In my year-end reflection last December, I found myself dwelling on something that might seem unremarkable: there wasn’t a lot of drama in BC education this past year. No major controversies. No political firestorms. No headlines.
And I wrote: that’s a good thing.
In a year when AI, politics, and social media all seemed determined to manufacture urgency, the absence of drama stood out. It felt almost countercultural to say it out loud, but it was true.
I’ve spent more than 500 posts championing innovation, asking “what if,” and pushing against “we’ve always done it this way.” I’ve written about AI, about rethinking assessment, about challenging assumptions. This blog is called Culture of Yes for a reason. I believe in trying things.
So let me be clear: this isn’t a retreat from any of that.
But here’s what I’ve come to believe in this work: steadiness is a strategy. And it might be the most underrated one we have.
This tension between innovation and improvement isn’t new. It’s been a sustaining conversation in education for much of this century, and I’ve returned to it in different ways on this blog. In 2011, I wrote about Valerie Hannon’s “split screen approach,” the idea that we need to improve the system of today while simultaneously designing the system of tomorrow. In 2013, I used the movie Groundhog Day to warn against simply repeating each year a little better, noting that we want to teach for 25 years, not for one year repeated 25 times. And in 2017, I explored the tension between getting better and getting different, and found that when we embrace doing things differently, traditional results often improve too.
So what’s changed in my thinking?
Maybe this: I’ve come to see steadiness not as the opposite of innovation, but as its prerequisite.
We live in a world that celebrates disruption. We reward the bold move, the big announcement, the pivot. In education, we talk constantly about reimagining and transformation. The language of change is everywhere.
And some of that is good. Schools should absolutely be places of wonder and joy and amazement. We should try new things. We should ask hard questions about whether what we’re doing is actually working.
But there’s a difference between innovation and improvement. Innovation asks, “What’s new?” Improvement asks, “What’s better?” Both matter. The problem is that improvement is quieter. It doesn’t photograph well. It rarely makes the newsletter.
Innovation introduces variance. Improvement reduces variance. Healthy systems need both.
I often come back to a phrase I’ve borrowed from others over the years: you don’t have to be sick to get better. That reframes the whole enterprise. We’re not in crisis mode. We’re not fixing something broken. We’re refining something that’s working, and that kind of work requires patience, repetition, and a willingness to resist the shiny thing.
What makes that kind of slow, steady improvement possible? Trust.
And trust, in a school system, is built through consistency. When the Board is consistent with its expectations, the executive team can plan. When the executive team is consistent, principals can lead. When principals are consistent, teachers can teach. When teachers are consistent, students can learn. That chain isn’t bureaucracy. It’s infrastructure. It is the solid ground that lets people take risks, because they know the foundation won’t shift beneath them.
Sometimes progress looks like not having to explain the same thing again.
I’ll admit something. Earlier in my leadership journey, I felt pressure to prove myself through visible wins. The flashy initiative. The big rollout. The thing you could point to and say, “I did that.” It’s natural. When you’re newer to a role, you want to show you belong there.
Somewhere along the way, that shifted. Maybe it’s experience. Maybe it’s just getting older. I have become more comfortable letting the work speak quietly. The best days in our schools aren’t the ones that make headlines. They are the ones where a student finally understands something that has been just out of reach. Where a teacher tries something new and it lands. Where a conversation in a hallway changes a kid’s trajectory.
None of that trends. All of it compounds.
So yes, I’ll keep advocating for wonder and joy and amazement in our schools. I’ll keep pushing us to ask whether we’re doing right by every student. But I have also made peace with something: the most important work often looks, from the outside, like nothing is happening at all.
Steadiness doesn’t make headlines. But it makes a difference.
