Social loafing is reduced individual effort on a group task. Classic studies of social loafing find that people pull less on a rope and clap more slowly and quietly when they are led to believe there are other people pulling or clapping, than when they believe they are alone in the task.

We’ve all been part of a group project where someone didn’t do their fair share of the work, whether we were the social loafer or the people who had to pick up the slack. And as classroom teachers, we have the opportunity to observe social loafing in group work on a daily basis.

I teach my psychology students about social loafing in a unit on social psychology, the theme of which is “the power of the situation.” With concepts like social loafing, conformity, and obedience, social psychology teaches us that the immediate social situation affects our behavior a lot more than we’d like to believe, especially in our individualistic culture.

After teaching about research in which people give an answer they know is wrong to conform to a group, or administer (secretly fake) electrical shocks to someone in obedience to an authority figure, I ask students to generate ways to resist conformity, obedience, and other forms of social influence.

The initial answers are always the same individualistic fantasies: “Just stick to my own beliefs,” or “Do what I know is right.”

No.

The lesson of social psychology is that social loafing, conformity, and obedience aren’t individual moral failings, but natural responses to specific situations. Changing the behavior isn’t a matter of just deciding to do our own thing — instead, to change the behavior, we have to actually change the situation.

The underlying cause of social loafing is the diffusion of responsibility — the sense that responsibility for the task is spread out among everyone involved. So a necessary condition for social loafing is a task that is judged as a group, with no individual accountability.

To change the behavior of social loafing, we have to increase individual accountability.

I’m going to share four interactive, high-interest activities that do exactly that, and get every single student engaged. Each of these activities reduces social loafing by creating individual roles or tasks, changing the composition of groups, limiting group size, or limiting the time each group stays together.

These activities can be used with different grade levels and content areas, and I’ll share some tips for adapting each activity to your needs. Each activity is designed to be intrinsically fun AND reduce social loafing.

Relay Review

I call this activity Relay Review because I usually use it as a review before a test, but it can be used in other ways, especially as any kind of practice. I have to give a shout-out to my high school Spanish teacher Señora Knott because I stole this activity from her when I first started teaching. My classmates and I got obsessed with this game in Sra. Knott’s class. The basic activity is to have 8-12 tasks for students to do in small groups, and turn it into a race with the other groups.

Preparation

1. Create a set of 8-12 tasks. For content review in my social studies classes, I write fairly straightforward factual questions, though the questions can be open-ended as well (see this example). One of the reasons I love this activity is that compared to other games (like Jeopardy or Kahoot), I don’t have to come up with as many questions, they don’t have to fit a specific format like multiple choice or have only one correct answer, and they can be more in-depth.

a. In Sra. Knott’s Spanish class, the tasks were scrambled Spanish words. We had to first unscramble the word, and then identify the meaning. Another option for a language class is to give scrambled sentences and ask students to arrange the words in the grammatically correct order. Or give them scrambled questions, which they have to arrange correctly AND answer.

b. In math, chemistry, or physics, the tasks could be different problems to solve. In English, the tasks could be examples in which to identify the type of figurative language or logical fallacy being used.

c. Depending on how involved each task is, I find 8-12 about the right number to complete the game in a 50-minute class period.

2. Make a copy (one-sided) of the tasks for each group you’ll have. I prefer the groups to be 2-3 students because with fewer students, social loafing is less likely. Once you get past 3 in a group, the odds of social loafing go way up. Be sure to run the copies off one-sided because they need to be cut apart. It’s best to color code each set in some way — either by copying each on a different color paper, or simply drawing a vertical line down each set in a different color.

3. Cut the tasks apart, so you can make a separate pile of the complete set of tasks for each group, and they can grab one task at a time. This is the step that does take some prep time but it’s mindless work, and it’s something I can have my student aide do if I’ve got the copies ready ahead of time.

In Class

1. You’ll want to be sitting in the front or center of the classroom, at a table or desk large enough to hold all the sets for your groups.

2. Each group should sit separately from the others, so they can confer without being overheard. Each group needs a paper and writing utensil to write their answers.

a. I have students write answers on a separate piece of paper, NOT the slips with the questions, so I can reuse the same sets of questions all day, and year to year.

3. Groups should designate someone as the writer (who writes the answers) and someone as the runner (who comes to you to get the questions — NOT actually at a run). Designating roles is another way to reduce social loafing. Other possible roles include question reader, and if you’re allowing notes or resources, note checker.

4. The runner for each group comes to your table, and you identify for them which pile of questions is theirs — i.e., Sally takes the red pile, Manuel takes the blue pile. The runner takes ONE QUESTION AT A TIME. For the first question, I make them all wait until I say go.

The Relay Review set-up at the beginning of the game — each group has question 1 on top.

And my table mid-game — different groups are on different questions, and I collect the questions they’re done within a parallel pile so they’re ready for the next class. The yellow group hasn’t finished question 1 yet.

5. The runner takes the question back to their group, and they have to answer on their separate sheet of paper. When they think they’ve got it, the runner brings BOTH their answer sheet and the question back to you at the front. I emphasize when giving directions that they must form a single file line in front of my table when coming up with answers, so there’s no debate about who got there first.

6. I check the answer. If it’s right, the runner leaves that question slip and takes the next one. If it’s wrong, they have to go back to their group and try again, until they get it right. Since the runner has to tell their group what I told them about what’s missing from their answer, even that role has to engage with the content.

a. This is the element that obsessed me and my classmates in high school and continues to engage students. It’s not just that it’s a competition, but that groups can get stuck on a difficult question, get way behind, but then catch up. In Sra. Knott’s version, she shuffled the order of the scrambled words for each group — so my group might get stuck on a difficult word on our 3rd one, while other groups surge ahead — until they hit that difficult word on their 7th one.

b. I give the questions to my groups in the same order because I like to call out the play-by-play — two groups are on number 3! Now another group has reached 3! Five groups are stuck on number 7, no one has gotten it right yet!

c. There are lots of options for how to handle it when a group gets truly stuck. You can decide whether groups can use class notes or assignments throughout the game, or only if they get behind by a certain number of questions, or are stuck on a question for a certain number of minutes. You can give a hint if a group has tried the question 3 or 4 times. You can give each group one chance to phone a friend and get help from another group during the game.

7. I usually count the first 3 groups to finish as having won (so that everyone doesn’t quit once one group finishes), and continue the activity until all groups finish (sometimes with help from the finished groups, if necessary). Sometimes the winning groups get a sticker or a treat, but usually, they just get bragging rights. When using this for review, I always post a copy of the questions to my LMS along with a key, for students who want to use it to study on their own.

8. Another good follow-up to the game is to go over the questions that most groups struggled with as a class.

Practice by Numbers

This is a stations activity I got from my wonderful colleague, English teacher Jenny Hussa. It can again be used for either review or practice.

This approach to stations reduces social loafing by changing the composition of the groups at every station and keeping the groups together for a short time, so students don’t have a chance to settle into patterns of loafing or taking over. A student might be able to social loaf at one station while other students take the lead, but at their next station with a different combination of students, they’re the one who has to step up.

Preparation

1. Create your stations. This activity works well with 5-8 stations. With 3 or 4 stations, it works well with a small class (20 or fewer students); otherwise the groups will be quite large and the codes will be repeated (increasing social loafing).

a. I find 5 stations work well in a 50-minute class period, with a few minutes for directions at the beginning of class and going over items at the end.

b. The tasks at these stations can be quite similar to the tasks used in the Relay Review. You want something a small group of students can complete in a few minutes. Here are some examples from my psychology class: Learning and Personality.

c. Print your stations so they can be cut apart and distributed around the room (spaced out and one sided). You only need 1 set of stations.

