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District math improvement plans can’t succeed if we try to do everything at once. For meaningful change to happen, leaders need to go narrow.

In this episode, we explore why narrowing focus is so difficult for districts and schools, even when everyone knows it’s the right move. We unpack the fears leaders face—picking the “wrong” focus, pressure from external demands, or the worry that one shift won’t meet everyone’s needs. We also dig into why saying “yes” to one math priority means saying “no” to others, and how failing to narrow leads to surface-level adoption without real impact.

We highlight what going narrow actually requires:

• How narrowing your focus unlocks the flywheel effect and avoids the “doom loop” of initiative fatigue.
• The resources, coaching, and leadership support it actually takes to create meaningful change.
• How to map backward using the If-Then-How framework so you can be realistic about what your team can accomplish in one year.
• Why choosing one structural change—like optimizing PLCs for lesson study and curriculum mastery—requires more than a memo; it requires follow-up, facilitation, capacity building, and monitoring.

If you’ve ever felt the tension between wanting to “do it all” and the nagging realization that lasting math improvement requires focus, this episode is for you.

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FULL TRANSCRIPT

Yvette Lehman: This journey, John, to support districts across North America to strengthen math teaching and learning, I feel like we come up against the same pebble all the time. And this will not be the first time our listeners are hearing us talk about this pebble, but it’s because it seems to always be there.

Jon Orr: It’s there because it’s one of those like we were just saying like you have to you have to hear the same message multiple times and

And this is true about lessons in life is like certain times you’re well positioned to hear a lesson where it takes root and sometimes you’re like, I’m not, that’s not a lesson for me right now. But you don’t actually say that, you don’t internalize it that way, it just rolls off of you and you may have not even said, like I haven’t even heard that before even though you may have heard it before or someone shared a lesson with you before because it’s like one of those, we’ve said this to.

to our leaders on our calls or, we’ve probably even said it here on the podcast. It’s like one of those things. It’s like, you gotta eat your peas, know, how do you get a kid to eat peas? Well, you can’t just assume they’re gonna eat peas right away, you know, because they’re not that tasty when you’re a kid. You gotta introduce it 20 times or if there’s 15 times, there’s actually a number of times you have to try a certain amount of food before a kid is gonna, they say, take that in. And it’s the same is true about lessons.

in life, but it’s the same is true about this particular lesson with us being math coordinators, administrators at schools or at districts and in charge of math improvement. And this lesson is coming to terms with going narrow so that you can create impact and traction the way you want. And then why that’s a lesson, because it doesn’t sound like it should be a lesson. It’s like we should just pick something to focus on, it’s like where the

where the struggle comes from is saying no to other things. And you can’t, when you say yes to one thing, you have to say no to others. Otherwise, you’re doing the spaghetti at the wall approach. Otherwise, you’re doing the I’m focusing on everything and therefore I’m focusing on nothing. And so it’s hard to focus on one objective or two improvement zones throughout the year with your saying like, I want that to change and I want that to change.

And I want all this to change. There’s so many pieces to education that we can’t just say no to everything if I just say yes to this one thing. And we’re saying, say yes to the one thing and be okay with saying no to the other things. And that’s the lesson we have to take away. That’s the lesson we have to zero down on so that we can make traction. We can create the impact that we’re looking at in our schools or our districts around math improvement. All right, let’s get into it.

Yvette Lehman: I guess my question is, we know this, you know, we’ve shared this often, but why is it so hard? Like, why do our, you know, the leaders, you know, in these roles where you’re making decisions around what math professional development is going to look like for the year for a system, whether that’s your school or your district or your state, whatever it is, why do people resist

Like it’s like they might know they’re like, yes, of course we need to go deep. Of course we need to deeply internalize this. If we want to see change, if we want better outcomes, we need to invest. We need to put everything we have, know, coordinate our systems and really commit to this one change. Yet it seems like even though people hear this message and maybe they can restate this message, they’re so reluctant to go all in on one thing.

It’s like, we’re gonna do that, but we’re also going to do this and this and this and that, and then maybe a little bit of that over there.

Jon Orr: Yeah, well what do you think it is? And maybe before he answers, what do mean by one thing? Is it one thing, like I’m gonna, at a school level or maybe zoom out a little bit at district level, am I focusing on one practice, one change, one thing, or is the school focusing on, tell me what you’re interpreting right now is one thing, so if I’m listening right now, I’m like, well what do mean one thing?

