you need some teaching. Or maybe you’ve found an incongruency or misalignment at the level of values and beliefs, and you need some mentoring around that. You might need some sponsoring as you reground and reframe your professional identity … but whatever the problem was, it’s Fixable. Whatever the thing was, the thing you don’t currently know how to do, it’s Doable – it’s just that you don’t know how to fix it or how to do it by yourself. We can work on it together (and you know how to reach me on LinkedIn when you’re ready for that), or you can find someone else to help you.
In just a few days, here in the US, we’ll commemorate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King’s work was all about liberation … and liberation is a process, an ongoing process of coming to know better and deciding to do better.
T took a really important step the other day. She sent me a message on LinkedIn and it started with I think I need you.
We ended up meeting that day for a Next Right Steps call. We found T’s Spark and her “IT.” And we started working on T’s next program, reframing her professional identity for a post-retirement role that makes T’s soul sing as she contemplates it. I’m excited, happy, and thrilled for her … and of course she’s excited, happy, and thrilled too. And Unstuck. And looking forward to a desired future state that seems so much more reachable than it did two days ago.
T knew when the time was right, she took the step, and an amazingly bright, beautiful future is opening up for her. What really convinced her, she told me, was the story of my friend M, or Ms N, who knew when the time was right and took the step into retirement – and she continues to thrive and take the next step almost 30 years later. She loved the way that M was able to reframe her identity through various roles and stages, and she wanted that for herself.
“If they can do it,” says Ali Katz, another of my personal mentors, “I can do it too. If they can have it, I can have it too.” And that’s important to remember, especially if you’re feeling Stuck and Miserable. Somewhere out there – somewhere not so very far away in our hyperconnected online world – there’s someone who successfully made the move from Stuck and Miserable to Joyful and Free. Maybe they’re available to mentor you directly, or maybe they can be your indirect mentor by example.
Otto Scharmer, who has been both kinds of mentor to me, talks about three “groundings” or “anchor points” that are particularly important in rapidly changing times. We anchor ourselves horizontally, he says, in the people around us – in what Robert Dilts would call our social environment. We anchor ourselves vertically upward in our purpose and vertically downward in our place. And we anchor ourselves chronologically in our practice, our awareness of the past and the present and the emerging future. But when we’re unanchored and ungrounded, even in just one of those ways, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by rapid change.
And so many people, especially teachers, are feeling unanchored and ungrounded in many of those ways right now. Maybe even in all of those ways!
T has been at her current school for well over 20 years, but as the faculty changed and the students changed over time, she’s been feeling less and less horizontally grounded. She’s still got a strong upward vertical grounding in purpose, but she’s feeling disconnected from the place. When it comes to chronological grounding in practice, she knows what used to work and she has some things that still work, but the emerging future of teaching practice – which may be the most important one – felt more and more disconnected.
And then we met. And we shared our Stories, the Stories of what brings us here today. We found her “IT” and her “Spark.” And all of a sudden, T was grounded and anchored again. It’s easy to see your next right step when you’re properly grounded and anchored … and it’s a lot easier to take that step, too.
And that’s what this is all about. That’s my desire for you when you’re ready!
In yesterday’s post, we talked about how teaching tends to be an identity-level job f – not just a role that I have (the way so many non-teaching jobs are) but who I am professionally. And in many cases, especially the frustrated teachers I’m serving these days, the professional identity becomes a larger and larger part of the personal identity. Sometimes our specific role (“I’m the Latin teacher at XYZ School” or “I’m the fifth grade teacher in Room 209 at ABC School”) gets fused with our professional identityand with our personal identity. I call it identity-role fusion, and it’s really common and it’s nobody’s fault and it’s the root of all kinds of problems. It makes it really hard to guard your identity and protect it from the Stuff that’s going on around you … stuff that probably isn’t even about you. But when you have identity-role fusion, almost everything feels like it is about you. It feels like it’s all about you … and not in a good way!