2. Prepare the student codes. Each student gets one code, which tells them the order in which they go to the stations. The codes are designed so that every student goes to the stations in a different order, meaning every group at every station is different.

a. It’s easy to create codes for any number of stations, but I’ve included the codes for 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 stations in this spreadsheet (up to at least 30 students, except 4 stations which only goes up to 20 students).

b. Use the codes in order, starting with the top left code and going down each column, then starting at the top of the next column. So if you have 27 students and 30 codes, you won’t use codes 28, 29, and 30. This guarantees that the station groups are as different as possible (minimizing the times students are in the same group twice).

c. The top of each column of codes is the station numbers in a different order (ie: 12345, 54321, 13524, 53142). For each row in the column, the first number is moved to the end of the code (ie: 12345, 23451, 34512, 45123, 51234).

d. You can distribute codes to students a couple different ways. My colleague Jenny, who invented this system, will print out the codes and cut them apart, so each student gets a tiny slip of paper with their code on it. I got sick of that, so I used large notecards to write out each code individually, and added tiny numbers in the corner to keep track of the order. I’ve reused these sets for many years.

The first few of my notecards with codes for 5 stations and 4 stations.

3. If you want, you can also create an answer sheet for students, with space designated for each station. I usually just have students carry a notebook or piece of paper with them. I prefer to keep this activity totally on paper, rather than digital, to encourage actual interaction at the stations.

In Class

1. When I first use this activity with a class, I give the directions before passing out the codes. After that, I can pass out the codes as students walk into class because they know how it works.

2. I ask students to get out paper and pencil/pen that they can carry around with them, and otherwise clear their desks. I place the stations around the room, announcing where each one is (I have my desks arranged into numbered groups, so it’s easy to put Station 1 at group 1, etc.).

3. Next I explain the codes: “When you get your code, write it at the top of your paper. When you move, you will leave your card behind on your desk. DO NOT write on, bend, step on, crumple, or chew on your code.” Including “chew on” makes students pay attention and remember not to mark the notecards at all — in the 15 years I’ve used these notecards, I’ve only ever had to replace one.

a. I have students copy their code onto their paper and leave the notecard at their desks when they move so that as soon as they go to their first station, I can walk around and collect the codes in order, ready for the next class. This also prevents the cards from being lost or damaged.

4. I give specific directions for what to do at each station: “First, one person needs to read the directions and the questions aloud for the whole group to hear. Discuss each question together — don’t work ahead on your own. Put a star next to any items your group isn’t sure of, and we’ll go over those together at the end of class.”

5. Then students go to their first station. You can set a timer, but I usually just watch to see when each group is finished, and announce, “Go to your next station.” As groups finish the last station, I ask students to bring the paper to the front, and then return to their seats.

6. As a follow-up, I go over the items students have starred on their papers. Depending on the time, I might go over all the answers. I also post a digital copy of the stations with a key to my LMS.

Sort

A sort is a pretty common activity, but over the years I’ve developed and borrowed from other teachers some strategies to ensure complete participation. The shoutout for this activity goes to Catherine Holden, the instructor at an AP Summer Institute I attended years ago, who shared many of these strategies.

The basic activity is to engage the class in a discussion or debate about the best order of a number of items. In my history classes, we are usually sorting from most significant to least significant — such as the most to least significant causes of European exploration, the most to least significant causes for the fall of the Soviet Union, or the most to least significant economic changes of the 18th century. The strategies I’m sharing here reduce social loafing by giving each student an individual role in the class discussion.

Preparation

1. I always give an assignment before a sort, so students have interacted with the content and the arguments before the class activity. This might involve reading about the content and ranking the items individually, or categorizing them by theme.

2. Create your set of items to be sorted, with one item per page in a document, and print it one-sided. I also include pages that say “Most significant” and “Least significant” (or whatever the two ends of the sort will be). Here are some examples: Economic changes and Fall of the Soviet Union.

a. In an English or language class, you could sort characters in a novel or short story on a spectrum from good to evil, most to least effective, or most to least relatable.

b. In biology, you could sort cell organelles or body systems from most to least significant in supporting life.

c. In a health class, you could sort behaviors from most to least healthy.

In Class

1. I post the most and least significant signs at each end of the board, and pass the other pages out to students, one to each student. There are fewer pages than students in the class, which is fine. The students who don’t get a page, I give a marker (or any other object to track their participation — thanks to Catherine for this idea!).

2. Each student with a page will bring it to the board and place it on the spectrum from most to least significant wherever they want. They need to give the class an explanation for why they placed it there. I usually start by having 3-4 students place pages on the board in a row.

3. Each student with a marker has to participate in the discussion by either proposing a change to the rankings or arguing for or against a change that another student proposes. I ask for proposed changes after every 3-5 papers added to the board.

4. Once a student proposes a change, they need to explain why. I then ask for any other arguments for or against the proposed change. I take the marker from any student who speaks to keep track of participation. Students without markers are also welcome to argue for or against a change, but I’ll call on anyone with a marker first.

Once arguments are exhausted, or we’ve just spent enough time on one change, I ask for a vote — either we change it or we don’t. Sometimes students try to slip another change into the proposed one – as in, instead of moving that item to the top, it should be second from the top — but I don’t allow that because it gets too complicated to vote. We vote on one change at a time.

a. In my experience, students can get super into these debates and oddly invested in their positions. I’ve had the debate about how significant technology was in European exploration erupt into a shouting match, and students come back a year later to reminisce about that debate with me. And even the students who don’t get super motivated by the debate still engage and participate verbally, because there’s the physical sign of whether they have or not, with the paper or the marker.

The end of a hotly debated sort on the causes of European exploration (though I set this up to show my own opinions — many of my students would argue for technology to be higher!).

5. We continue this process until all pages have been posted, all students with markers have spoken, and all proposed changes have been voted on (or we run out of time). I usually plan one 50-minute class period for this activity, though it could easily be adjusted to take less time by including fewer items to sort, or more time by allowing for more discussion, or adding more formal requirements to the arguments students make (as in, they are required to back up their argument with a specific fact or primary source).

6. Sometimes I give a writing prompt as a follow-up to the activity, in which students have to make a final argument about the most significant item and support it with specific evidence.

Psych to Psych (or The Examples Game)

I call this activity Psych to Psych because 1) I created it to practice concepts in my social psychology unit and 2) it’s loosely inspired by the game Apples to Apples. When I use it in history classes, I just call it the examples game.

It can be used to review or practice anything where students need to remember or create examples of concepts, themes, or categories. Students can play it as a competitive game, or use it as a cooperative activity; I usually leave that choice up to each group of students. This game eliminates social loafing because every student in the group takes a turn.

Preparation

1. Create two lists: one is a list of terms or concepts students need to know, and the other is a list of contexts to which those terms or concepts can be applied. Application is the main cognitive skill needed in psychology, as students need to not only understand definitions but actually be able to use the concepts to give real-world examples or predict behavior. That is the type of practice I designed this game for.

a. In my original Psych to Psych game, one list is all the vocabulary from the social psychology unit, and the other list is various situations, such as school, work, a dance, a birthday party, a sporting event, etc. (I would have attached the document here, but I cannot find it anywhere. It’s a complete mystery.)

b. In history classes, the vocabulary list can be concepts or categories like capitalism, socialism, communism, or scientists, philosophers, artists. The context list can be different centuries, historical periods (World War I, the Cold War, the age of globalization), or themes (political, economic, social, cultural).

c. In English or language classes, the vocabulary list could be applied to contexts like the ones I use in psychology, or different texts that the class has read.

2. Make a set of terms for each group, with each term on a small slip of paper. Group size is less important in this activity because every student takes a turn no matter what, but groups of 3-5 students work best. I copy the vocabulary list on one color and the context lists on a different color, so they’re easy to sort out and store each in different envelopes.

Context cards in green, vocabulary cards in purple.

