Ordinary in the Classroom
My journey transforming lesson plans into learning experiences.
When my daughter was five years old, I would read The Zax by Dr. Seuss. I have probably read this story to her dozens of times. Recently, I found the well-worn book on my bookshelf and picked it up, leafing through its pages. As I was glancing at the pictures and re-reading certain passages, I was struck by the metaphor for change and innovation. If you are not familiar with this story, read it now before continuing on. Don’t have a handy copy? No worries! You can watch the video on YouTube.
So, there are two Zaxes: a North-Going Zax and a South-Going Zax. It’s here, standing foot to foot and face to face where our metaphor begins. As a teacher, it seems that this story is an obvious anchor text to teach concepts of conflict resolution and compromise. However, if you continue reading and dig a bit deeper into the text, a different metaphor appears.
“Look here, now!” the North-Going Zax said, “I say!
You are blocking my path. You are right in my way.
I’m a North-Going Zax and I always go north.
Get out of my way, now, and let me go forth!”
“Who’s in whose way?” snapped the South-Going Zax.
“I always go south, making south-going tracks.
So you’re in MY way! And I ask you to move
And let me go south in my south-going groove.”
Each Zax is confident in where they are going, and how they are getting there. Both have been traveling in these well-worn paths for, presumably, many years and don’t see any reason to change. Complacency is easy. The status quo is comfortable for those who most benefit by remaining stagnant. Even though change seems to happen every day, if you look closely, you notice that real change only occurs when it either becomes difficult, unappealing, or cheaper. There is always a bias toward the status quo. This “status quo bias”, for example, is why there is so much resistance to various reform movements. Raquel Fernandez and Dani Rodrik (1991) illustrated that the “status quo may be concentrated on a small number of individuals while the losses are diffuse” (p. 1146). When these individuals continue to benefit, whether financially or racially (or both), then it is in their best interest when things stay the same. They may do nothing or stick with a decision made previously (Samuelson, & Zeckhauser, 1988) because that is the way we have always done things. There are deep emotions connected to tradition. When we change from a baseline that we established in the past, we feel a sense of loss.
While having a status quo bias is frequently considered irrational, sticking to the “way we’ve always done things” because they seemed to work in the past often seems a safe and less difficult (even responsible!) decision. For example, status quo bias is more likely to occur when there is an overload of choices (Dean et al., 2017) or high uncertainty and deliberation costs (Nebel, 2015).
Adam Grant, author of Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, describes this phenomenon when discussing the Internet browser preferences of customer service employees. Michael Houseman was examining why certain customer service employees either stayed or left their current jobs if unhappy. He noticed a strange connection between those who stayed and the Internet browser they used. For example, Internet Explorer and Safari come standard on either new PC’s or Macs. These are the default browsers. Employees who use these browsers are the same ones who let complacency rule their jobs, often leaving. They see their jobs as fixed and unchanging, despite being unhappy. Employees who use Firefox or Chrome, sought out something different because they wanted a different Internet experience. They took initiative to change their browser. These are the same employees who not only stay in their jobs, but look for ways to innovate or do something different within their jobs.
This is known as system justification. Political psychologist John Jost studied how people responded to undesirable default conditions. His theory is that people will justify or rationalize the status quo as legitimate, even if they are unhappy with their condition. They take what is given and do not strive to make any changes; exactly as our North and South-going Zaxes are doing.
Then the North-Going Zax puffed his chest up with pride.
“I never,” he said, “take a step to one side.
And I’ll prove to you that I won’t change my ways
If I have to keep standing here fifty-nine days!”
Now, it could be argued that they are both just full of pride (especially since that is the adjective Seuss uses), but I see something different. Both are complacent with their current state. They have been doing things, traveling in their paths and grooves, for a number of years. Why fix something when it’s not broken? Why do something different?
