Some people save lives with a single lesson.

Most of us can still picture the teacher who changed something in us. The one who saw us before we saw ourselves. The one who stayed after class, wrote the extra note, pushed us harder, or quietly refused to let us disappear.

You can hear the exhaustion in a sentence like that.

Not anger. Not blame. Exhaustion.

A Superintendent said that to me after my presentation at the National School Boards Conference last month, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

“Families are passive participants at our IEP meetings… if they come.”

You’ve probably heard it. Maybe you’ve even felt it. Maybe you’ve wondered if that means parents don’t care??

It’s an easy conclusion to draw, but it’s also the wrong one.

What if we flipped the script?

I’ve been paying attention.

Five conferences.
Fifteen webinars (maybe more).
Stacks of notes, tools, strategies, and “next best practices.”

And yet… I keep circling back to one idea that refuses to leave.

There is a theme emerging in education right now - clear, consistent, and quietly powerful:

Agency.

Are you - and your students - actually getting the full benefit of your MTSS system?

I’ve been sitting with that question ever since attending several breakout sessions at the Council for Exceptional Children Convention in Salt Lake City a few weeks ago.

You know that uncomfortable moment when you think you’ve got a solid grasp on best practice…
…and then new research gently (or not so gently) taps you on the shoulder and says, “It’s time to rethink.”

That’s where I am right now.

“You’re not the boss of me!”

Where have you heard that before?

Between siblings negotiating household chores?
Playground power struggles?
A defiant student refusing to comply with school rules?

How about silently inside your own head when a colleague tells you what you should or should not do?

It’s a primitive instinct to resist being controlled by someone else.

When a webinar led by Dr. Andrea Terrero Gabbadon referenced Doris Santoro’s Demoralized: Why Teachers Leave the Profession They Love and How They Can Stay, I immediately pulled the book off my shelf to revisit.

One line stopped me:

“Teacher retention issues can’t be fixed with a checklist of action steps. It’s an ecosystem problem.”

That sentence didn’t just resonate, it reframed everything.

The same question keeps popping up in conversations everywhere I go - online and in person:

If students use AI, are they cheating?

It reminds me of the same debates when we started seeing hand-held calculators. Was it cheating if students used them in class or at home?

Over the past 15 years, I’ve worked closely with school and district leaders who came to me with a commitment to improve their special education systems and student outcomes. They all want to create change with minimal disruption. They also want to make the best use of their resources (time, budget, effort), but every time I agree with them on these mistakes, we end up regretting it. 

Having been part of every one of these mistakes, I’d like to spare you…

Every school has an improvement plan, but let’s get real - humans resist change. We all hold on to ways of operating even when we may not be getting the results we want. How many people persist with “bad habits” in spite of best intentions?