In class

1. Each group needs a set of the vocabulary and the contexts.
2. On a turn, a student draws one card from each pile or envelope. They have to give an example of the vocabulary word that fits the context.

a. In psychology, they have to give an example of social loafing in the context of a sporting event.

b. In history, they have to give an example of mercantilism from the 17th century, or an example of a philosopher related to the political theme.

3. If students are playing as a competitive game, the rest of the group gets to approve or disapprove the accuracy of the example given. If they approve, the student keeps the vocabulary card as a point they’ve won (this is the part I got from Apples to Apples), but puts the context card back in the pile so it can be used again. If the example they gave is inaccurate or too vague, they put the vocabulary card aside so it’s not used again, but don’t get to keep it.

4. Most of the time, my students choose to simply use this as a cooperative review activity. They take turns giving examples, and help each other out if someone doesn’t know the term or struggles to give an example.

5. I instruct the groups to set aside any vocabulary terms they don’t know, and go over those at the end of class.

6. A great aspect of this activity is that once the cards are made, it’s easy to do with any amount of time that I have. I can pull the terms out with just 10 minutes left in class, or I can set aside 30 minutes or more for a substantial review.

As I wrote this article, I decided to include photos of the materials for each activity, to make the preparation and set-up more obvious. Taking and inserting these photos just now made me realize these activities have a 3rd feature in common — they all involve physical manipulatives. I didn’t do that on purpose, but it isn’t a coincidence.

My favorite interactive activities all use physical manipulatives and NOT digital materials (though students can reference those during the activity) because looking at physical papers or cards together facilitates interaction, and so often, looking at individual screens hinders it. This is yet another example of the lesson of social psychology — the situation shapes behavior.

When students are less engaged in class activities or more distracted by technology than we would like, those behaviors are not always about poor student choices or individual weaknesses — they are responses to the situations we’ve created in our classrooms. It’s always worth asking if we can change the situation to change the behavior.

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And yet when I coach teachers on this, a frequent response is, “I can’t plan that far ahead because I need to adjust to student needs.”

Adjusting to student needs versus planning ahead is a false dichotomy, and I’ve found that advance planning enables me to adjust to student needs far more effectively than planning lessons every night for the next day.

For example, imagine my 9th-grade world history students are struggling with a particular concept when teaching about the Industrial Revolution — communism versus capitalism. In last-minute planning mode, I decide to spend one more day practicing this concept than I originally meant to. Students get more practice, and the unit assessment ends up being a day later than it would have been — not a big problem.

But what if I take a similar approach often? If I add an extra day on a topic every other week, that’s 10 days in a semester — which could easily equal an entire unit! That’s 20 days or 4 weeks of school in a whole year – definitely a problem if I run out of time for that much of my curriculum. Sure, I can say my students understand communism versus capitalism — but what did they miss in those 4 weeks of instruction I’ve skipped or had to abandon?

In advance planning mode, I know exactly how many days I should spend on the Industrial Revolution unit to ensure I get through the whole curriculum, and how many days within that unit I have for communism versus capitalism. If I realize my students need more time on this concept, I can look at the big picture and make choices to meet this need without throwing off the rest of the year. I can look at the Industrial Revolution unit and see if there’s a topic coming up that I can spend less time on, or skills practice that I can combine with more communism versus capitalism practice.

I can look at the rest of the semester and decide to spend an extra day on this unit, knowing exactly where I will have to cut that day later on. I can look at my full curriculum and decide that since communism versus capitalism will come up again in two later units, I will use the assessment data from this unit to inform my instruction later, making sure to spiral back to what students misunderstood and build on what they did grasp.

When I have an advanced plan, I have many options, and I can choose among them knowing exactly what the consequences will be. When I plan at the last minute, every time I adjust for immediate student needs, I’m setting myself up to fail to meet their needs in the future, because I don’t have a clear idea of what the consequences will be.

Read about my advanced planning method here:

A peek inside one teacher’s lesson planning process (and how she streamlines to stay ahead)

Before getting into specific strategies, it’s important to reflect on your current practice. How much are you really adjusting to student needs when you plan at the last minute?

Be honest with yourself. I think it’s easy to use “adjusting for student needs” to justify to ourselves why we plan at the last minute when in reality, we’re just too busy to plan in advance.

Also, reflect on the ways in which you currently adjust to student needs or the ways you’d like to add. Brainstorm a list of the types of adjustments you make, so you can look for strategies to make those adjustments within the framework of a larger plan.

Needs that often prompt me to adjust my lesson plans

In my teaching, I often adjust lesson plans due to the following:

1. Extra practice: some or all students need more practice on a skill or concept
2. Reteaching: based on formative assessment, some or all students need more or different instruction to master a skill or concept
3. Student interests: something comes up that students are super interested in, and I want to embrace and encourage that spontaneous interest in learning; or students in a particular class really enjoy a specific type of activity (for example, my 4th hour loves debates but my 6th hour prefers discussions)
4. Differentiation: I need to modify instruction, assignments, or assessments to meet the needs of learners as outlined in IEPs, ILPs, 505 plans, etc.
5. Time: an activity takes longer than I anticipated, or an unexpected event interrupts teaching
6. Unprepared students: the activity I’ve planned depends on students having done some kind of preparation or homework

Strategies I use for last-minute adjustments to planned lessons

Below, I’ve outlined strategies to address each of these needs within the framework of advance planning.

Strategy 1: Building in buffer time.

Helps with: adjusting for extra practice, reteaching, or student interests

As described in my planning article, I start every semester by tallying how many teaching days I have and dividing those days up by unit. I start planning each unit by dividing up the days by learning target or topic. Whenever possible, I build in buffer time at these steps.

I might assign 80 of the 83 days in the semester to units, leaving 3 days as a buffer if I need to extend any unit. Or I only plan instruction and activities for 14 of the 15 days in a unit. I can also leave buffer time in a single week’s or day’s plans — I might know Tuesday’s activity won’t take the entire period, but I don’t plan anything else to fill the time.

Buffer time left at the end of the semester, unit, or class period can be used to meet many different student needs. Whether you need to take an extra day of practice on a concept like in my opening example, reteach a concept to a small group of students, or run with the conversation that got students excited or curious, you have time to do so without trashing your whole semester plan or curriculum. You can also designate specific buffer time for specific needs, such as including at least one reteaching day and one student interest day in every unit plan.

Strategy 2: Creating a standard student-interest activity.

Helps with: adjusting for student interests

One way to adjust for student interests is to include a lot of choices in learning activities — allowing students to choose a topic, group, format, or type of assessment. But what about those magical times when a specific topic comes up and carries the whole class away with fascination? How can we plan ahead to make the most of those times and not end up doing last-minute preparation? My strategy is to create a standard activity that can apply to any topic of interest.

In a history class, this might be a primary source gallery, where every student finds a primary source on the topic and we share them around the room, with a standard protocol for students to process and discuss the sources. I do a similar activity in psychology, with students searching for current research on a topic. I also do mini-inquiries, with students proposing hypotheses on a high-interest question, researching as individuals or small groups, and then sharing conclusions. This works well with current event topics, such as, “Why did Russia invade Ukraine?”

Other possibilities are Socratic seminars or student-led discussions. With each of these activities, I can have a template pre-made and all I have to do is throw in the specific topic that has sparked the class’s interest. Since we use the same format multiple times, students get familiar with the directions, so we can use our time more efficiently to get right to the good stuff.

Strategy 3: Incorporating self-paced days.

Helps with: adjusting for extra practice, reteaching, student interests, differentiation, and unprepared students

Last year’s Episode 252 introduced me to the Modern Classrooms Project, an approach to teaching that incorporates blended instruction (using videos), self-paced structures, and mastery-based grading. When I listened to Angela’s conversation with MCP co-founder Kareem Farah, I felt like I had come around a corner to discover something I’d long been searching for — a structure that can actually enable students to keep working on a concept or skill until they master it. I’m working on incorporating the whole Modern Classrooms approach in my classes, but for me, the quickest and easiest component to use is self-paced days.

