Anytime I go to the Cheesecake Factory, I get overwhelmed. I know this sounds dramatic. I certainly have a flair for the dramatic, but it is true. There is something about having so many options available that gives me anxiety. I find that I am much more confident and satisfied with my decisions when there is a variety to choose from but not so many options that I find myself in analysis paralysis. Meal order envy is a real thing! You know, that moment when someone’s plate arrives at the table, and you instantly want what they have more than the plate in front of you?
Sometimes, too much choice is no choice at all. This leads to me to reflect upon sources of anxiety in our schools. I’m hearing many teachers talk about feeling overwhelmed by an increasingly complex educational landscape. As Patrick Lenioni says, “When everything is important, nothing is.” In the same breath, I hear teachers also share frustrations over what many call a “lack of autonomy.” We often use words in education and assume we mean the same things when we say them. Words like collaboration and autonomy are among many words which hold big, sometimes emotionally-charged, varied meanings depending on the circumstances and contexts in which they are used.
According to Merriam-Webster, I think the definition that most closely matches what educators mean when they say autonomy is “self-directing freedom.” We all want to feel empowered and trusted to carry out our work on a daily basis. Sadly, there are leaders in schools and districts who are very well-intentioned yet in their school improvement efforts, become overly directive or prescriptive with what they want to see happening in classrooms and schools. In some cases, they micromanage and micro-monitor (I might have just made that word up) every little detail to the point where many teachers are no longer trusted to think critically about how to best meet the needs of their students. This is the ugly side of a compliance-oriented culture. Compliance is important. Regulations are important. I’m certainly not denying this. But if we become too fixated on telling teachers exactly what moves to make and when to make them, we shouldn’t be surprised that the same is happening to our students in schools. Blind rule following and “just tell me what to do and I will do it” is not the top skill needed by employers in the future workforce.
All of this to say, I think this is what many teachers mean when they express concerns about their autonomy. Sadly, when districts or schools work to create alignment, fear often rears its ugly head because some hear alignment to mean lack of autonomy.
I actually believe true alignment in a trust and inspire environment can fuel collaboration, autonomy, and ultimately increased learning. Because without a vision and without alignment of priorities, everything feels important and when everything feels important, we are left trying to make all the decisions for ourselves. This is both unfair to teachers and students. All choice is no choice at all.
I believe alignment supports collaboration which bolsters individual autonomy. As an example, let’s say that a district has decided to prioritize building a guaranteed and viable curriculum this school year. They set the direction that teacher teams will prioritize 60-80% of the state standards. Because the district recognizes that teachers do not have time to teach every standard deeply, they provide teacher teams with an instructional coach and time to prioritize the standards using a protocol. I share the REAL protocol in Legacy of Learning. Neither the district nor the instructional coach is telling the teachers exactly which standards to prioritize, they are simply setting the direction for WHY they need to be prioritized and offering the tool to do so. This kind of direction is important when working through something that feels new and complicated. Too much choice and lack of guidance can lead to group frustration and can turn people away from collaboration because there is a real sense that this would be a lot easier if I was left alone to do this by myself.
From there, the content team makes decisions about when to teach these standards during the year, for roughly how long, what the learning targets will be, and also how they will measure mastery. This is what collective or group autonomy looks like within an aligned system. The district isn’t making teams teach specific standards, for specific amounts of time, using a specific tool, they are simply saying that they will be aligned and must make these decisions to ensure alignment. The people closest to the work are best suited to make these kinds of decisions. We must trust teacher teams and support them with direction, supports, and time to do this work.
As teacher teams implement the learning targets they’ve prioritized and sequenced, they can engage in rich, meaningful dialogue about instructional practices. When they look at student results together, they can ask questions of each other regarding about which instructional practices teachers used and how they implemented those practices to lead to desired results. They can engage in learning from each other, from professional voices, and from what the research says too. This kind of collaboration requires consistent time and a commitment from school and district leaders that this is valuable and important. It often requires support from instructional coaches too. Finally, it requires psychological safety. Which means it requires patience. This kind of work and this type of culture does not happen overnight.
When teachers leave these spaces of collaboration, they go back to their classrooms which are filled with a beautifully unique combination of students. This is where teachers should have a stronger sense of individual autonomy. While they will be teaching the agreed upon curriculum during agreed upon windows of time which bolsters their conversations and collaboration, they know their students and their unique learning needs and should be empowered to make informed instructional decisions to best meet the needs of their students. As a community of practice, we will likely have defined an instructional framework that supports research-informed practices such as movement, chunking content, solving complex problems in randomized groups of 2 or 3, standing at vertical surfaces together, etc, but teacher will be in the driver seat for making decisions about which of these practices are needed at which time during a particular lesson. Of course, this work is never really done. We’ve never fully arrived. We will always revisit it and make adjustments, but it’s helpful to have a compass while we travel through the wilderness.
Alignment supports autonomy. Autonomy without aligned is not autonomy. Nothing but choice is no choice at all.
I’m not saying this is exactly how the work needs to go. There are likely smarter, better ways. I’m simply firm in my belief that well-executed alignment in a high trust and inspire environment supports autonomy versus detracting from it. We need to take the time to define words like alignment, collaboration, and autonomy together. We need to cultivate environments that support our work in a way that does not feel like we’ve squeezed the art, soul, humanity, and responsiveness out of teaching. We need to ensure the proper supports, time, and resources are in place, so we don’t turn our schools and districts into box checking, robotic, thoughtless compliance machines.
But when we do this kind of work well, our systems and collaborative model actually begin making the work easier versus harder. We do hard things at the start to make our work more enduring and manageable long-term. When our systems and structures support us in thoughtful ways, we can actually experience more joy, creativity, and success in our daily work with students.
It’s yes and.
Not yeah but.
MEGHAN LAWSON 
Leave a comment