Balancing Innovation and Well-Being in Schools

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In the past several years, my work has been focused primarily on two things: innovation in education and personal well-being. Yet many would look at these two separate topics where I see them as connected. How innovative and forward-thinking-and-doing could any organization become if people are exhausted and do not feel valued for their contributions to the school community?

As I prepare a keynote for an organization on this topic, I wanted to share three insights on how you can move your organization forward without trampling your own people in the process.

1. Less is more.

Go to any educational conference (literally any conference), and AI is one of the most discussed topics. As much as I appreciate the timeliness of the conversation, we always have to consider the approach.

The focus is often on all of the different AI tools and sites you can utilize in your school or classroom, and sessions are packed focused on”100 New AI Tools,” trying to provide as much choice as possible. Often, we believe that providing ample choice is a good thing, but in reality, it often leads to being overwhelmed.

In our pursuit of trying to do everything, we often end up doing nothing (well).

Barry Schwartz talks about this deeply in his book, “The Paradox of Choice”:

“When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.”

Barry Schwartz

Unfortunately, I read that book after I started overwhelming my staff as a principal.

In my pursuit to keep up with the rest of the world, I remember inundating my staff with “10 Tech Tools in Ten Minutes” during every monthly staff meeting. My hope was that showing them all of the powerful tools available to them would inspire them to try new things.

It did the exact opposite.

They ended up hating technology in my first year as a principal.

I took a different approach in my second year.

In working with our educational technology team (led by our own staff), we focused on three tools that we could use for the next three years as a staff, that we would know inside out. You also knew the person across the hall was using the same thing, so we would develop many experts across the building.

We never wanted to limit people to technologies they could utilize, but we committed as a staff that our time and resources would be toward those three tools.

I write about this in-depth in “The Innovator’s Mindset.”

“As a school or system, when we limit our initiatives, tools, or techniques, we give ourselves time to discover what deep learning can really look and feel like. Focusing on a few key things promotes innovation in teaching and learning. And this sharp focus allows you to do more—with less confusion, frustration, and stress. At the same time, by sharing those ideas and learning experiences with other teachers— within schools and around the world—you can help deepen understanding, allow for transformative learning, and disseminate ideas for innovation.”

George Couros

If you want to go further without promoting burnout, focus on doing less, better.

2. Provide time within the structure of the work day.

This is deeply connected to the first point. In our pursuit to do everything, we seemingly have time for nothing.

Case in point: think of the typical structure of many professional learning days. It might start with an opening address, followed by a ten-minute (15 if you are lucky!) break, with session, after session, after session, after session, until everyone is exhausted and probably too tired to implement anything new they learned.

Why do we pack so much into such a short time frame of the day? Because there is a feeling that our time is so limited that we need to fill the day with as much time as possible. But if the day is so full that we are unable to retain any information or have time to plan for implementation, how does anything get done?

I am not against lectures, but what if you have an opening address and give people thirty minutes to process and talk to each other? Do you think that would promote more or less learning? Many would say that the best part of any conference is the conversation in the hallways with their colleagues. Informal learning is still “learning” and we should intentionally create space for that within the school day.

With my staff on our planned professional learning days, I used to ask them for their full attention during the morning but then promised they would always have the afternoon to do what they needed for their classrooms or teams. That was their time to use as they needed. I never regretted that decision once, as our mornings were full of wonderful conversations, and the staff were so grateful that they could do whatever they needed to take as little work home as possible. Sounds like a win-win situation.

This can also be done within the regular school day.

Often, I would provide substitute teachers to cover classes for staff so that they could co-teach or observe other staff members or have planning time together. Think of the cost of that versus sending staff to a conference. It was a great investment that ensured staff in my own school were valued as experts across the hallway, not only the ones speaking at events.

In the pursuit of rethinking our time, we also reconsidered our relationships with one another. Part of my job as an administrator was to protect the time of my community as much as possible, guarding the mass amounts of paperwork and over-inundation of meetings. The more I could ensure that I protected there time, the more they were able to achieve in the classroom. If you are an educator who talks about the “evils of homework” (personally, I am not a fan), then it is important to do everything in our power to also ensure our staff has a small amount of work to take home at the end of their days.

Time is the most valuable currency and we have to spend it wisely.

3. Develop people’s strengths instead of focusing on what they “can’t do.”

In “The Innovator’s Mindset,” I asked the following question: “Do we really think someone will be innovative in an area they hate?”

Too often, I watch as administrators look at “data” and focus on weakness areas, and really try to hammer home why they need to do a better job. Rarely, do I see someone say, “Wow, we are really good at this! What are we doing that we can apply to other areas?” Not only does this ensure people feel valued, it brings out the best in them. When we build our own confidence, not only do we get better at what we are already good at, but our weakness often get better as well.

Tom Rath talked about this in his book, “Strengths Finder 2.0”:

The key word here is “primarily” focus. It doesn’t mean we ignore our areas of growth, we just start with strengths. But when you constantly hear what you are not good at, this not only harms your well-being, but it doesn’t bring out all that we are able to achieve.

This is one of my favorite quotes from Peter Drucker on the topic:

It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity. —Peter Drucker

Everything you want to happen in your organization already exists; as a leader, your job is to unleash the gifts and talents of those you serve.

I will be talking about the connection of these two topics in the new year, as there is a focus on continuously moving forward in education, but it should never be on the well-being of our staff and students.

Innovation will always be a human-centred endeavor, so our focus should always start with the people not the tools.

The description for the talk/workshop is below, and if you want to learn more about me providing this for your school community, please feel free to fill out this form.