A self-paced day is a bit different from just an open work day, with more structure for students. This year, I’m planning to have a self-paced day about every other day in my AP European History classes. I will prepare the lessons for the entire unit, and students will work through them at their own pace (with periodic hard deadlines to keep them on track). I can use the class time for one-on-one conferences or small group instruction, making this structure perfect for providing reteaching and differentiation.

The mastery approach of Modern Classrooms means students must master each lesson before moving on to the next, providing a structure for extra practice. I can incorporate optional lessons or one of my standard student interest activities for students who finish the required lessons quickly, to make space for students to pursue their interests. And students start a self-paced day from wherever they left off, meaning there’s really no such thing as an unprepared student. Students who have missed a lot of class or didn’t do the homework have the chance to catch up rather than being dumped into instruction they’re not prepared for.

You might be thinking, sounds great, but there’s no way I have time for that in my curriculum. So far, having worked on shifting my first 2 units to this model, I’ve been surprised at how easy it is to make every other day a self-paced day. I’m not really adding the self-paced days, I’m just rearranging activities. I already incorporate a lot of self-paced or small group work into my teaching. I frequently give students a task to complete individually or with a group and then call the class together to process what they did. It only takes a slight shift to turn the first part into a self-paced day and incorporate the follow-up for 2 or more lessons into the same instructional day.

Strategy 4: Spiraling content and skills (separately).

Helps with: adjusting for extra practice, reteaching, and differentiation

In my opening example, I talked about spiraling content. Spiraling in a curriculum means circling back to the same skills or content again and again, but each time, at a more advanced level – creating the shape of a spiral.

In a content-heavy class like social studies, a lot of content does not spiral – we learn the effects of the Industrial Revolution, and later the causes of the Cold War, and they’re not related or repeated. But core disciplinary concepts are repeated, such as capitalism versus communism, causes of wars, phases of a revolution, or characteristics of democracy. And these big concepts are the ideas we really want students to take away from our classes, so it’s worthwhile to spiral them.

It’s often easier to think of skills as spiraling. It’s easy to practice and advance the same reading, writing, and analysis skills as we move through new content. Even better, in a class like social studies with both, we can spiral content and skills separately from each other, and individually for students. The writing assessment for the Cold War doesn’t always have to be a three-paragraph essay. If most of the class mastered that a couple of units ago, I can make the Cold War writing assessment a five-paragraph essay incorporating primary sources. And the students who need more practice on a three-paragraph essay can be assessed at that level, allowing for differentiation.

When students are struggling with a concept or skill, I consider whether and when that concept or skill comes up again. Do I need to reteach or give extra practice now, or can I use the current data to plan for more effective instruction and practice the next time? In some cases, it may be important to reteach immediately — if the next concept builds directly on the current one, for example. But in some cases, I can plan for reteaching the next time the spiral comes around to the concept or skill.

8 ways to stay ahead in lesson planning (without sacrificing student needs)

Strategy 5: Using mastery or standards-based grading.

Helps with: adjusting for extra practice, reteaching, differentiation, and unprepared students

Both self-paced days and spiraling work best in the context of mastery or standards-based grading. In the self-paced structure, students need to master a lesson before moving on, and the number of attempts it takes them to get there shouldn’t affect their grade, as long as they achieve that mastery (within reasonable limits, of course). If I’m going to spiral content like communism versus capitalism, then students’ level of understanding in the earlier unit shouldn’t count against them if they get it in the later unit.

Mastery or standards-based grading enables students’ grades to grow as their knowledge and skills do. I used a simple form of mastery grading in my AP Euro class for years with essays. When I first started teaching the class, it was quickly obvious that it didn’t make sense for students’ first essay attempts, which are frequently terrible by AP standards, to drag down their grades for the whole semester. Yet I also needed to give students accurate grades (not participation or “you tried” grades), and I needed them to pay attention to and care about the feedback (which many would ignore if the essay simply didn’t count in their grade).

In mastery grading, each new essay score replaced the last one, and at the end of the semester, I counted their last and their best scores. This structure enables extra practice, differentiation, and spiraling as I gave students practice tasks individualized to their level of writing at that time between each full essay. It enables reteaching, as I can give more instruction on any writing skill many students are struggling with. And if students are unprepared on a specific day or for a specific essay topic, they will have a chance to show their true skill level in the next essay.

Full standards-based grading can be more complicated, with the need to assign a score for each learning target, whether content or skills. It usually requires a completely different grade book setup, record-keeping approach, and type of assessment. This year I’m moving my AP Euro class to full standards-based grading for the first time, and I’m sure there will be a learning curve. I am super excited about this voluntary change, however, because I believe standards-based grading will work together with self-paced days to allow students to learn at their own pace more than in a traditional classroom.

Strategy 6: Planning for essentials only (the pandemic approach).

Helps with: adjusting for time

As teachers, time gets away from us for a variety of reasons — activities take longer than we expected (which is really a planning issue); there was a fire alarm or a student crisis, or we just keep having to add extra days and push the curriculum back. When I find myself in this position, I now return to the lesson of the pandemic years — stick to the essentials.

Whether it was totally asynchronous instruction in the spring of 2020, or A-day, B-day hybrid in 2021 (meaning I only saw students 2 days a week), I simply did not have the instructional time I was used to. Over the last few years, we’ve all had to strip our classes down to the absolute essentials — the core disciplinary concepts, the foundational skills for the next class, the bare minimum. I think this is actually a gift from the pandemic years — I’ve never been better at focusing on fewer things, better.

So when you find yourself out of time, identify the essentials, and cut the rest. Is there an activity that helps students learn, but you mostly include because it’s fun? Do they mostly learn that content from something else? Do you typically include four examples or four chances for practice — can you cut that back to two? Would you normally introduce a new topic with student reflection or discussion questions, but you can really get right to the instruction? None of these choices is ideal, but time is finite.

Strategy 7: Creating a differentiation toolkit based on common accommodations.

Helps with: adjusting for differentiation

Differentiation is a huge category of planning. Every student is an individual, with specific strengths and needs. However, we can still plan for a lot of our differentiation in advance, before even knowing our specific students, because while the students’ needs are varied and unique, many of the accommodations to meet those needs are not.

There are many reasons students struggle with writing in English, whether a learning disability, dyslexia, emotional trauma, missed school, or being a native speaker of a different language. But the accommodations that support these students are often the same — sentence stems, outlines, and checklists for writing tasks. So I can make a version of any writing assignment with those accommodations ahead of time.

On my World History teaching team, we’ve been creating a differentiation toolkit for every unit we teach. We have a short list of common accommodations and strategies that work for students with various needs. The toolkit will have a version of each of these accommodations and strategies based on the content for that specific unit.

For example, for students with intellectual disabilities, we often have modified versions of tasks with pictures rather than words, so the toolkit includes an image bank for all the vocabulary of the unit. We use drag-and-drop type activities with these students as well, so every unit has a version of that. We will always need to tweak these activities for certain students, but we can make the whole toolkit ahead of time, so we’re never starting from scratch on differentiation.

How to move out of the day-by-day lesson planning trap and think big picture

Strategy 8: Flipping days around.

Helps with: adjusting for time and unprepared students

This is a simple but powerful way to adjust for student needs, and it’s only possible in advance planning mode. When I have an entire unit planned out ahead of time, I can move the days around like puzzle pieces to find the right fit.

If a fire drill is scheduled for 3rd hour on Wednesday, and I don’t want it to interrupt the discussion, I can flip it with the activity on Friday. I use this most often when I’ve planned an amazing interactive activity that depends on students having background knowledge or specific preparation, and on the day, I find many students haven’t done the prep work. If I power through the activity, I will have students who are lost, disengaged, and simply not learning what they need to learn. Instead, I can look at my whole unit plan, and flip with a day that doesn’t require any student preparation. This would simply not be possible in last-minute planning mode.