This is the classic story of Kodak in the early 70s. George Eastman wanted to make photography accessible to everyone. In 1935, he introduced the first commercially successful color film. This put Kodak on the map as the number one brand for photography & digital imaging. They had world class research and development (R&D) within the organization and held over 7,500 commercial imaging patents, including the slide projector, film cartridge, and the first digital camera in 1976. Unfortunately, Eastman didn’t see it’s potential because of how much they were wedded to color print photography. As a business, Kodak invested into the entire photography process, from the film and cameras to the paper the pictures were printed on. They even developed the first digital camera in 1991, but since print photography was their most profitable division, they believed digital cameras would not have traction outside of the professional market. They saw the digital revolution coming, but ignored it because that was not “the way we do things” at Kodak. Instead of pivoting and rebranding the company as a leader in digital photography, Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. Both the Zaxes and Eastman’s Kodak were extrememly stubborn and would not step outside of their well-worn default paths.
We live in a world of defaults, according to Adam Grant. He goes on to say that we are socialized to accept these defaults as the status quo. He writes, “Rules and systems are created by people” (Grant, 2016, p. 8). That is even true here in the Prairie of Prax:
“And I’ll prove to YOU,” yelled the South-Going Zax,
“That I can stand here in the prairie of Prax
For fifty-nine years! For I live by a rule
That I learned as a boy back in South-Going School.
Never budge! That’s my rule. Never budge in the least!
Not an inch to the west! Not an inch to the east!
I’ll stay here, not budging! I can and I will
If it makes you and me and the whole world stand still!”
The South-going Zax states outright that he learned in school to “never budge.” He will continue to stand there for 59 years because of how he was socialized. It’s too bad that in this story Dr. Seuss doesn’t give us an example of another type of person: one who when confronted with a dissatisfying status quo, seeks to change it. “When we become curious about the dissatisfying defaults in our world, we begin to recognize that most of them have social origins…and that awareness gives us the courage to to contemplate how we can change them” (Grant, 2016, p. 8). Neither Zax has been socialized to question their realities. They just continue to move through life in the same path they have always walked. They never question the rules that they learned in school. What happens?
Well…
Of course the world didn’t stand still. The world grew.
In a couple of years, the new highway came through
And they built it right over those two stubborn Zax
And left them there, standing un-budged in their tracks.
Nothing happens. No innovation. No creativity. They literally stand in place as the entire world develops around them! Innovation takes curiosity, but you won’t be curious if you are never taught to question things.
Kids are naturally curious. Tony Wagner (2012) has studied innovation; where it comes from, how it develops, and how to nurture it. In writing Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World, he interviewed thousands of creative innovators, their parents, and mentors. The commonality he saw in the lives of children who grew up to be creative and an innovator: a balanced “respect for authority with constructive engagement and constructive rebellion — teaching kids to be strong, but give them the walls to push against” (Wagner & Compton, 2012, p. 205). My guess is that the parents of the North and South-going Zax each taught their children to never question authority; in fact never rebel against anything different from what they were taught. Blind obedience.
My daughter has since grown to be a passionate, sometimes willful and extremely stubborn young lady. As I re-read this story standing in front of my bookshelf, I remember how I made a concerted effort to teach her to be creative and innovative. When she was little, I wanted her to grow up to change the world. I still want that for her! I want her to see areas for improvement. I want her to stand firmly in a belief, but also be flexible to maneuver and compromise in order to affect change. I want her to practice empathy so that she understands multiple perspectives that do not match her own.
Educators should be teaching their students how to respectfully question authority. If students are not happy with the system, then they should be allowed to work with their teachers to change it to be more equitable. If teachers are not happy within the system, they should be given the agency to disrupt it. In education, the status quo canabalizes new ideas and over time, demoralizes and burns out teachers. The education system is definitely resilient; it was created to sort students by age, race and ability and place them in appropriate industrial jobs. Today, teachers may defend the status quo because there are too many options for instructional technology and pedagogical practices. Teachers are not given time to think about their pedagogy and craft. It is just easier to take out the same lesson from last year and reteach it to a new batch of students. Unfortunately, this leads to stagnant (and inequitable) teaching and learning. The challenge of innovating public education is to get educators and administrators to create superior learning experiences while at the same time lowering the risks and costs of change. They also need teacher buy-in.