Sometimes life happens and there’s a change in your role or the context of the role … and sometimes it really isn’tpersonal. “We’re moving you from Room 209 to Room 212 next year,” That Administrator says, or “Enrollment is down, and we need you to teach a section of World History.” That’s never fun to hear! But when you have identity-role fusion, it can be totally overwhelming. “But I’m the teacher in Room 209, not 212! Room 209 is part of who I am!” says your fused identity. And it feels like you’re under identity-level attack. No matter what That Administrator’s actual intentions were, it feels like a deeply personal attack.
“I’m almost ready to retire,” said my friend W, almost 30 years ago, “but not quite. I think I’ll do one more year, maybe two.” In a quiet moment, she added this: “I need to figure out who I’m going to be when I retire.” W took things very personally – things that students and parents and colleagues and administrators said and did, even when they weren’t directed personally at W at all. That’s what happens when you find yourself in role-identity fusion. Even retirement, which W was genuinely looking forward to, felt like a personal attack sometimes.
But it doesn’t have to be that way! W’s friend M – but let’s call her Ms N – never suffered from role-identity fusion. And Ms N taught me an way to have space and grace (as she would put it) between your professional identity and your role.
She had built a professional persona, the “Ms N” version of herself. “Ms N” was the teacher version of M that allowed her to do what people in role-jobs do naturally: she could put on the teaching role when she arrived at work and take it off at the end of the day. “Ms N” wasn’t different from the M she was to her family and friends, but “Ms N” was a distinct version of her. “Ms N” was the secret behind her thriving for the twenty eight (“and a half”) years she taught, even when her teaching role and her specific context changed. Even when there was personal tragedy. And “Ms N” was the secret behind her ability to walk away when she knew it was time.
“Justin,” she said, “I’m retiring at the end of the month. I looked at that textbook, I thought about taking students through that textbook for three more semesters, and I realized I’m done. I talked to the retirement system people and they told me it would be $50 less a month if I retire now. And I can live with that.”
M was able to put aside her Ms N teaching persona when she knew the time was right. And, years before, M was able to leverage her Ms N teaching persona when her role changed – when That Principal asked her to teach some Spanish along with the English classes, and then, a few years later, when he asked her to teach Spanish exclusively. When That Other Principal moved her from Room ABC to Room DEF to Room XYZ.
Do you want the space and grace and comfort and ease that M had? Then you probably need some space between your professional identity and your specific role. You may need a professional persona, or you may just need to get out of identity-role fusion. We can work on that, or you can do it yourself – you know what’s best for you!
It was New Year’s Day, 2024. My favorite coworking space “just happened” to have a social event, so I decided to go to that. And WOW! Talk about an amazing day full of connections and conversations and making new friends!
A theme that showed up over and over again, in just about every conversation during the say, was the phrase that gave today’s post its title. “I’m a software developer,” said one new friend, “but what I’d really like to do is ….” In a long conversation, one of the manager of the space, whom I’ve had short conversations with before, told me what he’d really like to do with the space, with and for the surrounding community, in the next five years. A brand-new prospective member who “just happened” to show up – a person who grew up Here, traveled All Over, and came back because there’s something for her to do Here Soon – told us about what she would really to do in the next three months or so and in the longer term.
And then I had at least two more “what I’d really like” conversations after I left for the day.
Your New Year’s Day may have been less eventful and conversational than mine, but I bet, at some point, you thought about what you really want – from the year ahead, from the next step on your teaching and learning journey. Maybe you feel like T, who would really like a job where she gets to do the Work she loves with People who respect her as a professional, treat her fairly, and pay her well. T wishes she could find that kind of job as a teacher, but she’s ready to move on to Something Else if she can’t. Or maybe you feel more like N, who would really like to find, or maybe create, a teaching role and context where she can work with eager, happy learners, where it isn’t a forced march through curriculum, where the relationships between teachers and students and parents are collaborative, not adversarial. Maybe you’re like E’s mom, who finally found that kind of environment for her son … but now come the logistical challenges of moving to where it is.
