We were putting significant energy into bringing Sarah Ward back to speak with families and staff about executive functioning in late January. It is important work, and we know it matters. Still, a small voice in my head said, haven’t we already done this?
And then I paused.
Sara last spoke to our community in 2017.
That was nine years ago.
In that time, more than half of our current parents likely did not have children in the system. A significant portion of our staff were not yet working here. And in a K–12 district, roughly 75 percent of our students weren’t even enrolled yet. Many of our parents’ own experiences of school are now twenty or more years old.
When you look at it that way, the idea that we have “already done this” doesn’t really hold.What is actually happening is something else entirely.
Leadership has memory. Communities don’t.
Those of us who stay in systems long enough carry the history with us. We remember when an idea was first introduced, how it landed, what worked, what didn’t. That institutional memory is valuable. It helps us avoid fads. It gives us perspective. It allows us to be steady.
But it also creates a blind spot.
While leaders remember, school communities renew themselves every year. Every September, new families arrive. New staff join teams. Students move through grades and eventually out of the system altogether. Culture, unlike policy, does not persist on its own. It has to be retaught, re-explained, and re-lived—not because it failed the first time, but because that’s how learning actually works.
Repetition isn’t stagnation. It’s how understanding is built. And it’s often what makes real improvement possible.
I think about our principals who meet with new Kindergarten parents each fall. The presentation is familiar. The questions are fairly predictable. For the principal, it can feel like Groundhog Day. But for those families sitting in the library, it is their first time. Their child is about to start school. Everything is new.
The work of leadership, in that moment, is to deliver that message like you did the first time.
Because to the people hearing it, it matters.
This is the companion idea to what I wrote in my last post, Steadiness as Strategy. There, I argued that steadiness isn’t the opposite of innovation, but its prerequisite. That without trust and a stable foundation, real improvement is hard to sustain.
What I didn’t fully name is what steadiness asks of leaders.
It asks us to say things we’ve said before, to people who have never heard them. It asks us to resist the pull of novelty when the work that matters is still unfinished. It asks us to stay interested in ideas long after they have stopped feeling new to us.
But here’s where it gets complicated.
Not all repetition is the same. Some repetition serves the community. Some repetition just serves us.
I wrote a few years ago about teaching and aging rock stars. Roger Daltrey of The Who once said there was no point in producing new music because fans just want to hear the classics. Just play the greatest hits. And I get it. There’s comfort in the familiar, for the audience and for the performer.
But the artists I admire most, people like Paul Simon, take a different approach. They know the crowd wants to hear the songs that made them famous. They play those songs. But they also keep creating. They rework old material. They stay curious. They resist the temptation to coast on what already worked.
The question for leaders is the same one facing any artist with a robust catalog: are you repeating because it still matters, or because it’s comfortable?
That’s the discernment this work requires.
Executive functioning matters. It mattered in 2017, and it matters now. So we bring Sarah Ward back. This summer, BCSSA is bringing Yong Zhao back to speak with superintendents from across the province, not because we have run out of ideas, but because these ideas still matter, and most of the people who need to hear them have changed since the last time they were said.
Capacity takes years to build. Communities don’t stand still while we build it.
But if I am honest, there are other things I repeat that are harder to justify. Familiar phrases. Comfortable framings. The Superintendent Greatest Hits. Sometimes I catch myself reaching for them not because the audience needs to hear them, but because I already know how to say them.
Steadiness is not the same as stagnation. But the line between them isn’t always obvious. The difference is intention. Am I repeating this because the community hasn’t heard it, or because I haven’t bothered to think of something better?
Earlier in my career, I might not have asked that question. Repetition felt like a lack of momentum. It felt like you weren’t moving fast enough, or far enough, or boldly enough.
Now, I see it differently.
Steadiness creates the conditions for learning to deepen. Trust allows people to hear ideas they may not have been ready for the first time. And consistency sends a signal: this matters enough to stay with.
But only if it actually does.
So when we bring an idea back into focus, when we invite a speaker again, revisit a framework, or restate a belief, we’re not circling.
We are anchoring.
The work isn’t to constantly invent. It is to welcome new people into ideas that matter, again and again.
Without coasting. And without apology.
The image at the top of this post was generated through AI. Various AI tools were used as feedback helpers (for our students this post would be a Yellow assignment – see link to explanation chart) as I edited and refined my thinking.
