Part 1: The Problem of "Too Much"
This is the first of a two-part conversation about how to thoughtfully, carefully, and deliberately take some things off the plate of your teachers and staff.
I’m sharing because I’ve learned how critical it is to remove initiatives, resources, and systems that are no longer relevant. Simplifying is tricky, but it is worth every difficult decision because it truly does make life easier for everyone.
My own epiphany came about ten years ago. It was mid-December. I was just a regular ol’ principal, doin’ my morning rounds. I turned a corner near our school's storage room and stopped. There, amidst a pile of boxes, sat a teacher I’ll call Rachel. I’d known Rachel for several years; she was a kind, calm, and experienced. She was generally… unfazed. I was startled to see her holding her head in her hands. “Rachel! What are you doing back here?”
She looked up. To my dismay, I saw her eyes were brimming with tears. I’d never seen her cry. “Oh, no! What’s wrong?” I asked, squatting next to her.
“I can’t find the snowmen!” she wailed.
Huh? Snowmen? Waaaa?
Out came the words in a torrent, every sentence an exclamation point. “I’m so overwhelmed,” she choked out. “It’s just two weeks until my annual winter play! I can’t find the snowmen we used to have stored back here! And I need to find the white rack for our holiday Giving Tree, and I just realized the fake snow we always used got tossed last year, so now I need donations for new batting to pull apart!” Her voice grew higher, more anxious. “I tried to get the film crew from the high school here, but I don’t even think they’re going to be allowed to come because it’s exam week and their teachers won’t excuse them. They’ve come every year! They have to come or I won’t get a video to send out to parents!” She dropped her head back into her hands and wailed again: “And I can’t.find.the.snowmen!'"
I hugged her, found a box of tissues, dug out the snowmen, promised we could figure out how to film the performance, and walked with her to the lounge for a cup of coffee. Then, gently, I asked, “You know you don’t have to put on such an extensive performance, right?”
She stared at me as if I’d suggested she cut off her arm.
I backed off. I knew how much she cared about this annual performance, and I believed strongly in teacher autonomy. Besides, I thought, none of it is affecting instruction.
But I was wrong. Everything we do— and don’t do— ultimately affects instruction. When we decide how to allocate our time, we're simultaneously deciding what we'll do well and what might spread us too thin. When schools and teachers have too much going on, whether it's from a winter performance or from the demands of instruction, assessment, resource management, or project-based learning, they are slicing the pie into thinner and thinner slivers.
To be clear, I am not advocating that we stop doing fun things and only focus on instruction. Quite the opposite. I’m saying we need to truly think about the return on investment for all the things we do—on the actual value our time allocation brings to our intended outcome.
Everywhere I go, whether in my own district or when I work with teachers and leaders around the country, I hear echoes of this same conversation. It’s too much. I can’t fit it all in. Too many things, not enough time. It’s real, too: In my recent book, “Trusted,” I outline all the new initiatives that have been added to the plate of educators in recent years, and it’s mind-boggling to see an actual visual depiction of all these additions. (I’ll share that visual at some point soon). The pressure feels like an overfilled and ominous water balloon. No wonder we all feel ready to burst.
But here’s a frustrating truth: Alongside that pressure, that stress, and that anxiety are also massive amounts of things we don’t need to be doing. I see this all the time. Time and energy spent on things that don’t matter. Initiatives, lessons, communications, and projects that should fade into the sunset without anyone even noticing. Things that get so cumbersome they aren’t even effective. A middle school teacher once told me, proudly, “I spend five days developing classroom norms.” Five days? I was incredulous. “Well,” she said, “We want to be thorough. We talk about what we want out of one another, and it fills five or six sheets of chart paper. We use those as a reference all year long.” She pointed. The “norms” were, indeed, posted around the room. There must have been thirty of them.
Why not spend an hour or two on norms and end up with just two or three powerful, impactful statements? Why not pare down the holiday concert? Why not downgrade an unnecessary exam to an exit ticket? Why not eliminate just one thing?
Okay. So. It’s easy to agree we should do less, but much harder to figure out what to let go. Next week, we’ll explore the “How”— with key considerations and a step-by-step process for deciding what to pare down. And we will revisit the snowmen, too.
Let’s stay curious—
Jen
P.S. No AI is used in writing this newsletter.
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