Since you’re here, you’re probably seeking more abundance in your life, the kind that flows when you are genuinely seen and heard and understood and valued and appreciated. The kind that leads to (and flows from) joy and gratitude. The kind that promotes flow and peace and – let’s go ahead and say it – the kind that brings love and liberation and life. The kind that, believe it or not, is waiting for you on the other side of that seemingly unsolvable problem or get the seemingly unachievable result – the IT – that’s been blocking your way.
What’s my desire in this still-new year? To help you (more and more of you) solve the problem “IT” and gain the desired results “IT” so more and more of you – of us – can have that abundance on the other side. To help you feel and beseen and heard and understood and valued and appreciated for Who you are right now and for Who you want to become. To increase the joy and gratitude, to help you find the flow and peace, to celebrate the growth of love and liberation and life as you connect ever more deeply with the People and Places and Purposes and Practices that make you come alive.
You know you’re ready for that, too. And you know how to reach me on Facebook or LinkedIn. So let’s do this thing!
When people come to me for help, they sometimes show up a homeschooling parent whose child yearns to learn Latin but struggles with conventional, old-normal, textbook-based approaches. Sometimes they show up as an adult learner who yearns to learn Latin really well but has gotten stuck and frustrated, again, with the conventional, old-normal, textbook-based approaches, And sometimes they show up as a teacher who’s struggling, stuck, and frustrated, caught between an old-normal world where their old-normal approach to teaching worked pretty well and a strange new world where nothing seems to work anymore.
No matter how they show up, they’re wondering “Is IT Fixable?” or “Is IT Doable?” or, perhaps, “Is IT Achievable?”
So our first order of business is to figure out exactly what IT is. And that’s both easier and harder than it seems.
Your IT might be the seemingly unsolvable Problem or Situation that you can’t Fix, no matter how hard you try. Or your IT might be the seemingly unattainable set of Desired Results that you can’t seem to achieve. There was a time, not so very long ago, when IT wasn’t there and things were … in retrospect, they were Pretty Good. Not “perfect,” of course, but Pretty Good Indeed. A whole lot better than they’ve been since IT appeared.
Darnyelle Jervey Harmon, in her remarkable bookMove to Millions, calls your IT your SPICE Problem – the seemingly unsolvable problem that (at least from your perspective) is
Specific
Pervasive
Insurmountable
Clear
Expensive (not just in terms of money, but also in time and energy and attention)
As she says, an IT or SPICE Problem always has to do with something that you strongly desire to make, save, protect, reduce, or increase.
You know what yours is! And you know what you want to make, what you want to save, what you want to protect, what you want to reduce, what you want to increase. If you’re a teacher reading this, you probably want to make a difference, but it feels like you can’t anymore. You want to save the time, energy, attention, and money that you’ve been throwing at your IT, even though you already knew that the “solutions” wouldn’t work before you spent a second or a dime. You want to protect your Heart, because your Heart is almost broken, and you also want to protect your professional identity because that’s so closely connected to your personal identity and your core purpose in life. You definitely want to reduce the anxiety and overwhelm, the big scary emotions that have you questioning your professional identity and thinking about getting Just A Job, the kind where you can leave work at work, on a regular basis. (Hello, Sunday Scaries?) And you want to increase your satisfaction and your students’ satisfaction. And your sense of efficacy. And … let’s be honest … you want to increase your joy and freedom. You want the Freedom Bus that my First Principal talked about, and you want to stop feeling like a Misfit Toy.
