I’ll be honest with you. I’ve sat in more than a few meetings where the solution to every school challenge seemed to be “more professional development.” Teachers are tired, schedules are packed, and yet the answer keeps coming back to adding another PD session. I remember one principal telling me, “If I have to schedule one more workshop, I might lose my mind.” That’s the tension right there: you want to improve your school, but piling on more PD isn’t helping—and might even

What if the biggest driver of student success isn’t a new program or platform, but how leaders see and support their people? Emerging research shows that when leaders intentionally notice and name instructional progress, teacher engagement rises, burnout drops, and students benefit. Gratitude isn’t soft—it’s a strategic leadership move.

Schools rarely falter because people aren’t working hard. They falter because well-intended efforts speak different dialects. New programs arrive with their own vocabulary, meetings produce action items that don’t point in the same direction, and mid-level leaders become translators instead of accelerators. Teachers hear multiple “top priorities,” so they make local choices to survive.