You can plan in advance AND make day-to-day adjustments

Though I’m committed to advance planning as the best way to meet student needs and maintain work-life balance, I definitely still make day-to-day adjustments — I’m not a robot compulsively following a plan.

I plan ahead to include a warm-up or exit ticket, but I adjust the specific prompt based on how the class went the day before.

I plan ahead for a discussion or group work time, but I adjust the amount of class time for that activity based on students’ level of focus.

I plan source analysis with four sources ahead of time but decide during class how many sources to require, or how many to analyze together as a class versus in small groups or individually.

And sometimes, I simply have to push the end of the unit back a day.

The goal is not to create a rigid plan that never changes. The goal is to create a flexible advance plan so that when you need to change it, you can do so deliberately and effectively, enhancing student learning rather than sacrificing it.

The post 8 ways to adjust lessons for student needs WITHOUT planning everything last minute appeared first on Truth For Teachers.

I’ve worked with teams where we brought out the best in each other, divided up work efficiently, and enjoyed our work together. I’ve also worked with teams that didn’t deserve the name, where the other people teaching the same class made my job more difficult. I’ve seen teams that seem to multiply the members’ time by sharing the work, and teams that suck up the members’ time with never-ending meetings.

What I’ve learned from my various team and co-teaching experiences is that it pays to explicitly discuss the functioning of the team. You can’t just hope for a well-functioning team; you have to plan for it.

Whether you are on a large grade level or common course team, or a co-teaching team of two; whether you have worked with this team for years or have been placed together for the first time; whether your team is already pretty functional or super inefficient — this team checkup can help you make this the year your team brings efficiency, inspiration, and joy to your job.

A Foundation of Trust

Trust and assuming the best of each other are the essential foundation for any well-functioning team. I worked with a team several years ago where we were constantly arguing about what to teach — in history, there are endless events and examples, so there are tons of decisions to make.

Our meetings were often debates about the value of assessing students on different examples of imperialism or Cold War policies. However, no matter how much we disagreed about these specific decisions, we trusted each other. Our underlying assumption was that we all wanted to support student learning, so we could always resolve these conflicts with compromise.

I’ve also seen situations where there is no trust and no assumption of good intentions. I’ve seen teachers who assume their colleagues have ulterior motives for their decisions or that they’re trying to make them look bad. I’ve seen people agree in meetings, and then go off and do things their own way. I’ve seen people who believe their colleagues are ineffective, and so can’t recognize anything good those colleagues do. I’ve seen colleagues who don’t speak to each other unless absolutely necessary or avoid discussing the real issues on their team. In this type of situation, not only are students not getting the best possible learning, but these teachers are miserable at work.

If you are working with a team with a history of mistrust and assuming the worst, I think that needs to be addressed directly. It might be in a general way: “We have not always trusted each other to be professionals or to do the best thing. We’ve made assumptions about each other’s motives that were not positive. We need to acknowledge this and work to change it. Can we all agree to start by assuming the best of each other? No matter what someone does, we will assume it’s because they believe that is best for student learning. Can we start there?”

Depending on the details, you might find it necessary or helpful to get more specific. Individuals might need to talk about the specific harm that has been done. A restorative circle can be an effective approach for that type of discussion because it gives every person an equal voice. Whichever approach you use, every team member needs to be honest with themselves about their assumptions, and genuinely work to give them up. If you continue to believe, “This person can’t change,” or, “This person doesn’t work hard enough,” or, “This person can’t be trusted,” the team will never be able to move forward.

The steps of this check-up work best when there is a foundation of trust. And as long as the need for trust has been openly acknowledged, I believe these steps can also help build trust in a team that has been struggling.

Step 1: Reflection

The first step is to reflect on how the team has been working. What is going well and what are the team’s successes? Be as specific as you can with successes – which students have shown improvement? Which units or lessons have been made more effective and more engaging? Which assessments have been more aligned with standards? In what ways has the team made everyone’s job easier? What have you learned from each other?

Next, reflect on what hasn’t been going well. What is frustrating members of the team about how it works? What takes more time than it should? Where does the team get bogged down, and what never actually gets done?

If you’re doing this check-up with a brand new team, this reflection can be based on past team situations. In other teams you’ve worked with, what went well and what was difficult? What would you like to repeat or avoid in this new team?

Step 2: What are your district requirements?

Clarify the district or school requirements for your team, in terms of what is required for all teachers to do the same way. For example, in my high school setting, common course teams are required to have common assessments based on common learning targets, and the same grading policies; we’re not required to have exactly the same daily lessons, assignments, or materials. It’s helpful to explicitly state the requirements with the entire team; don’t assume that everyone knows the district policies.

Step 3: What are your team’s non-negotiables?

Next, discuss other aspects of your work that the entire team will do the same way, that go beyond the district requirements. What does your team expect everyone to do the same, and what is okay for people to do differently? It is essential to make this explicit, to build trust and streamline decision-making.

If one teacher assumes the whole team will give the same assignments, and another teacher alters or skips an assignment, it’s easy for the first teacher to interpret that as a lack of teamwork, or bad teaching, or deliberate disrespect. But if all team members have agreed, we don’t have to always give the same assignments, it nips the problem in the bud.

Items to consider for team non-negotiables (assuming they’re not district requirements) include:

• Dates and format for assessments
• Grading and late policies
• Assignments that go in the gradebook
• Differentiated and modified assignments and assessments
• Day-to-day planning

Step 4: What are your personal work styles?

Once the teaching elements that need to be uniform are designated, it’s time to acknowledge that you’re all individuals. Everyone deserves to work in a way that enables them to do their best and maintain their work-life balance. I suspect this is a step many teams never discuss, and that can so easily lead to misunderstandings and resentment.

For example, I had a colleague who frequently had new ideas for the next day’s lesson in the evening and sent off an email at 8 or 9 p.m. with her exciting new plan. However, one of my strict work boundaries is that I do not check school email after I leave for the day. So I never saw her emails until the next morning, when it was often too late for me to change my plans. I had to actually say to our team, “I don’t check school email after I leave for the day, usually around 4 p.m. It’s one way I maintain my work-life balance. So anything you send after that time, I won’t see until the next morning.”

With this contrast in our work styles out in the open, we could agree that we didn’t need to do the same thing every day. If my colleague had a great new idea she wanted to try, that was fine, and it was also fine for me to stick to the original plan. Without this conversation, it would have been so easy for her to resent me for ignoring her emails, and for me to resent her for infringing on my evenings.

As another example, while teaching from home during the pandemic, I found it worked best for me to do any schoolwork I needed to complete over the weekend, first thing on Saturday morning. It felt great to get schoolwork out of the way immediately, and it was the best way to ensure I had a true mental break from work for the rest of the weekend. However, when I shared a new or updated document with my team on Saturday morning, this made one of my team members feel guilty that she hadn’t done her part of the team work yet.

We had to discuss the fact that we had different work styles, and that my Saturday morning emails were not a judgment pushing her to get to work. We had a meeting where each team member laid out when we prefer to work, and affirmed that everyone’s preferences were fine, as long as work got done when it was needed.

In the course of this discussion, we also decided to change our weekly meeting day. We had been meeting on Fridays to plan the following week and divide up the preparation tasks, but this made some team members feel obligated to work on weekends. We found that by meeting on Wednesdays instead, we created a longer cushion of time for team members to do their preparation, allowing everyone to work at their preferred times and protect their weekends.

So for this step, have a conversation about when and how each team member prefers to work, and how that will affect the team. When do you prefer to do planning and preparation work? When do you prefer to grade? When do you check email? How far ahead do you prefer to plan? What is your tolerance for last-minute changes in plans? What are your boundaries around work – when do you not work? When do you not check email? Acknowledge everyone’s personal preferences as valid, and figure out how to schedule work as a team without infringing on these preferences.