Good news: once you’re clear on what IT is, you know what you’re looking for in a solution. Darnyelle Jervey Harmon says that SPICE Problems like an IT require SPICE Solutions, which are
Specific
Positive
Intentional
Clear
Evident
And that’s why our first step, when we work together, isn’t a prepackaged Thing like a webinar or a “course” with some videos and worksheets. There is nothing wrong with webinars and courses! They are great for information, and when they’re well-designed, they can be great for application of things you already know or have been learning. If your Root Level Problem was on the visible side of Robert Dilts’s framework, at the level of Physical or Social Environment, Behavior, or Capabilities, you could solve it with information or application …. and you wouldn’t be reading this post because your problem wouldn’t be an IT.
Justin’s version of the “Dilts Pyramid”
But an IT or a SPICE problem isn’t solved by information or application. An IT or SPICE Problem requires transformation because an IT, at its core, is a misalignment or incongruence hiding – not in plain sight – somewhere in what Dilts calls the Values and Beliefs or the Identity. Since you and I are a good fit for each other (because if we weren’t, you wouldn’t be reading this post, right?), we know that it’s somewhere in the midst of all that: somewhere in the way that you’ve been expressing that identity through your persona, your role definitions, or the stances you take toward things.
Maybe, if you’re the homeschooling parent or the frustrated teacher, your IT was “… but I have to use a textbook and explain the concepts and have The Kid(s) do exercises first,” which works great for The Kids who like concrete-sequential approaches to learning but collapse completely for The Kids (more and more of The Kids every year, it seems) who are more abstract or more random thinkers or both. If that’s the case, you can solve your IT SPICE Problem and achieve your IT Desired Results if you find a pathway that plays to the strengths of The Kids instead.
Or maybe your IT was more like “… but I have to teach about Grammar and Vocabulary and Culture and History and So Many Other Topics, and there isn’t enough time or energy for that!” And you aren’t wrong, but you don’t see how Grammar and Vocabulary and Culture and History and All Those Other Things are aspects of a Larger Whole. And if that’s the case, solving your IT SPICE Problem and achieving your IT Desired Results will involve seeing that Larger Whole and finding ways to help your students see it, too.
Something amazing happens when we name and claim the IT. Several amazing things, really. First, the three questions that I ask about IT essentially answer themselves:
Can IT (the problem) actually be fixed? Can IT (the desired results) actually be achieved or done?
Do you want to?
Is it worth the investment of time and energy?
There’s no universally right answer for those questions, even though the answer to the first one is usually “at least theoretically yes.” You may realize, as I did in 2014, that you don’t want to or it isn’t worth the investment of time and energy or both! And now you have a different Problem framed and ready for a SPICE Solution. Or you may realize that you deeply desire to and it’s definitely worth the investment. And now the criteria for that SPICE Solution are obvious. Maybe you can implement it on your own. Maybe you need help. We’ll figure that out and get you started.
That’s why you won’t find a click here to buy button for “Fixable” or “Doable.” These are not the kinds of information or application level programs where a buy with a button solution will help. You need a conversation with someone who can help you at the transformation level … and you know in your heart that you desire that conversation yesterday if not sooner.
You know how and where to reach me on Facebook or LinkedIn. You know you’re ready. Let’s do this thing so 2024 really is the Different Year you’re hoping for.
E isn’t a client of mine yet, but E’s Story is so much like the Story of my best-fit clients …. which means it’s so much like my story transposed to a different place and time. E is actually a second-career teacher, and he spent nearly twenty years loving the students and the work and feeling like he was fulfilling his calling by working as a teacher.
And then things changed. It seems like E can’t do the Calling-work anymore. So E is looking for other jobs … and WOW there are a lot of people who feel just like E. They feel just like I felt back in December 2013, a decade ago as I write. You can probably feel it right below the surface in my stories of Ms. X, Mr. Y, and the Giant Review Packets that they just knew they could Make Those Kids Do (“just a few questions a day”) over Winter Break.
“Who are these people?” I was silently asking. “And where is this Place? What happened to the People and Place I used to know and love, the Place Called School that was at this same address, in this same building? How can it be so totally different, so utterly changed, when it looks and sounds and even smells the same as it always did?”
