Good on Purpose

“We don’t want any teacher to be accidentally good. We want them to know why they are successful.” – Mike Rutherford, author of The Artisan Teacher

I had the pleasure of learning from Mike this week alongside building principals from my school district. We took copious amounts of notes. Wow. He really got us thinking!

I think one of the things I keep coming back to is some of the research he shared. Essentially, if you’re bad at something, it takes 10,000 hours to get good at it. As adults, we generally don’t have that kind of time. We are very busy.

He also shared that our brains actually have a higher capacity and room for growth in our areas of strength or as he says “talent.”

Knowing this about time and talent makes me wonder whether we are spending our coaching and feedback time appropriately with adult learners. This certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t address less strong areas, but we are likely spending too much time and energy on weaknesses when we could be going further and faster by growing educators in their areas of talent.

I had the opportunity to learn from Mike about 6 years ago and since that time, I have been deeply impacted by his 30 Second Feedback Protocol. I’ve used this strategy alongside building administrators and instructional coaches for years.

I’ve seen first hand the irrefutable positive impact that this feedback strategy can have on teaching. Teachers keep their positive post it notes of encouragement not just because they feel good but because these notes provide a roadmap for future personal success, lighting the way for what they can continue doing well, emphasizing what’s working.

30 Second Feedback works not simply because it’s positive, but because it’s very specific about the teaching move and the impact that move had on learning. It’s a fairly simple formula: teaching move (cause) and then learning (effect.) Mike encourages us to include a nice cushion at the beginning to ensure we are disarming with the understanding that regardless of how kind and warm we are, our presence as administrators can be a bit unnerving to teachers. And then a nice tag at the end. I’ve included an example from Legacy of Learning below.

Here’s the graphic that Rutherford was kind enough to allow me to include in my book:

During the learning session, Mike went on share other strategies for ensuring teachers know their talents and for uncovering latent talents that teachers may not even realize they have. Let’s ensure teachers aren’t accidentally amazing but in fact confidently and deliberately so.

I love the concept of searching for talents! If teachers know that our visibility and time in classrooms is focused on unearthing and naming strengths versus looking for deficits, teachers are more likely to be excited about and open our visits.

As Elizabeth Gilbert says, “The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”

Let’s help educators find those strange jewels, so we can take great care of these gems and shine bright together, lighting the way for other educators to do the same.