What Do I Do When Turnover Means I’m Always Starting Over?

A district science curriculum coordinator sent me this question, and I suspect a lot of people reading this will recognize themselves in it:

“Every year I have teachers leaving or moving to other schools. It feels like I am constantly introducing new teachers to ADI instead of helping anyone work on specific problems of practice. What can I do?”

This is one of the most common frustrations I hear from instructional leaders, and it is a real one. If a third of your science teachers are new every August, it can feel as though your district never gets past the first chapter.

But the problem is usually not the turnover itself. Most schools cannot control that. The problem is that onboarding and improvement are running on the same track, so every year the introduction takes up all the time and the deeper work never starts.

That is a design problem, which means it is something we can actually solve. The answer is to separate the two tracks and then find the places where they can feed each other.

Six Keys for Getting Off the Starting Line

1. Run two tracks, not one.

New teachers need an introduction. Returning teachers need to work on something specific. When both groups sit through the same session, the returning teachers are bored and the new teachers are overwhelmed. Give new teachers their own predictable onboarding at the start of the year, and give returning teachers a separate, ongoing focus on a problem of practice. The two tracks can meet later, but they should not start in the same room.

2. Let the student experience do most of the introducing.

You do not have to explain every part of ADI to a new teacher before they begin. The fastest way to understand the model is to experience an investigation as a student and then teach one with materials that are already designed. Because every ADI investigation follows the same seven stages, a new teacher who gets through one investigation with support already knows the shape of the next. Save the deep explanations for when the questions arise.

3. Pick one problem of practice, and anchor it in a stage.

“Getting better at ADI” is too broad to work on. “Our Reflect stage keeps getting cut, and when it happens it turns into a lecture” is something a group can actually improve. So is “During Share, groups present to me instead of to each other.” Choose one problem per semester, tie it to a specific stage, and stay with it long enough to see a change.

4. Use student work as the shared object.

This is where the two tracks can meet. Have new and returning teachers sort a set of initial models or Phenomenon-Driven Task responses together, grouping them by the ideas students used rather than by right and wrong. New teachers learn what ADI is supposed to produce by looking at real student thinking. Returning teachers get to work on noticing and responding to reasoning, which is one of the hardest parts of teaching well. Everyone is working on the same thing at their own level.

5. Rehearse instead of just discussing.

Talking about a practice does not change it. Trying it out does. Before a returning teacher tries a new approach to the Reflect stage with students, have them run five minutes of it with colleagues playing the students, then talk about what happened. Rehearsals feel awkward the first time and become ordinary by the third, and they are one of the few professional learning moves with a strong track record for actually changing what teachers do.

6. Grow your own facilitators so the introduction does not depend on you.

If you are the only person who can introduce ADI, you will spend every August doing it. Send a few experienced teachers or campus leaders to an ADI Facilitator Institute, ideally at least one from each campus or level, so they can lead the introductory workshop themselves. That frees your time for the problems-of-practice track, and it gives new teachers someone in their own building to ask when they get stuck.

What a Year Might Look Like

Here is one version that works well in a district with regular turnover. In August, new teachers attend an introductory workshop led by an in-house facilitator and are paired with a returning teacher who will teach the same investigation the same week. In September, returning teachers choose a problem of practice anchored in one stage. Once a month, teachers meet by campus or grade level for forty-five minutes around a stack of student work from that stage, with an internal facilitator leading the conversation. By spring, new teachers have taught several investigations, and returning teachers have spent a full semester getting better at one specific thing.

Putting It All Together

None of these keys is exotic, and most leaders will recognize pieces of the set from their own practice. What I have come to believe is that they work best in combination, and that the feeling of constantly starting over is not evidence that turnover makes improvement impossible.

It is evidence that onboarding and improvement have been built as a single track, and that structure needs to be redesigned.

How ADI Makes This Easier

The hardest part of onboarding a new teacher is usually not the ideas. It is the planning. A new teacher who has to design lessons from scratch will spend their first year surviving, not learning. ADI materials take that load off. The investigations, design challenges, and assessments are ready to use, the teacher notes explain the purpose of each stage, and the consistent seven-stage structure means routines learned in one lesson carry into the next.

That leaves your professional learning time free for the work you actually wanted to do: helping teachers get better at the parts of teaching that no set of materials can do for them.

Ready to get off the starting line?

Learn more about ADI curriculum materials, the ADI Learning Hub, and the ADI Facilitator Institute at argumentdriveninquiry.com.