The Work Behind “Good Practice”: Making the Invisible Visible
This week, I facilitated a workshop on designing accessible learning experiences. As often happens, the conversation picked up steam in the last ten minutes—just when the official hour was ending. Questions were flying, ideas building on each other, and it felt like we could have kept going for another hour.
Afterward, I found myself sitting with two big questions:
How can we recreate those conditions that allow the conversation to really deepen? Do participants need a “warm-up” experience before they’re ready to lean into new, more complex thinking?
How can we create supports that encourage educators to try new practices without fearing failure or judgment?
At first glance, they seem like separate questions. Yet the more I reflected, the more I sensed how intertwined they are.
“It’s Just Good Practice” — Why Words Matter
One comment from the session really struck me: the phrase “It’s just good practice.”
Those four words carry more than they seem. Just—as if to say, “This should be simple, obvious, something any teacher should naturally know how to do.” To the educator who isn’t yet confident, who hasn’t had a chance to practice or who is juggling competing priorities, this isn’t a neutral statement. It can land as judgment, as evaluation, even as a blow to professional self-worth.
Over my time in classrooms, I’ve come to believe we need to be much more deliberate in how we talk about “good practice.” What looks simple from the outside is, in fact, the product of complex design decisions and years of refinement. Making teaching look easy is really hard work.
What My Students Never Saw
When I was a classroom teacher, my students would never have guessed that I was once a struggling reader. As a child, I learned how to compensate: rehearsing passages before reading aloud, practicing fluency until the text “flowed.”
But here’s the thing—what I was modeling for my students was the polished outcome, not the process. They didn’t see that reading is often messy and hard. They didn’t learn that fluent reading is built through strategies, persistence, and patience.
It wasn’t until later in my career that I understood the value of thinking aloud—of making explicit what usually remains invisible. That’s where students see not just the “what” but the “how.”
Teaching as a Form of Design
The same principle applies to teachers themselves. If all they ever hear is “it’s just good practice,” they’re stripped of the acknowledgment that:
The work is difficult.
Progress is iterative.
Expertise is cultivated over time.
To grow in our craft, we need others to help make the unconscious conscious: the reasoning behind a routine, the subtle choices that create accessibility, the principles that underpin design.
Think about riding a bike. Ask me how I do it, and my first instinct is to say, I just ride. But if I slow down, I realize there’s more: balancing, shifting weight, adjusting speed, scanning the road ahead. Teaching—like biking—requires unpacking what has become automatic so that others can learn to do it too.
Educators engage in professional learning to make meaning and deepen their understanding of pedagogical practices.
Building Conditions for Growth
Every opportunity we have to work with teachers—whether they are pre-service, new to the field, or seasoned veterans—we have a responsibility to:
Name the complexity. Teaching is not “just” anything.
Model the invisible. Show the process, not just the product.
Create safety. Support risk-taking without judgment, so shifts in practice feel possible.
If we can do this consistently, we create the conditions for conversations that deepen over time—not just in the last five minutes of a workshop, but as an ongoing habit of professional learning.
The real art of teaching lies not in making the work look easy, but in making the work of learning and design visible. That’s how we honor the complexity of our practice and support each other in growing it.
I’d love to hear what words or phrases you’ve found either motivating or discouraging in your own practice. What language do you use to support teacher risk-taking and growth?