Yvette Lehman: What if you said to yourself, for example, what we’re committed to doing this year is optimizing our PLC structure so that during that time, that time is being maximized so that teachers are better positioned to plan forward. Like teachers are using that time for lesson study. They’re using that time to internalize the standards at their grade level. They’re using that time. And what if that was all you committed to?

this year. And we could quiet, you know, some of the other, well, we also have to do this and we want to implement this practice. So we want to implement that practice. And while this grade needs to be doing this practice, we just need to, what if we could quiet?

Jon Orr: So then what do you think is the why we can’t commit to that, which was the original question, right? It was like, okay, so now we’ve kind of said, what if you just did this one structural approach change or one focus, why do you think it’s like I don’t wanna just commit to that one PLC structural change?

Yvette Lehman: I remember when we had this conversation as our team last week and Kyle said something that resonated with me, which is like fear. Like fear that that one move is gonna be the wrong move. I actually had a call like that the other day where I was talking to a school principal and I asked her the question, know, what’s holding you back from doing that? And she said the same thing. It’s like fear, fear that another school is gonna do something different and they’re gonna have better results or fear that maybe this isn’t the right path to get me the outcomes that I’m hoping for. If we go all in on this one thing, what if it was the wrong thing?

Jon Orr: Right, yeah, yeah. It’s almost like I’m imagining, you were like, I’m gonna pick one thing right now and it’s gonna be this, maybe it’s this instructional practice or this routine and I really want teachers to internalize and adopt and make consistent in their classrooms because it does this, because it does this, because it helps us get towards our goals.

or our vision, but then imagine fast forward 10 years from now, five years from now, and that the thing you pick was like mad minutes. It’s like, right, we went all in on this one thing, and then years later they were like, that was the wrong thing to pick. That’s what you’re talking about.

Yvette Lehman: Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And like that’s fair. You know, that’s valid. I think there’s also maybe pressure, external pressure as well. Like I can picture myself in a leadership role where I’m responsible for supporting systemic change in math. maybe it’s like, is this one thing that we’re committed to going to resonate with everybody? Is this one thing that we’re committed to going to, you know, meet the…

demands of my superiors or people at higher levels than me. So I understand why people find this so hard, but I guess my question is, what’s the outcome if we don’t? If we can’t change the way we think about school improvement and not just math improvement, know, all types of improvement. Like the reality is teachers and principals can only give so much energy to

one or two shifts at a time. Like you’re talking about people who already have a really heavy workload, who are in the thick of it, who are responding to, you know, a lot of demands in their role every single day. And we’re asking them to put energy into transforming something. And the reality is like, if we can’t get narrow, we can’t get specific, we can’t get realistic.

Jon Orr: Yeah, so let’s use your example for a sec. Let’s say we were looking at the PLC process and making sure that we’re restructuring, was the only thing that we could do. And we’re gonna pick how to use that time effectively. Why do you think we can’t then still do other things? Why is that actually gonna take up all of our resources, all of our time, all of our focus?

Like tell me why it makes sense that it will allow us to, the narrowing actually can be important, but it’s like, because I think where we think about it is like, we’ll do that, but then we also are gonna do this, this, and this, right? So it’s like, well, why do you, why does it make sense? Like we won’t be able to do the other things.

Yvette Lehman: So I love when you said like, we’ll do that because I think that’s what we do all the time. We’re like, we’ll do that. And now we think it’s done. We’re like, we told everybody that they needed to use their PLCs this way. But what we often don’t do is go back to check, did the change that we were supporting actually happen? It’s like we say, yes, we’re gonna restructure PLCs and we’re gonna implement this protocol.

But then we never go back to say like, well, was the protocol implemented? Was it implemented effectively? Do we need to refine it? Do we need to, how do we know if it’s working? Are we gathering feedback? Are we, know, innovating? Right.

