LINKS FOR YOU
📱 Using Values-Alignment Messaging to Teach Healthy Digital Habits - Learn how schools can foster teens' digital self-agency with values-based strategies beyond phone policies.
🧊 Question: What's Your Favorite Outside-the-Box Classroom Icebreaker? - Share your top icebreaker to foster classroom community from day one.
🔢 2025-2026 Math/Science Teacher - Middle School (Pacoima) - Join a dynamic middle school team teaching multiple subjects in mathematics and science (CA)
🏫 2025-26 Assistant Principal, Elementary - McAllen ISD - Step into a leadership role and inspire the next generation of learners in McAllen (TX)
đź“š FY26 Comprehensive Literacy State Development Grant - Access funding to enhance comprehensive literacy instruction quality and coherence statewide (FL)
đź’° 2025-2026 Strong Foundations Direct Implementation Grant - Funding for professional learning to use open education resources on Title I campuses (TX)
ONE BIG IDEA
Summer break has barely begun and your inbox is already full of invitations to "transform your teaching" with new workshops, certifications, and must-have strategies for fall.
Meanwhile, you're still recovering from implementing the three major initiatives you took on this past year—and honestly, you're not sure any of them really stuck.
Sound familiar?
You're caught in what researchers call the professional development hamster wheel, where the pressure to constantly add new skills creates surface-level learning that never translates into lasting change.
The alternative approach that research supports looks very different.
Evidence suggests that the production of teacher professional development courses and programs has outpaced the research on their effectiveness, leaving educators drowning in options but starving for results.
The average teacher encounters multiple PD initiatives per year, each promising to revolutionize their practice.
Yet, comprehensive analysis shows only a weak relationship between traditional indicators of professional expertise (length of experience, number of workshops attended) and actual, observed performance.
This creates a vicious cycle: teachers feel behind because they're not constantly acquiring new skills, so they pile on more professional development, which leads to cognitive overload and prevents any single practice from being truly mastered.
Educators end up treating professional growth like a collection hobby rather than skill development.
Slow professional growth isn't about being lazy or resistant to change.
It's about embracing what researchers call "intentional practice"—focused, systematic practice with immediate feedback and clear goals for improvement.
Think compound interest, but for your teaching abilities.
Just as small, consistent investments grow exponentially over time, focused skill development creates outsized returns.
What consistently distinguishes elite surgeons, chess players, writers, athletes, pianists, and other experts is their commitment to sustained, focused practice on tasks just beyond their current ability.
The magic isn't in the quantity of skills acquired, but in the depth of mastery achieved.
This approach means choosing quality over quantity in professional learning.
Instead of attending five workshops on different topics, you might spend the same time and energy becoming genuinely skilled at one approach that could transform multiple aspects of your teaching.
Here's what the evidence tells us about how mastery actually develops: building expertise requires incorporating ongoing reflection and adjustment into skill practice, rather than simply repeating tasks until they become routine.
The brain needs time to consolidate new approaches, create neural pathways, and integrate new methods with existing knowledge.
Extensive research reveals that developing true proficiency in most domains takes sustained effort over the years.
That doesn't mean you need a decade to see improvement—but it does mean that meaningful change requires focused attention over months and years, not weekends.
When you constantly switch between learning new strategies, you never give your brain the repetition and reflection time needed to move from conscious competence (thinking hard about every step) to unconscious competence (flowing naturally through effective practice).
Here's where summer break becomes a secret weapon for professional growth.
The sustained time away from daily classroom demands creates the perfect conditions for the kind of focused skill development that's nearly impossible during the school year.
Stepping back from constant decision-making isn't just rest—it's a strategic advantage for learning.
This is why breakthrough teaching ideas might come while walking the dog or washing dishes—the brain is finally free to process and synthesize experiences from the school year, identifying patterns and generating creative solutions.
Summer also offers something rare during the school year: sustained time for reflection.
To achieve meaningful improvement, dedicated time for self-reflection and feedback are essential for allowing learners to self-adjust and refine their approach.
Teachers can actually think deeply about what worked, what didn't, and why—rather than just surviving until the next planning period.
Ready to try a different approach? Here's a framework for choosing depth over breadth:
Step 1: Pick One Focus Area
Step 2: The Practice-Reflect-Refine Cycle
This cycle should happen regularly but doesn't require classroom implementation during summer.
Teachers might practice giving specific feedback by reviewing student work samples, reflect on feedback patterns, and refine approaches before school starts.
Step 3: Build a Resistance Plan
Professional growth isn't a sprint—it's more like training for a marathon.
In professional domains, skill development follows a progressive pattern of problem-solving, where accomplished practitioners actively engage in work tasks of increasing complexity while reflecting on their performance.
The teachers who truly transform their practice don't do it by collecting strategies like trading cards.
They achieve this by becoming deeply skilled in core practices that serve as the foundation for everything else they do.
This summer, instead of trying to revolutionize every aspect of teaching practice, what if educators committed to becoming genuinely excellent at one thing?
Students—and teacher sanity—will benefit from it.
Alludo - we have helped district leaders across the country increase capacity in thousands of schools by successfully delivering millions of evidence-based professional learning lessons to their educators and staff members.
See you next Saturday!
Rebecca