Like E, I had a strong sense of calling or mission, of what for and who for, that influenced my professional identity and the persona and role definitions and stances that I took towards things. My very first principal, at That First School, talked about “helping kids build and board their Freedom Bus and figure out where they want to drive it.”
The principal who hired me away to That Second School … she talked about creating “the Island of Misfit Toys,” where bright, quirky kids (“who would have gotten themselves killed at a Great Big High School”) were free to find themselves and thrive as who they were. My what for and who for resonated with those visions. I loved those visions and I loved the People and Places and Practices that clustered around those visions.
But visions change. Very First Principal retired, and his successors – capable administrators and good, kind people though they were – had a different vision for That First School. The “Island of Misfit Toys” principal got an offer she couldn’t refuse to lead a much larger school, with salary (and effects on her finances in retirement) to match. Her successors, who were also capable administrators and good, kind people, also had a different vision for That Second School.
By December 2013, I didn’t have words for it, but I was ungrounded from the People and Place around me, and my Practices were more grounded in what had been true Before than in what was true in the moment or what was emerging. And that was “just” from the inevitable slow changes in People and Places.
If you’re reading this, and if you’re a teacher, the changes that started in March 2020 were drastic and overnight. All of a sudden, you were forcibly ungrounded from the People and Place you knew. The Practices that had worked perfectly well or well enough on Thursday or Friday were suddenly impossible to implement in a world of Remote School. You still had your sense of Purpose, and you had a faint hope that maybe, just maybe, the closures would end after the promised two to three weeks and Good Old Normal would return. “And we’ll appreciate it more,” you thought, “because of All Of This.”
We know the rest of the story.
Weeks turned to months. Even when schools did reopen, things were Different. If you’re a middle-school or high-school teacher, none of your current students ever experienced Good Old Normal School at the level you teach … and when you stop and think about it, you realize that Good Old Normal is gone and it isn’t coming back.
My what for hasn’t really changed, and neither has my who for. I still love helping people build and board their Freedom Bus and figure out where to drive it; I’ve just added teachers whose world has changed to my list of People who might be needing a Freedom Bus. And I still love helping the Misfit Toys flourish as Who they actually are; I’ve just added teachers who suddenly feel like a Misfit Toy to that list. But the joyful freedom focus and the process where we recraft the Stories together … that would be recognizable to students of mine from 2013, 2003, and even maybe 1993.
If you’re reading this, and you’re wondering whether your IT is FIXABLE or DOABLE, the answer is “It depends.” It’s almost certainly true that your Seemingly Unsolvable Problem could in theory be solved, and your Seemingly Unattainable Desired Result could in theory be achieved. Do you still want to? And is it worth the time and energy investment? And can you do it alone, or do you need help?
You know where to reach me when it’s time. Let’s do this thing!
Some of us, reading the current series of posts, are thinking, “This is so close to what I need, but my issue is a little bit different.” If that’s you, your big question isn’t really “Is IT FIXable?” There may be some things that need to be fixed; there probably are. But they aren’t the things that are keeping you awake at night and threatening to ruin your Winter Break again, just like they ruined your Thanksgiving Break and your Summer Break and all the other breaks since they started to show up.
Your question is different because you’re not really focused on the seemingly unsolvable problem. You’re focused on the seemingly unattainable result that you’ve been desiring to achieve for such a long time.
Maybe you’re a teacher, or maybe you’re a homeschooling parent or an adult who’s been trying to learn That Language and hitting a wall. Or maybe you work with teachers, parents, or learners outside of school. Maybe you have a formal title like Curriculum Specialist or Supervisor or Instructional Coach. Maybe your title is informal or “It’s Complicated.” There are lots of different ways you might show up, but just below the surface is your Question, which isn’t “Is it FIXable?”
Your question is, “Is IT DOable?”