Jon Orr: How will you know it’s working? What’s required to make it a success, right? Like I have a structure, sure, well what do I do with that time? And to go, do I have a skill facilitator to manage that time? And if not, what does that mean? And how do I support that process? And if we are gonna go narrow inside of that process, what topics should we pick and then therefore do we have everything we need to support that in those PLCs with those teachers? How do we ensure that the work’s happening in the PLC is actually carried into the classroom? All of these questions.

in a way we have to get that nitty gritty, like we call this reverse engineering. It’s like if you wanna see what you’re gonna be doing in that time show up in classrooms, which we all do, it’s like keep reversing and going, well how do I know that that is going to work and do we have everything we need to make that happen? Because when you do that, when you use a framework internally called the if then how framework, we’ve shared this on the podcast, we’ll put it in the show notes, there’s a template you can follow. But when you get very,

detailed about really trying to define, if I do that, then what will it look like? Then what outcome can I expect and how will I know that that shift or that change worked? When you answer all of that, you realize you can’t commit any other resources anywhere else.

whether it’s a school level goal or school level focus, whether it’s a district level focus to say like, at a district, that’s what we want all our schools to do. And then therefore out of each school, that’s what we want the schools to do. The narrowing of just that one thing is takes commitment, takes resources, takes support, takes coaching, takes, you know, support from the district office down to the school level, from principals down to the people. It is a mass, a mass focus that we have to take. And it’s like, we can’t,

sometimes commit to anything else because that is going to be the important change we want to make.

Yvette Lehman: You just painted an interesting picture. like if I ask myself, if the key result, you the milestone we want to hit this year is we want to optimize PLCs that they’re being leveraged for the purpose of, you know, internalizing standards or curriculum mastery. You mentioned all those pieces and it’s like we need.

principles to understand why this work is important, which means we need to build principal capacity. We need to build buy-in. We need them to experience a PLC and what it looks like, sounds like when it’s being facilitated this way. We need to build our coaches capacity. If they’re the ones who are going to be facilitating these PLCs, we have to engage them in this work. And more than once, we were just saying this morning, you sometimes we work with districts and we see them in person for sessions multiple times and we still, they need to hear it again.

It’s not like a one-off. Like I can’t pull the coaches and say, yes, I walked you through one PLC and we didn’t even actually engage in it. I just talked to you about it and now you’re good to go. You can facilitate these PLCs. So there’s a lot of work that has to happen on these different, we call it like a multi-tiered approach, right? Like we as a team have to understand and deeply understand the.

qualities of an effective PLC, what it looks like, sounds like, feels like. We need to build the capacity of our bridges and they need to experience it, actually engage in it as if they were a participant multiple times. We then have to support them with implementation and check in and make sure and get feedback and innovate and, you know, respect teacher autonomy by gathering voice and being there in person. So you pointed out that when I think about all those things and I think about, that is the time.

because other things are still happening. Like there’s still other coaching conversations happening in schools. Are your coaches doing nothing but PLCs? Of course not. Like that’s their priority. They’re going to prioritize their time. They’re going to look at their schedules. They’re going to do their best to be available for PLCs because that’s the work. Does that mean that there aren’t going to be other touch points or other individual coaching with new teachers or you know, of course other things are going to continue to happen systemically.

But when we think about the bulk of the work or the objective that we’re committing to collectively, the key result that we are all committed to meeting this year, what we want is for there to be actual measurable change. And if that’s what we want, we can’t say, try this, do that, let’s do a little bit of that, a little bit of that, because it’s gonna all be surface. It’s all gonna be, well, we said we did it. When in reality,

All we did was talk about it really and give some exposure to it, but we never actually followed up to make sure that the change was happening and being implemented with Fidelity.

Jon Orr: Yeah. And I think really what it boils down to is, understanding and clarifying what change do you really want to see and what it takes to get the change. And because I think that we talked about this too, it’s like this gap between expectation and reality is like most times we just don’t know what it actually takes to create the attraction or create the impact that we’re actually looking to create.

So that’s why we get hung up in the, we’ll try that we’ll do that we’ll do that and then what are we gonna make sure we’re gonna focus on? We’ll structure these PDs this way, we’ll structure, we’re gonna support coaches to do work at the school level but we haven’t given them a focus. It’s just, it’s because we haven’t really clarified but also understood the necessary requirements. We’ve talked about, we have a few different podcast episodes, we put that in show notes links too about the four components of adoption of like we need.

to make sure the why is present. need to make sure, we give a glimpse. We need to make sure that we are, know, the internal battles are there. We’re like, can do this, you know, in addressing that. My students can do this in addressing that. And then also the consistent follow-up support, one-on-one touchpoint support. Like when you think about that, and we tend to think about that about like teachers and coaching teachers, but what you said was like, if we’re gonna like, if that one example was like PLCs from the district level down to the school level, down to the teachers, then it’s.