According to Jon Mertz, author of Activate Leadership, real change “happens when we can embrace it on a deeper level: emotional, social, and spiritual.” Fear is a strong emotional motivator. Change can be scary because we are uncertain about the future. We all love certainty. There are plenty of examples of things or events that you definitely want to be sure of or are guaranteed will happen. When I pick up my child from school, I want a guarantee that he will be there waiting to go home (and I’m positive that he feels the same way). When I get in my car each morning, I want it to start every time; I don’t want my starter to stop working or the gas tank empty. When I wake up in the morning, I expect the sun to be exactly where it is supposed to be. These guarantees are not bad. They are things we rely on. None of them are examples of innovation and not a single one of them forces me me to step out of my comfort zone. When John Spencer asks: Am I sure this will work? what he is really asking is Are you comfortable with taking a risk? When I open up a blank document and begin typing a poem or story or blog post or chapter to a book, am I comfortable with it not going as expected? When I go for a walk and take a different path, am I prepared to get lost and possibly see something I have never seen before? When I walk over to that person at the other end of the restaurant bar, am I comfortable with being turned down? When I try something new in the classroom, am I prepared for it going horribly wrong? All of these involve a good dose of fear and require us to push past our fears to take risks.
Social pressures can also hold us back from deviating from the status quo. What will my teammates think if I don’t teach that worksheet? What will my principal think of this new lesson? Jim Rohn believes that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. However, we don’t always get to choose the people we work with. Sometimes the people we work with are holding us back or preventing us from making real change in our classrooms. Peer pressure can sabotage any creative or innovative idea you may want to try out in your classroom. We need to ensure we have supportive and challenging relationships. Strong relationships that are built on trust challenge us to step out of our comfort zones and away from the status quo. Challenging relationships make us better and help us interrupt the status quo when required.
Finding your purpose or moral compass in life is the single most important thing you can do. Simon Sinek calls it his WHY. When you know your WHY, all other decisions become easier because you can filter them through your WHY statement. For example, if your purpose, cause or belief is to inspire students, then it is easy to decide how you will teach a particular lesson (it will also help you decide what concept to teach). However, if you only see yourself through your HOW (strengths) or your WHAT (your role at work), then it is easy to become an automaton and deliver content instead of inspiring learning. Our WHY matters. How we approach change depends on our WHY and how we view our HOWs and WHATs. Do you see yourself as a continuous learner, always improving, serving your school community? Challenging the status quo becomes much easier if it doesn’t align with your WHY or personal values.
It is easy to be hypnotized by the status quo. We get caught up in our daily routines: checking email, answering texts, clocking in and out. Change feels uncomfortable. We like being comfortable. Sometimes changing the status quo seems to be someone else’s job; someone higher up in the hierarchy. We like to point fingers. If only these students were more engaged, I could do more fun activities in class! The best first step is to challenge your own default status quos. When was the last time you questioned your own beliefs? Do you have strong opinions that are weakly held? Are you open to other points of view? What would happen if you tried something different and failed? Who would you blame? Staying comfortable will not disrupt the status quo, and if we, as educators, are serious about dismantling an educational system that was designed to fail marginalized students and their families, then we need to experience a lot of discomfort. Learning requires discomfort. That is why it is called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is a psychological term that explains that when a person holds contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values and then participates in behavior that goes against one of these beliefs, ideas, or values, they experience stress.
