Happy Friday Reader

This week, i had the pleasure of working with Masters students at St. Mary’s University Belfast, guest lecturing on what makes professional development actually work. We kept coming back to a brilliant framework from the Education Endowment Foundation that breaks effective PD into 14 mechanisms across four areas.

Build knowledge. Motivate staff. Develop teaching techniques. Embed practice.

All sensible. All evidence-based.

When I asked which mechanism is most often missing from their programmes, they knew immediately. And they weren’t wrong.

Rehearsal.

One of the biggest things that moves the needle on changing practice is the one thing we’re all desperately uncomfortable doing.

Let me tell you why I know this so personally.

A few years back, I joined this massive coaching programme. Brilliant cohort. Loads of learning. Only one surprising (and quite funny) challenge: I was the only British person in a room full of Americans. And I was about to learn that Americans absolutely love role play.

I mean they really love it.

While my colleagues were enthusiastically jumping into scenarios, practising conversations, getting feedback, I was sitting there dying inside. The cringe was real. I wanted the ground to swallow me whole.

And yet.

That rehearsal, that awkward, squirmy, please-can-we-just-read-about-it-instead practice, changed my work more than anything else. The theory was useful. The discussions were interesting. But standing up and doing it whilst people watched? That’s what what changed me most, and I'm so thankful.

It mattered so much that I’ve built it into every part of my Education Leaders Intensive programme. If I’m not willing to rehearse with leaders, I’m basically asking them to translate theory into practice on their own and for the first time in the real world. We know that doesn’t work.

Last year I spoke with Josh Goodrich about his book Responsive Coaching, and he got me thinking differently about implementation planning alongside rehearsal. You can’t just practise something once. You need to state exactly when, where, and how you’ll use it. The specific lesson. The exact moment. The cue that’ll remind you.

​That conversation with Josh shifted how I design development work with schools.

Think about this as you head into the weekend:

When did you last rehearse something yourself? Not plan it or discuss it, but actually practise it out loud, with someone watching, getting feedback, trying again.

I’d love to know what’s in your way. What would need to change for rehearsal to feel possible in your context? Hit reply and tell me.

Have a cracking weekend,

Shane