Step 5: What are your overall teaching & learning goals for your class or grade level?

Now it’s time to discuss the team’s goals for the actual teaching you share. It might seem strange to put this after several other steps — shouldn’t goals be first? However, I think it’s important to acknowledge the team’s parameters and boundaries first. It doesn’t make sense to set goals that don’t fit with district requirements, or won’t be possible based on team members’ boundaries. Steps 2 through 4 give your team the framework you are working within, ensuring your goals are compatible with that framework.

The goals you set as a team will vary widely depending on your district requirements and curriculum, and what kind of team you are. I’ve taught 9th grade Global Studies for a long time, which is a subject where we have tons of decisions to make about what to actually teach since literally all of human history falls in the scope of the class.

Our team set two goals to help us make those decisions: 1) to teach history that helps students appreciate and understand other cultures and parts of the world, and learn not to be ethnocentric, and 2) to teach history that helps students understand the context and causes of current events. When we disagree about what to teach, we can come back to these big-picture priorities and choose the content that best furthers these goals.

Here are some questions to help your team consider your goals:

• What are the overall objectives for this class, subject, or grade level?
• What do we want students to take away from this class at the end of the semester or year?
• What do we hope they remember 5 years later?
• How will we prioritize content versus skills?
• What priorities will we use to make decisions about teaching and learning?

Step 6: What’s your meeting schedule and communication plan?

Here is the time to make some practical decisions. When will your team meet? I think for most teams, once a week is a reasonable meeting schedule. If your team decides to meet more often, I recommend designating specific tasks or decisions for each meeting, to ensure the meeting time is worthwhile. It’s important to take every team member’s schedule into account in this step.

At the high school level, we can have one team member who only teaches this shared class, while other team members also have two or three other classes to plan and prepare. The shared class cannot take up a disproportionate amount of these teachers’ prep time. Be thoughtful about when during the week the team meeting is scheduled, like in the example I gave in Step 4.

Will you meet at the beginning of the week, the middle, or the end? Are you planning for the upcoming week, or are you planning a week ahead? Maybe you can designate one meeting a month to do the overall planning for the month, and then weekly meetings are for creating materials and discussing student needs. Be clear about the reasons for your meeting schedule and goals for each meeting.

Another aspect to consider is who needs to be included in the team meetings. Is it a meeting of content or general education teachers, or are there special education and other support teachers who need to be there? Maybe the special education teacher needs to attend the meeting every other week, and the alternating weeks focus on content decisions. Be sure the meeting schedule includes every team member in a productive way, including special education teachers, English language teachers, speech/language teachers, psychologists, social workers, counselors, and paraprofessionals.

Next, make a plan for communication between meetings. I’ve seen teams where there is a designated meeting once a week — but the team members check in with each other informally so often, they really end up meeting every day, and all their prep time is absorbed by the team. That is not an efficient or respectful use of people’s time, especially if teachers have different numbers of classes or subjects they’re responsible for.

Is the team’s primary channel of communication going to be email? Email is quick, but can also be disorganized — have you ever wasted time trying to find which email chain contains the information you need? Consider a shared document, so all discussion is recorded in one place.

On my Global Studies team, we have a shared planning document for each unit, and we use comments to assign who is updating something, to make suggestions for changes, and to indicate when a document is ready to copy or post for students.

Another team at my school uses a shared spreadsheet as a to-do list. Every lesson is listed, and there are columns for who is updating it, the deadline, and notes. Then there are checkboxes for creating the presentation, creating the video, creating the homework, and posting the materials for students. This is a very efficient way for the team to communicate about what is done and who is doing everything. Whatever the method, discuss with your team how you will avoid using up all your prep time with inefficient daily checking in.

Step 7: What are your meeting norms?

With your meetings scheduled, it’s time to plan for those meetings to be efficient and effective. Establishing norms can make a world of difference in how well your team uses your meeting time. Here are some questions to consider:

• Who will make the agenda, and what format is useful?
• Who and how will you take notes during meetings?
• What routines should be part of your meetings? For example, starting with a celebration or bright spot; checking the last agenda or to-do list; a specific type of opening or closing.
• Are there specific tasks or decisions to complete as specific meetings?
• How will you ensure every team member has a chance to voice their ideas?
• What norms do you need to ensure the team stays focused and efficient?
• How will you deal with it when the team gets off task?

Outside of meeting norms, it’s also good to talk about your norms for when you have a problem or disagreement with someone. Is the expectation that you go directly to that team member and discuss it with them? Is it acceptable to discuss the issue with someone else on the team or outside the team first? Should the issue be discussed with the entire team?

In episode 188, Angela talked about the secret rules we have for other people’s behavior — the conscious or unconscious assumptions we make about how people should behave, which are not explicit and not shared by everyone. This situation of what to do when you have a problem with someone is an example she gave in the episode. When we judge others’ behavior based on our secret rules, we set ourselves up for conflict and misunderstanding, because we’re holding people to a standard they don’t even know about. Making the team norms for dealing with problems explicit can prevent so many misunderstandings before they start.

How to (finally!) stop being annoyed by personality differences

Step 8: What can you divide up, and what do you need to let go of?

In my experience, the ideal team is one where we share enough of our day-to-day plans that we can divide up the prep work. With common assessments, we can have one person update the assessment for this year, and then separate people create any modified versions we need for specific students.

We can take the three examples we’re going to teach in imperialism and have one person prepare the materials for each. When we taught virtually in the spring of 2020, and basically everything had to be adapted for the new reality, this ability to divide up the work in my Global Studies team kept us sane. If your team can’t divide up some of the prep work, I think you’re doing more work than you have to.

But dividing up the work also means you have to let go of things. You might have to let go of formatting preferences, font choices, or file naming systems. You simply can’t expect everyone to do these details your way, nor is it a good use of your time to change the font of every document your team members make. You might need to let go of more substantial aspects as well. Maybe you wouldn’t have phrased the question that way, or chosen that particular text, or had that number of practice problems. But is the difference worth the time it would take to redo it yourself? Is the team version good enough? Is it a minimum viable product?

The more you can use the work of your team members as it is, the less time you waste. And if there are issues with the materials someone creates that you think really do matter, that could affect student learning, then discuss it directly as a team, so the team has some shared standards for materials.

Something I think every team needs to let go of is the need to be exactly the same every day, in all aspects of teaching. Such uniformity is simply not realistic; teachers are individuals, and every class of students is different. Activities will take different lengths of time; one class might get super interested in a topic and spend lots of time on it, while another class breezes through.

No one should make a habit of breaking the team’s non-negotiables, but the team should also acknowledge it might need to happen sometimes. If there is a fire alarm or other emergency during one class, it might not be fair to give them the same assignment. If one teacher has taught the class for years while another is brand new, it’s not realistic to expect them to spend the same amount of time on every lesson. Set your team parameters, but be realistic and flexible about them.

Step 9: Advocate for your team at the school and district level.

Your team functions within many larger systems, including your school and district. Make sure that your team is advocating for what you need to be effective. Every team that is expected to collaborate should have designated common planning time within the work day.

Without this basic requirement, it puts the burden on the team to find a time to meet, which can be super challenging when team members have different schedules and responsibilities outside of work. Administrators might say it’s difficult or impossible to make this time, but if collaboration is a priority, then shared planning time should be a non-negotiable aspect of the schedule.

Another point to advocate for is consistent teams from year to year. The steps I’ve outlined here are not easy to discuss and resolve; it takes time to develop an effective working relationship, and if the team changes every year, it will simply never happen.

Finally, it’s important for your school and district to give clear and reasonable guidelines for teams. Administrators need to be explicit about their expectations for commonalities across teams, like the ones I listed in Step 2. If your school gives no guidelines, but your team can be criticized for teaching differently, you are being set up for failure. Ask all the questions you need answered for your team to be successful and efficient.