Cognitive dissonance was first investigated by Leon Festinger in 1957, in observing the behavior of a cult whose members believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood. Many of these individuals gave up their homes and jobs to work for the cult. When the flood never happened, some individuals admitted to their foolish behavior. However, more zealous members of the cult reinterpreted the evidence to show that they were right all along (the earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult members). We still see similar behaviors today with QAnon and other far-right, big-tent conspiracy theorists. Humans prefer harmony between their ideas and beliefs and their actions. That is why Maya Angelou’s quote resonates with so many people. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” We do better because we want our behaviors to fit with our newly added knowledge or learning. This can be a scary thought, especially when our previously held beliefs are strongly held or ingrained in our culture and affinity groups. During his life, Nelson Mandela exemplified courage in how he persisted while afraid. “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
Being innovative has never meant being fearless. Pushing through our fear of failure is a huge part of creativity, innovation, and changing the world. We all love guarantees, but if you want to do something that no one has ever done before, or create something out of nothing, or inspire people with your ideas and actions, then you need to be uncertain and live in that uncertainty.
Tim Ferriss has this mental exercise called Fear Setting. He starts by asking some pretty large What If questions, detailing each one, listing all that is preventing you from accomplishing your goal, and then describing what would you do if the absolute worst happens; how would you repair the damages? This exercise is a great way to begin living in that uncertainty and wrestling with fear. He asks, what might be the benefits of an attempt or partial success? Ferriss then draws out the cost of inaction over the period of 6 months, 1 year, and 3 years. By doing this cost-benefit analysis, he often observes that the scariest things we want, the craziest ideas that we never act on, often are not that scary and oftentimes, failure isn’t as devastating as we imagine.
Not only is it important to begin asking yourself Am I sure this is going to work, it is also vital that we practice living in that discomfort of things not working. Being innovative is not about never failing; being innovative is about failing over and over and over again. You have all seen those quotes about failure. It can be inspiring to read these pro-failure quotes from Robert Kennedy and Thomas Edison! Have you ever read one of these quotes and then said, Well, that’s easy for them to say! They did [fill in the blank]! It is hard for us to imagine Thomas Edison persisting through 10,000 failures because we are all benefiting from indoor lighting. It is difficult to imagine Winston Churchill bouncing from epic failure to utter disaster because he forever lives in infamy as the prime minister who brought the United States and Soviet Union together to defeat Adolf Hitler. We weren’t sitting in Edison’s workshop watching him fail over and over again cursing the light bulb. We never felt the impossible weight of trying to defeat Nazi Germany. We are looking at all of these things after the fact. Were they sure what they were attempting was going to work? Nope! They were just as frustrated as we are in our daily struggles with the status quo. They knew better and so they worked to do better. Are you stretching yourself outside of your comfort zone? If not, you may be stuck standing underneath the Zax Bypass while innovation drives past.
As educators, we cannot wait for someone else to come along and fix public education. We need to work together to disrupt the ordinary that we have all come to accept: worksheets, standardized tests, grades, boring lesson plans. What is your most memorable experience from Elementary school? Most adults I ask can usually pinpoint a particular grade level or even a certain teacher. Perhaps you connected with Mr. Jones, a 4th grade teacher who was your first male teacher. Or maybe it was Mrs. Smith, a kind reading teacher who helped you fall in love with reading. Many adults don’t remember a single positive educational experience until high school or college, and at that point, most remember the learning because it was connected to their passions as a student. Very few adults actually remember a learning experience from school. It may be a particular school project (craft or research paper), fun field trip, or exciting assembly, but rarely is it the classroom learning. If we want to change that narrative, we need to take some big risks. Sandra Herbst says, “As leaders, we have to be willing to risk our own significance.” It is time to embrace discomfort, get uncomfortable and do something positive with the positional power we hold. If we want public education to encourage our children to be brilliant change-makers in the world, we need to seek out others who want the same change. We need to keep challenging each other and learning from each other and working together to change a very complex, inequitable system.
I believe in less talk and more action. When you have a bias toward action instead of toward the status quo (and a belief in the iterative process of human-centered design thinking) then you will actually see the change you are working to create. By designing for action, you set the stage, design a new model for the classroom, test it out, learn from your test, and tweak. Human-centered design thinking is the best framework we have for disrupting the status quo. It works because it provides a structure for innovation that creates a flow from idea to execution. It counteracts our implicit biases that inhibits creativity. It is an iterative and continuous process that never stops. There is no recycling of old lesson plans. Each day brings with it a new challenge and every school year brings a new group of dynamic and brilliant students. If we want to be successful in educating today’s youth, we need a fundamentally different approach, not more ordinary in the classroom.