Your IT isn’t exactly a Problem. Your IT is a Goal or a Desired Result that you’ve been wanting to achieve, either for yourself or for the learners (and maybe teachers) that you love and support … a Goal or Desired Result, BUT it seems unattainable or unachievable. It could be, “My child desperately wants to learn Latin, BUT we’ve tried every textbook and curriculum package out there and we always get Stuck.” It could be, “My whole identity is wrapped up in being a good, experienced, effective teacher, BUT the world has changed and I’m not as effective as I want to be.” It could be, “I just want the teachers and students in my department to be happy and successful, BUT they’re stuck and miserable and nothing seems to help.”
So, sure, there are Problems to be solved, but the Problems aren’t the point. The Goal, the Desired Result, the Thing that the Problems are keeping you from doing or being or achieving … that’s the point.
Good news: we can work with that, too. In fact, “Is IT DOable?” is an easier question to answer than “Is IT FIXable?” It’s a similar process, but that small change in focus makes things easier. When you message me and ask for an “Is IT DOable?” coaching call, this is the process we’ll follow:
Here’s an example of how it works … I’m time-traveling in a way, interviewing the Me that I was in 2013, just a few months before I had that moment of clarity that propelled me out of my Stuck and Frustrated Place and into the first version of the Joyful Liberation Work that I do now.
2013 Me: “The Story that brings us here today … WOW, that is a great question, Future Me! So, I guess you know it but I’ll tell you anyway. When I was (should I say when we were) a sophomore in high school, walking down the hill from the main building to the separate building where lab science classes were, I had (we had?) this sudden realization that I wanted to be a teacher, specifically a Latin teacher, and I wanted to use Latin teaching as a way to help people access the languages of power and see through different eyes and understand things more deeply and … I didn’t have the words yet, but yeah, I wanted to do joyful liberation work through Latin. And not just with students, either! I had this sense that there was something about teachers and schools, something about spreading joyful liberation through a network of Schools Like No Ordinary School. But that seems so far away now. Am I even still the same person who had that dream?”
Current Me takes notes and empathizes and explains the Cynefin framework categories.
2013 Me agrees that Complexity is the main issue, with some Chaos and maybe even some Confusion.
Current Me explains the Dilts Framework, and 2013 Me has a flash of insight: “OHHHH! Yeah, Future Me, you are right! There is something at the level of Values and Beliefs or Professional Identity, something really important that I’m not seeing. That’s WHERE I’m Stuck but I still don’t know WHAT I’m stuck in.”
Current Me takes “us” on a deeper dive into Professional Identity, Professional Persona, and Role Definitions. “OMG!” shouts 2013 Me. “I SEE IT! So, I’m a Guide on the Side. I’ve always been a Guide on the Side! That doesn’t mean I don’t lead or direct; I mean, you were me, right? You know that. But when I do lead and direct, I’m not standing in front of people waving my arms like a choir or orchestra conductor. Maybe in rehearsal, but not in performance. I … we … love musical groups where the leader is leading from within, right? But my students … they don’t know how to work with a Guide on the Side. They don’t want a Sage on the Stage either. They want a GUIDE on the STAGE! They want someone to stand in front of them and wave their arms. That’s the misalignment! And they don’t even see me as a Guide, the ones who are the Problem. They see me as, like, a Sage on the Side, and they wonder why I’m not up there on the Stage like I should be!”
Current Me smiles, very happy that 2013 Me could see, in 15 minutes, what took him (me? us?) months of struggle and frustration in 2013-14.
So that’s the IT for 2013 Me: students seem to need a GUIDE ON THE STAGE instead of a GUIDE ON THE SIDE.
Can this “IT” be fixed or done? Sure, and 2013 Me has seen evidence of it the days that he ran a “Traditional Latin Class” with That One Group. It was exhausting but 2013 Me did it and it worked.