Step 10: Check up on your team regularly.

One conversation is not enough to keep your team running smoothly year round. This team check-up needs to be an ongoing process. I recommend doing the whole check-up at the beginning of a new school year, and at that time, plan a few points throughout the year for reflection and adjustments.

Halfway through the first semester (or 9 weeks into the school year) is a good time to check in with the team to see if the plan is working for everyone. It’s essential to check in at the end of a grading period or any time people’s schedules change, since meeting schedules and other details might need to be adjusted. And the end of the school year is a good time to take notes about what worked and what didn’t, before those details are forgotten. Tend to your team with care, the same care you give managing a class of students, and it can be a source of inspiration and enjoyment at work, and balance between work and life.

The post The Team Check Up: 10 principles for building a more efficient, effective teaching team appeared first on Truth For Teachers.

“For an English teacher, if you’re doing it right, I don’t see how you could NOT be overwhelmed all the time.”

“Well, anyone leaving the building by 3 every day isn’t doing their job.”

“I don’t go looking for new ideas on education websites late at night. Maybe I just don’t love teaching enough.”

These are beliefs. Not facts.

I’ve heard similar attitudes about teaching since my first year. Even before I was in the classroom, while in my teacher education program in college, I was taught to expect that teaching would never be – could never be – a job that fit into traditional work hours. It was years before I questioned that assumption.

I do not believe that I have to work all the time to be a good teacher anymore.

There are structural reasons teachers have too much work to do, and not enough time to do it. Districts do not prioritize work or collaboration time and continuously pile on more responsibilities. But today I’m not writing about what districts and administrators can and should do to make our jobs manageable, or even strategies for reducing our own workloads.

I want to focus here on the stories and myths we tell ourselves that make us accept working all the time, and how we can change that mentality. This isn’t about policies or strategies; this is about fundamentally changing the way we think about our jobs.

I’m in my 18th year of teaching, and most of the time, setting aside bad pandemic decisions and exhausting political battles, I am satisfied with my workload and work hours.

I work 40-45 hours a week. I can sustain this amount of work for another 15-20 years if I want to stay in this career. I never skip family events or social activities because I have too much work to do. It’s been a multi-year journey to get to this point, but I can pinpoint exactly when it started.

It was in February 2011, when a bill to remove collective bargaining rights from most public employees, known as Act 10, was announced by the governor of Wisconsin. During the ensuing political fight, the anti-public school teacher rhetoric was overwhelming and demoralizing. We were somehow the “haves” while the rest of the population was the “have-nots” — though of course, I knew many colleagues who worked second jobs to make ends meet.

We only worked 9 months a year, were essentially just babysitters and didn’t deserve the pay and benefits we had. I can picture myself in the office of my old apartment, sitting down to grade papers after dinner and experiencing a blinding moment of cognitive dissonance.

Why was I forcing myself to do work, during my personal time, that clearly was neither recognized nor appreciated, to say nothing of compensated? Full of anger and resentment, I packed up my work bag and settled into a personal project of organizing recipes. It felt like an act of rebellion.

About a year later, a new teacher asked me when in my career I’d started to get my work hours under control. I said, “Actually, this year is when I’ve really noticed a change.” She responded, “Okay, so about 5 years…” and I countered, “Or a major political crisis.” We laughed, but it is absolutely true.

I said I’d noticed a change like it was something happening to me, but in fact, I had made a radical change — not in how I worked, but in what I believed. Anger and resentment were not a healthy place to start, but they turned into a determination to set boundaries and stop letting my job dominate my time.

School policies didn’t change; district expectations were not reduced — they’ve only increased since then. I didn’t have brilliant new strategies — those came later. The change started when my beliefs about the job changed. I wanted teaching to be a sustainable career that fit into reasonable hours, and I chose to believe I could make that happen.

Why do we believe we have to work all the time to do our jobs well?

Reason 1: We start teaching in college, when there are no boundaries between work and life, and just continue that way of life as professional teachers.

When I tried to trace the roots of my work-all-the-time mentality, I realized they go right back to the beginning — to student teaching in college. I know not every teacher had this training, but for many of us, our first experience of full-time teaching was as a student.

In a college student’s life, there is no boundary between work and life; going to class, hanging out with friends, studying, and social events are all mixed up together as part of daily life. I carried this way of life into my semesters of full-time student teaching; I came home from school and worked on my lesson plans or assignments for my methods class. And I continued this way of life when I became a professional teacher, coming home from work and just continuing to work.

Part of the reason for how much I worked as a first- and second-year teacher was simply the amount of work there was, and the fact that I was starting from scratch in my planning and preparation. But the root of the long-term problem – the fact that I still worked excessive hours years later — was that I never questioned it.

I expected the work to get easier and more efficient as I got experience, and it certainly did. But I did not plan to create clear boundaries between my work and life, and no one, no mentor or veteran teacher, taught me to do so.

This early training in what it means to be a teacher is an under-appreciated factor in the work-all-the-time mentality. For many of us, our introduction to our profession was in a context with no boundaries between work and life. In fact, some teachers even receive explicit instruction to have no boundaries as student teachers.

One teacher I know was told as a student teacher, by her university supervisor, that if she didn’t arrive at school before her cooperating teacher and leave after, she wasn’t really dedicated to the job. With such early training, it’s not a surprise that the work-all-the-time mentality is one of our core and unquestioned beliefs about teaching.

Reason 2: We buy into the teachers-as-heroes myth, and use our martyrdom during the school year to justify to outsiders our summers off.

When teachers appear in the media — whether in the news or in entertainment like TV and movies — it’s either as heroes or villains. We are either heroes who go above and beyond all reasonable work expectations, feeding, clothing and parenting our students, using our own money to fill in gaps left by home or school, changing lives.  Or, we are villains who take advantage of students, parents, and taxpayers, barely working, getting paid to do nothing all summer.

Both portrayals reinforce the work-all-the-time mentality.

If we buy into the heroes myth, believing that our role is to give students everything they need, believing that every student represents a chance to change or save a life, there are literally no limits on how much time, effort, money, and energy we’ll spend on teaching. And when we defend ourselves against the lazy teacher portrayal, one of the first arguments we often use is that we do work in the summer, and we work such crazy hours all school year that it justifies our summers off. We repeat this argument so much, we believe it.

I want to be clear that I do believe we can change lives as teachers. I believe we should put the needs of students first, within the boundaries of work, and I admire teachers who fulfill the needs of their students when those needs aren’t otherwise met. However, I have no interest in being a hero, and I do not need to justify why I am not a villain. What I am is a professional.

I have extensive specialized training and years of experience doing something most people don’t know how to do — and I love doing it! I love teaching, I love the students, I love the moments when I know a student just understood something, or a student asks a question I’ve never considered before. I love teaching, and I do it well. I meet my professional responsibilities, and that is where my obligation ends.

By doing my job well, I still influence my students, and every once in a while, I can say I’ve changed a life. I don’t have to go above and beyond to be a good teacher.

It is kind, and yes, heroic of teachers to help with the unmet needs of students, but the help of individual teachers is only a bandaid on the larger problem. What’s best for all students is for our schools and communities to meet these needs consistently and systemically, rather than leaving it up to the kindness of individuals.

As for justifying our summers off, there is no need. Having summers off is a huge perk of being a teacher. I don’t need to deny that, or put in extra summer work, to explain myself to outsiders who don’t understand our work. (Other jobs have perks too — usually, perks you can deposit in a bank account. Aside from summers off, sometimes I get a coffee gift card or a free scone.)

I work a 10-month contract on a salary basis; there is a first day of work and a last day of work, and there is no reason for me to work the rest of the time because I am not being paid to do so. There is also no reason to work all the time during the school year to somehow make up for the time I am not paid to work in the summer. (The fact that many districts send us paychecks through the summer does not change this; the work we are paid to do happens during 10 months, and the year-round paychecks are just a matter of convenience.)