Equity Defined: Implicit Bias
In 2013, psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald wrote a book titled Blindspot. In it, they outlined a theory, called implicit bias, which they had been observing and discussing in their research for twenty years. Their research suggested that people can (and often do) act on the basis of internal prejudices and stereotypes without intending to do so. To test this, Banaji and Greenwald developed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to help people discover potential prejudices that lie beneath their awareness.
Implicit bias is most prevalent in school disciplinary actions and educational tracking practices. If an equitable school starts with the belief that all students are capable of completing grade-level work, then any academic experience needs to be open and available to any student. Instead, students’ perceived abilities are based on race, class, gender, English language proficiency, and standardized test scores. This perception is often denied when confronted because attitudes and biases lurk beneath one’s awareness. Biases against a particular student’s academic ability often determine whether a student can access and pursue rigorous, grade-level work. The same is true for student discipline. A disproportionate number of Black boys are sent to the principal’s office, suspended, or expelled for behaviors that confirm the implicit biases of many educators. Teachers make thousands of choices in the classroom. If they do not make a concerted effort to redress their biases toward students of color (building a greater awareness of race and identity), then inequity persists. If educators are serious about interrupting their implicit bias and disrupting the status quo, we need to create more learning opportunities for our most vulnerable students. This requires us to stop teaching to the middle and raise the expectations we hold for students who have been underserved in schools.
Many teachers think that real-world problems are too big and too complicated for students (especially students of color). How could my fifth-graders brainstorm ways to enhance their local communities? Well, why not post a challenge about transforming time and space?
CHALLENGE: Locate 1–3 viable spaces that are underutilized and within walking distance to the school. Then, generate a design proposal that serves the local community and is financially sound for the owner.
CRITICAL QUESTION: What kind of transformation design would serve the local community as well as provide a compelling and long-term solution for teenagers and space owners?
This could be a great community-based research project on how best to create safe spaces for students of all ages to utilize before and after school.
Students will exceed any expectations placed upon them, if we give them the necessary support to be successful. We need to dream with students; not stand in the way of their dreams. Is it really that far-fetched to think that a student might solve a problem that has baffled adults for years? Kids bring with them a sense of reckless wonder and possibility that gives them such a unique and innovative perspective. Our most vulnerable students “draw on their social and cultural literacies in order to be academically successful” (Stembridge, 2020, p. 5). We need to rethink and redesign how we organize schools and classrooms, differentiate instruction, and provide the emotional and academic support students need to cognitively push themselves and each other without setting them up for failure. Imagine students in the same room working on rigorous grade-level projects while giving and receiving differentiated support. Students would experience a culturally responsive learning partnership where they are valued as learners and improve the skills and knowledge they need to be successful both in and out of the classroom.
References
Banaji, M. A., & Greenwald, A. G. (2013). Blindspot: Hidden biases of good people. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.
Dean, M., Kibris, O., & Masatlioglu, Y. (2017). Limited attention and status quo bias. Journal of Economic Theory, 169, 93–127.
Grant, A. (2016). Originals: How non-conformists change the world. London: Penguin.
Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological Review, 102, 4–27.
Nebel, J. M. (2015). Status quo bias, rationality, and conservatism about value. Ethics, 125(2), 449–476.
Raquel Fernandez and Dani Rodrik The American Economic Review Vol. 81, №5 (Dec., 1991), pp. 1146–1155.
Samuelson, W., Zeckhauser, R. Status quo bias in decision making. J Risk Uncertainty 1, 7–59 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00055564
Stembridge, A. (2020). Culturally responsive education in the classroom: An equity framework for pedagogy. New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Wagner, T., & Compton, R. A. (2012). Creating innovators: The making of young people who will change the world. New York, NY: Scribner.