Do I want to? That’s an easy answer, too: NO! 2013 Me has exactly zero desire to become a Guide on the Stage, and it would not be worth the investment of time and energy to become one.
What’s the Next Right Step? 2013 Me now knows that he (I? we?) will be looking for an environment where Guide on the Side leadership is needed … actually, to be precise, the kind of participant-leadership that you see in a really great jazz band, a small vocal group that performs without a conductor, or an orchestra with a player-conductor, but for teaching and learning. 2013 Me doesn’t know it yet, but that opportunity is only a few months away.
And if you’ve read this far, you either know your “IT” by now or are ready to book a session and name IT. And you’re ready to say, out loud, the important part: whether you want to Fix or Do your IT, and whether it’s worth the investment of time and energy. And you’re ready to see and name and take your Next Right Step or two.
You know where and how to reach me. Let’s do this thing!
Teaching Confidence is important. Knowing whether your Seemingly Unsolvable Teaching Problem is Fixable? Also important. But you know there’s a bigger-picture Thing going on here, right?
And if you’re new to this blog, you probably wonder why it’s (still) called Joyful LATIN Learning. If you scroll back to the posts from 2014 and before, it’s probably obvious: Justin taught Latin, the language of the Romans “and their successors,” first in physical-world schools from 1992-2014, then in online settings from 2014 on. The blog’s name made sense back then.
But Teaching Confidence and Fixable Problems aren’t just for teachers of Latin, the language. And they’re obviously part of something larger, right?
When I realized that this old-but-new blog was still a right-fit platform, I had a sense that LATIN might be an acronym for something important. And it is! There’s Latin, the language, and the process of teaching (and learning) that language and its many cultures in joyful, effective ways. We’ll still talk about that. But there’s also LATIN the acronym, which stands for
Liberatingly
Aligned
Teaching
Improvement
Network
We’ll be talking about that kind of LATIN as well.
When you choose to Reclaim Your Teaching Confidence or find out that your problem is Fixable, you’re really choosing to be part of an emerging network of teachers who are committed to liberation and alignment in their teaching practice. What you’ll ultimately be doing is Rebuilding Your Teaching Practice on a solid, firm foundation of liberation and alignment and joyful learning. Your professional identity and professional practices will be liberatingly aligned or grounded, as Otto Scharmer says, three ways:
horizontally in the People around you, with a deep awareness of the wants and needs and strengths and challenges that your students face
vertically in Purpose (with a deep, clear understanding of your own core purpose as a teacher) and Place (with a deep, clear understanding of your teaching context, including the wants and needs and strengths and challenges that the other adults in your school and community are facing)
chronologically in Practice, with a deep understanding of what used to work in Old Normal times, what seems to be working in these dramatically different times, and what seems to be emerging as a potential New … Something, even if “New Normal” is still too much to ask for.
Back in Old-Old Normal times, thirty-some years ago, when I was a new teacher and, before that, a pre-service teacher, I was fortunate – blessed, even – to have truly excellent models of those kinds of grounding. The Classics and Education faculty at Carleton College were great models for me. The Education faculty at UNC-Chapel Hill were great models. My first principal, Mr. B, and my early colleagues and mentors at That First School were great models. And when I made the Big Switch to That Second School in 2001, nine years into my teaching career, I had a whole new set of well-grounded colleagues and administrators to help me adjust to very different People, Place, and Practice.
But even if you had those kinds of mentors and models before, nobody has ever been “here.” Nobody – in living memory – has experienced the kinds of disruptions of Place that everybody experienced when schools shut down overnight at the beginning of the pandemic. Nobody knew how to Do School in the absence of a Place called School. Practices changed in unpredictable ways when those Places Called School were closed, and the People involved (students, teachers, parents, everybody!) changed in unpredictable ways, too. That’s why, when the Places Called School reopened, we couldn’t “just go back” to Good Old Normal, even if we wanted to. And that’s one really important factor in why so many teachers – and for that matter, so many students – are so stressed, so overwhelmed, so unhappy.