This is simply the way this job works, and our communities want it this way. Do parents want to change to a year-round school? No, almost never. Do districts want to pay us for full-time curriculum work all summer? Definitely not. So I’m certainly not going to feel guilty for working my established schedule and then enjoying the main perk of the job!

Reason 3: We believe in a correlation between originality and good teaching.

I have often heard teachers praised for having new ideas, and I’ve worked with teachers who create everything they use from scratch. In my early years of teaching, it felt like “textbook” and “worksheet” were curse words, they were regarded with such disdain.

The idea that to be good teachers, we have to create our own materials, that any pre-made materials like those from a textbook or curriculum guide are useless trash, seems pervasive in the schools where I’ve worked. I’ve also seen many teachers who reuse very little of their own material, instead of reinventing each unit each year. All of this creation and reinvention is a lot of work and a huge investment of time.

I was fortunate to have a college methods professor who started my introduction to teaching social studies with this maxim: “There is no connection between originality and good teaching.” Teaching something in a new way is not automatically better, and purchased materials are not necessarily useless.

Separating our concept of good teaching from originality can free us to use materials we find, or that we made last year, as they are, knowing that our effectiveness as teachers is as much about what we do during instruction as the materials we use.

Reason 4: We see teaching as a mission, not a job, and allow the goal of putting students first to mean sacrificing ourselves and our families.

For many teachers, this is not just a job, or even a career — teaching is a calling, a mission, a way to change the world. We are teachers because we love students, we care about them deeply, and we believe education can impact their lives for the better.

We believe in putting the needs of our students first. We also feel this sense of mission on a broader scale – we want education to correct inequities, bring communities together, and create a more just world. We want more out of our jobs than a paycheck — we want to feel fulfilled by doing meaningful work, and teaching gives us that fulfillment. I feel this way about teaching myself.

So it is very difficult to address the fact that this sense of mission contributes to the work-all-the-time mentality. If I really believe education can change my students’ lives for the better – if I really believe I must put my students’ needs first — how could I not stay late to give a student extra help? Spend every evening writing extensive feedback on essays? Devote my weekend to finding and adapting exciting new activities?

The problem is, there is no end to that line of thought. If I’m really going to put my students’ needs first, that means before my need for personal time, before my own family, before my physical and mental health. Though I want to do meaningful work, I do not have to let it consume my entire life.

So, how can we change this mentality?

Shift #1: Stop judging and criticizing each other for how, when, and how much we work.

“She gets to school right before the bell every morning.”

“He hasn’t been into school to work all summer.”

“She leaves at 3 every day.”

In what voice did you read these statements? Was it a voice of disdain, judging people for their lack of commitment? Or a voice of praise, acknowledging a colleague’s success in setting boundaries?

I have far more often heard these comments in a voice of disdain, as criticisms of colleagues. The implication is people can’t possibly be doing their jobs if they arrive on time rather than early, leave on time rather than stay late, or opt not to work during the unpaid part of the year.

I actually think this attitude is more rooted in envy, or an effort to justify to ourselves our own excessive work hours, than a true judgment of others’ lack of work. We reassure ourselves that the crushing hours we work – the hours we hate – are worth it because at least we’re better at our jobs.

This type of criticism creates and reinforces a culture of working all the time, and we have to stop saying these things to each other. Even more importantly, we have to stop saying them to ourselves. When I criticize a colleague for leaving work on time, it impacts the person I’m talking to, but I think the internal impact is even more significant. I’m reinforcing my own belief that working contractual hours is not enough to do the job well, and my work-all-the-time habits make me a better teacher.

We can still say these things, but they should be in praise, not criticism. Let’s acknowledge and applaud when our colleagues succeed at setting boundaries and finishing work during reasonable hours.

Shift #2: Look for every opportunity to reinforce and congratulate each other for setting boundaries on work, and teach new teachers that setting such boundaries is the professional thing to do.

Let’s turn the statements above into congratulations:

“She gets to school right before the bell every morning, because she has all her prep done ahead of time.”

“He hasn’t been into school to work all summer, because he’s prioritizing time with his family.”

“She leaves at 3 every day, she’s that organized.”

Aren’t these the choices we would all prefer to be able to make? Being so organized and caught up with work that there is no need to arrive early or stay late? Consciously choosing family over work in the summer? It is not easy to get to that point, but when a colleague does, let’s reinforce them, not tear them down. Let’s create a culture of healthy boundaries, rather than one of working all the time.

We need to both model and explicitly teach new teachers to set boundaries between work and life. We know they’ll work long hours in their first few years – that might be inevitable.

But rather than leaving them to believe that either 1) their hours will magically decrease as they get more experience or 2) working those hours all the time is normal for your whole career, we should tell them, it won’t always be like this. You can make choices and set boundaries. You do not have to work all the time to be a good teacher.

Shift #3: Redefine the goal as excellence, rather than “going above and beyond.”

I’ve always heard teachers praised for going above and beyond, but since the pandemic started, the phrase has been getting a workout like never before. And it is accurate — we have certainly gone above, beyond, beneath, around, and every other direction in the last 2½ years; the work we’ve been asked to do would have been inconceivable in 2019. But pandemic teaching has exposed, more than ever, the inherent manipulativeness of the phrase.

When praise for going above and beyond is accompanied with even more new expectations and a disregard for our physical safety, it’s impossible not to feel the praise is just a way to get us to give even more. When praise for going above and beyond is unaccompanied by the time and resources needed to do our jobs, it is meaningless and insulting.

Have you ever been in a virtual staff meeting, and even though you and your colleagues are physically separated, connected only digitally, probably mute and many with cameras off, you can still feel the collective hum of frustration?

I’m thinking of one specific virtual staff meeting in the spring of 2021, after which I had some very open conversations with my principal. I explained why being praised for everything we’d done that year felt like a slap in the face when we were constantly asked to do more with less, and he responded, “What should I say instead?” And I’ve been thinking about it ever since — what should they say instead?

I don’t want to be praised for going above and beyond expectations. I want to be recognized for meeting expectations. When the expectations are already high, meeting them signifies excellence.

Let’s redefine the goal as being excellent at our jobs, rather than going above and beyond.

Let’s define excellence as being so organized and effective, there is no need to work extra hours, rather than arriving early and staying late.

Let’s define excellence as being fully engaged with our students in every moment of class, rather than spending hours creating new materials. Let’s define excellence as noticing the needs of our students and connecting them to school and community resources, rather than trying to meet all of those needs ourselves. Let’s define excellence as being good teachers, rather than heroes, martyrs, or saviors.

How to know if you should quit teaching after the 2021-2022 school year

Shift #4: Have more conversations and change together.

I end with this because it is the linchpin. We have to change together. One teacher can change their own beliefs and practices – I’ve done that. But one teacher cannot change a culture, and that’s what we have — a culture of working all the time.

Many teachers feel they can’t say no when asked to commit to extra work, because saying no just means another teacher will have to do it. As long as I believe that my personal success in creating boundaries means someone else will have more work to do, that belief will be a barrier to change.

As I prepared to write this article, I asked many friends and colleagues for input — what did they think about why we believe we have to work all the time? I was surprised — but I shouldn’t have been — by how many of these conversations turned into a reinforcement, rather than a repudiation, of the work-all-the-time mentality. Two of the quotes at the beginning are from these conversations. “Why do we think we have to work all the time to be good teachers?” quickly became, “The only way to be a good teacher is to work all the time.”

We need to have a lot more conversations.

We need to be open about our desire for change. We need to talk about the hours we are actually paid to work. We need to call the rest of the time working for free. We need to use our unions, our professional organizations, and our online networks to normalize excellence, rather than excess, as the goal.

And, we need to look inside for the beliefs we hold that reinforce working all the time, and talk about those beliefs together. We need to acknowledge they are beliefs, not facts. Then we can change them.

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