This week, I had the privilege of spending a lot of time with our newest teachers. It is always one of my favorite weeks of the school year. There is something about welcoming educators at the beginning of their journey that always brings me back to the people who helped shape mine.

My appreciation for mentorship began long before I became an educator. My parents and my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Roth, were some of my earliest mentors, and their influence has stayed with me across every stage of my life and career. Mrs. Roth, has remained a constant. Years after I sat in her classroom, she continued to mentor and guide me as I stepped into leadership. We even wrote a chapter together in my book The Leader Inside about the trajectory of that relationship and what it has meant to both of us.

And perhaps that is one of the gifts of mentorship. We rarely know how far our influence will travel.

Years later, I had the opportunity to coordinate a mentor program in my former district, and my path eventually led me into formal leadership. Although my role changed, the responsibility of mentorship did not. I still believe deeply that we have a professional responsibility to build capacity in the people we serve and help set them up for long, meaningful careers.

Across several sessions, we explored evidence-based literacy instruction, our MTSS process and the importance of strong Tier 1 instruction, and the curriculum articulation documents that guide how we design meaningful learning experiences for students.

I know what you must be thinking. That is a lot. I agree. But woven throughout all of that learning were plenty of laughs, a few jokes, and moments when the whole room erupted in laughter.

And, designing these workshops took a great deal of thought, especially knowing how much new information our teachers were taking in throughout orientation.

As I prepared for each workshop, I kept returning to the book Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath and one of the questions at the heart of their work: Why do some ideas stick while others do not?

It made me ask a different question: Of everything I could share, what did I really want to stick?

The Heath brothers explore simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotion, and stories as elements that help ideas stick. But one concept especially stayed with me: what they call the Curse of Knowledge.

Once we know something, it becomes difficult to remember what it was like not to know it.

They illustrate this through an experiment involving “tappers” and “listeners.” A tapper has a familiar song playing in their head and taps its rhythm for another person. To the tapper, the song seems obvious. But the listener cannot hear the song playing in the tapper’s head.

They only hear the taps.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that.

Those of us who have been in our schools and districts for years can hear the song.

We understand the acronyms. We know the curriculum. We know where the resources live. We understand how one initiative connects to another. We know the history behind decisions. We have lived through the conversations that shaped the systems now in place.

Then a new teacher walks through the door.

They hear the taps.

And that is where I think leadership matters.

Our responsibility is not to see how much information we can fit into a workshop. It is to help people begin making connections between the taps so that, over time, they can hear the song too.

That requires us to make complex things feel accessible without stripping away their depth. It requires us to decide what matters most. It requires us to connect new learning to something people already understand. It requires opportunities to talk, experience, question, apply, reflect, and try again. And it requires us to remember that capacity is built over time.

A five-hour course cannot teach someone everything there is to know about evidence-based literacy instruction. An MTSS presentation cannot prepare someone for every student they will encounter. A curriculum document cannot tell a teacher exactly what to do when the learning experience they carefully planned does not unfold the way they expected.

And I believe they shouldn’t. They are starting points.

The real learning happens when teachers begin working with students. It happens when they try something and see its impact. When they have a question and know whom to ask. When a coach sits beside them. When a colleague shares an idea. When they reflect on something that did not work and decide what they will try tomorrow.

That is where professional learning and mentorship meet.

In The Leader Inside, I wrote: “You don’t have to search for the big things to see good things happen. The small things matter, too.”

I believe that applies to how we build capacity, too.

We can sometimes make professional learning more complicated than it needs to be. We can build the presentation. We can create the document. We can share the framework. We can introduce the initiative.

And yes, all of those things have a place.

What I am saying is that people can build capacity through the accumulation of smaller experiences that connect over time.

A conversation. A question. A story. An opportunity to practice. Feedback from someone they trust. A moment when something that once felt disconnected suddenly makes sense.

So what are three things you can think about doing tomorrow? 

If you are a leader, coach, mentor, or someone responsible for the learning of others, building capacity does not have to begin with another initiative. I invite you to start small.

1. Decide what you want to stick.
Before your next meeting, workshop, or conversation, ask yourself: If people remember only one thing from our time together, what do I hope it is? Let that answer guide what you include and, perhaps more importantly, what you leave out.

2. Remember what it feels like not to know.
Listen for the acronyms, assumptions, systems, and practices that have become second nature to you. Ask yourself whether everyone else can hear the song yet. Make the learning concrete. Connect it to something people already know. Create space for questions without making anyone feel as though they should already have the answers.

3. Create the next opportunity to learn.
Do not let the workshop be the end of the learning. Ask: What happens after people leave this room? Build in a conversation, coaching opportunity, classroom application, reflection, or chance to revisit the learning. Capacity is not built through exposure. It is built through experiences that accumulate and connect over time.

Moving Forward

And maybe there is one more question worth carrying with you: What are you doing today that someone else may still be carrying years from now?

I think about that question differently because I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of it.

Years ago, I was a fourth grader sitting in a classroom with a teacher who could not possibly have known where either of our paths would lead. Today, she is still my mentor I speak to weekly.

And this week, as I sat with educators just beginning their own journeys, I found myself thinking about the responsibility and privilege of being on the other side of that relationship.

We never really know which conversation will stick. Which question will unlock something. Which small interaction will become part of someone’s story.

As I wrote in The Leader Inside, “Gifts live within exceptional educators, waiting to be unwrapped in the right place, at the right time, with the right people.”

So I’m thinking that maybe our job is not to unwrap those gifts for people. Maybe it is to create the conditions that help them discover what has been there all along.

Because sometimes what sticks is an idea.

And sometimes, long after the workshop ends, what sticks is the person who helped us believe we could do something with it.