So, if you want to Rebuild Your Teaching Practice in ways that work for drastically changed People and Places, there are several steps you may need to take.
The first question for many of us is “Is It Fixable?” – but what exactly is It? And do I want to fix it? And is it worth the investment of time and energy it would take? Some of us will realize that we don’t want to or it isn’t worth the investment, and that’s totally OK. Some of us need a new professional identity in a whole new professional field, a field that is aligned with the kind of work we wanted to do – and were good at doing – all along, the work we can’t do in these drastically changed Places Called School..
If we do decide it’s Fixable, your Teaching Confidence is probably a big part of that “It” that needs to be Fixed. In Old Normal times, when things were (ideally) Clear or (usually) Complicated in the terms of the Cynefin framework, it wasn’t hard to have Teaching Confidence. In Clear situations, there was a Best Practice, and in Complicated Situations, there were Good Practices to choose from. But today? Today, when it’s Complex, Chaotic, or even Confusing in Cynefin terms, how do you know what to do? And if you don’t know what to do as a teacher, it’s really hard to have Teaching Confidence.
If Teaching Confidence is an issue, we’ll work to Reclaim Your Teaching Confidence. Since Teaching Confidence is closely related to knowing what to do, we’ll dig down through the observable problems – the problems with the Physical Environment, the Social Environment, the Behaviors, and the Capacities or Capabilities, in Robert Dilts’s terms, where we don’t know what to do – until we get to the root level problem where we can know what to do. That root level problem is likely to be in the areas that Dilts calls Values and Beliefs or Professional Identity. There’s something, maybe more than one thing, that you always used to do, an approach that always used to work with Old Normal People and Places, that just isn’t working anymore. It isn’t aligned with the Actual People or the Actual Place, and when we find it, we’ll discover that it isn’t aligned with your Actual Core Purpose anymore either. So we’ll be able to let go of that and let something new come.
And then we’ll see where you are right now as a teacher, using Robyn Jackson’s framework and terminology. There are several possible pathways.
Most of us aren’t really Novice teachers anymore, but we may be feeling like a Novice again. If we are, we’ll proceed to Refind Your Teaching Flow to get you out of that Novice feeling. Or we may Restore Your Teaching Balance so you don’t feel like Dr. Jackson’s Apprentice teacher, or Renew Your Teaching Rhythm so you can be a Capable Practitioner again.
Some of us really still are a Capable Practitioner, but we’ve been feeling like an Apprentice again. If that’s you, we’ll Reground Your Professional Identity so you can feel like the Capable Practitioner you are.
And some of us are ready for the next level. Some of us are ready to Rebuild Your Teaching Practice and level up in the New Normal … level up to be the kind of teacher you always wanted to be.
Along the way, you’ll meet the Others – the other teachers who are on this journey of Liberatingly Aligned Teaching. It’s not a journey that you can “finish,” mostly because things will continue to change. Your “perfect” Practice and Practice Model today, your “perfect” Professional Identity for right now, won’t be “perfect” forever … and that’s OK. You’re now part of a Teaching Improvement Network, and together, we’ll keep each othe grounded and aligned and balanced as conditions continue to change.
The Longest Night of the Year is over. Today is just a little bit longer and brighter than yesterday, and tomorrow will be longer and brighter still. Christmas is coming, and so many other Winter holidays are here or on the way. You know you want to be part of a Liberatingly Aligned Teaching Improvement Network as the New Year arrives, and you know you want your Winter Break to be transformational and regenerative, not just barely sustainable. And you know how to reach me, and you know how the process works when you’re Ready.
Don Tapscott's blog about … everything
The author of Wikinomics, Growing Up Digital, and Grown Up Digital explores issues affecting – and affected by – the “Net Geners.”
Joyful L.A.T.I.N. Learning Journeys 