then all those pieces have to have those four components as well, which means like each school, how am I addressing those four components at each school site? Who are those people at the school sites that need those four components? The principals need that, our coaches maybe need that, our instructional coaches. You know, our teachers also need that in the PLCs. It’s like that’s when you realize it’s like actually if I try to take into account what it actually takes to create change, because I’ve defined my change, that I can’t actually focus on, or I can’t actually.

commit more resources outside that one area. And if you can, you can. I think that’s what you want to do. It’s like, let’s get clear first about what it really takes, map it out, and then go, can I do another, can I focus on something else with the resources I have, with the support I have, with the commitments I have to do and focus on some other routine or idea or whatever you want to do to create change or shifting improvement.

then map that out too. And then go, can I realistically achieve that goal or that impact? If you can, you can allocate resources to it in the way that meets those four components, then go for it and be ready to shift if you need to, but map it out first. And I think that’s the going narrow, like the fear, right? The fear of like, I can’t go narrow is because I don’t wanna leave everything out, but like, okay, well, pick one thing for sure.

and allocate the appropriate resources. And we can help with that. Like this is what we do all day long is we hop on calls with our partners. We help them allocate those resources, create those maps, create those clear pathways. If you can do that, then the fear of that one may be accomplished, but then it’s like, okay, but that’s the really important part. And then it’s like, you can step back because I think I would rather, like you said earlier, it’s like, I would rather address my most

important fear of a shift that I’m hoping to make over the course of three years or four years, like getting that, like clearly feeling really good about our progress or our support or our resources towards making that change. Like I would rather that be, you know, that fear gone in my life and my work than going, a year went by and I don’t know what we did. Like I know what we did, but I don’t know what change we made or shift we made. Like I don’t have any evidence that supports that. because we didn’t get narrow. I’d rather avoid that fear.

Yvette Lehman: What we’re trying to articulate here is like the difference between the flywheel and the doom loop. Like we want a flywheel, right? We want to build momentum that can, we can grow from. So it’s like, we make one small change this year and it builds momentum to more changes and more opportunity because we’re building capacity and we’re creating bright spots and we’re building, like we always talk about that sustainability where this culture of learning and deeply investing in our own

knowledge is part of the culture and buildings and we’re committed to this culture and we can add more. Of course, right? Like there’s always opportunity to add more once we’ve started to see some success and we can continue to innovate and we can continue to dig deeper. But we have to get the flywheel started. And that’s usually what we end up doing is the opposite, which is the doom loop or the implementation failure where it’s like we try a bunch of things.

none of those things with a lot of depth. So then we don’t see the change we want to see. And so then we throw them out and we try something new and we get stuck in this cycle of not seeing the change we want to see or only seeing small pockets of success and never building momentum. And I think the thing that’s preventing people from building momentum, from getting that flywheel moving in so many cases is they’re over committing.

Jon Orr: Right? We want to remind you, like going now doesn’t mean you’re gonna lower a bar or anything. It means you’re just choosing high leverage math objectives, focuses, and then doubling down on those. And then making sure that you can commit the necessary resources to make it happen. we’re talking very theoretical here. We’re talking high level view of how to structure this.

And how to think about this and I think that’s an important aspect of the work We do is we have to continually think about like how do I think about math improvement? How do I how do I try to like avoid these pitfalls? But also plan for successes and that’s this is our main recommendation right now is to avoid the widespread approach and try to go narrow We’ve got those fears to deal with but if you also want to hear something specific like hey, tell me exactly what this looks like We want to do that

we’re structuring the next episode. So if you’re listening to this, the day it airs, we air on Mondays and Thursdays. So this is coming out on a Monday and you’re listening to it on a Monday, the next episode is gonna be the Thursday episode. Stick around and we’re gonna talk about a specific case, we’re gonna talk about what this looks like on this idea, the narrow. What does it look like when we go narrow? How do we know this is narrow enough? We’re gonna talk about what those narrowing pieces are for a specific.

case in a district that we’ve partnered with, so we’ll share those details. We want to talk theory here today, but we want to talk practice and what this looks like in practice in the next episode. So come back and join us. And if you want to dig a little deeper, and if you want us to take a unique look at your situation and help plan your math improvement goals and focuses, then hop on a call with us. Head on over to makemathmoments.com forward slash district, and we can be talking about what your plan looks like. so that you can also go narrow.

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