Lean thinking, better teaching
Like medicine, teaching is a calling. Shaping students' minds is an enormous responsibility that teachers take on with passion and dedication, but it can also be a gigantic burden – both emotional and physical.
A school here in the Netherlands, Zaan Primair, recently started working to relieve the overburden on staff in 10 of its 55 schools, and I believe the work they are doing is inspiring.
Zaan Primair is no stranger to lean thinking. They have been applying the philosophy in their classrooms for some time in an attempt to improve education, encouraging students to define, visualize and track their own goals. It worked very well, but until recently they did not believe lean could be used in any other way.
All of that changed when they attended a learning event at Nyenrode Business University, where one of our clients explained how they had worked with us on their lean transformation. They thought it was an interesting approach and asked me to visit their CEO to explain what kinds of problems lean could help solve (the answer is any problem, in case you are wondering).
At our meeting, upon hearing how lean could be used in the context of the Zaan Primair schools, the CEO seemed to have had a revelation. He immediately saw an opportunity to use it to relieve some of the pressure the school's teachers were feeling.
The previous year, a task force had been set up to solve this problem. The participants were given one day a week to work together on finding a solution to the overburden (a sign of how much the school board cares about this problem), but they were having difficulty focusing their efforts and finding a way forward.
We at the Lean Management Instituut were called in to help the team overcome the impasse they found themselves in. Our coaches, Linda van Driel and Eric Steenbakkers, brought A3 thinking to Zaan Primair, a problem-solving method that would help them clarify where the overburden was coming from.
An initial analysis showed that there were three work peaks throughout the year, represented by activities such as parent-teacher meetings. Incidents, ranging from a fight between students to an argument between a teacher and a parent, also seemed to take up a large amount of teachers' time every day (it is worth mentioning that these activities are often work that teachers take home and that can potentially create a lot of emotional turmoil).
LEAN TEACHING
We first tackled the work peaks, showing the Zaan Primair team that, to a large extent, they could plan their work in a different way and keep it from being concentrated in three specific moments of the school year. Then we helped them level the work: parent-teacher meetings went from happening three times a year to happening every week (usually once or twice a week).
We then began to analyze the incidents, which represent a big problem (particularly those that occur between parents and teachers) and, therefore, a big opportunity for the next A3. First, we closely followed 10 schools, tracking for three weeks the number and type of incidents that occurred (we categorized them as verbal, non-verbal, physical and digital). Before long, some patterns began to emerge. First, we learned that one or two children in each class are usually responsible for most of the incidents: this tells teachers where to focus their efforts. More importantly, in the schools where we were tracking incidents, it became easier for teachers to talk openly about problems. This is a very positive step for this organization, because being able to discuss problems is the first step to solving them.
Developing an understanding of the current state, based on concrete data about the work, takes emotion out of the equation and allows teachers to focus on applying their skills and passion to solving real problems and, therefore, providing better education to students.
