Quarter-Turn Moves: Stop Teaching Alone (Without Waiting for Permission)

School is exhausting.

I hear you. I see you. And I want to give you permission to do something radical:

Take a breath. Step back. And stop teaching alone.

Not next year. Not when the schedule changes. Not when leadership creates a new structure.

Now.

Because relief doesn’t come from big reforms, it comes from quarter-turn moves — small shifts between colleagues that change everything.

Before we get there, let’s clear the three biggest roadblocks.

“We don’t have a common schedule.”

Sure you do.

There are times when you are both teaching in your separate classrooms. That’s your opening.

Bring the students into one space. Co-teach. It won’t be perfect. It might be messy.

But students will light up when they see their friends. You’ve just doubled the number of teachers in the room — and that includes the students themselves. Support multiplies. Possibilities expand.

If you wait for the perfect schedule, you may be waiting forever.

Use what you’ve got.

“We don’t have time to plan.”

This was my biggest complaint, too. So my teams stopped trying to do everything alone. We made simple behavioral shifts under the banner of: divide and conquer.

We stopped spending hours making classrooms “look like learning.” Students displayed their own work in their own haphazard way. (They didn’t care about bulletin board borders.)

We split the prep work. One copied. One organized materials. One built groupings. One created lesson slides. We worked in the same room so thinking could flow naturally: Should Clara and Sofie be together? They’ve been struggling at recess.

We even used working lunches to sketch plans aloud.

Planning didn’t disappear. It just felt lighter because it was shared.

“But who will really know my students?”

They are not yours. They belong to their families. They belong to themselves. They belong to the community.

You have the privilege of guiding them for one year. But they are not yours!

When you shift from my students to our students, something releases. 

Pressure drops. 

Because there is no way — no matter how committed you are — that one teacher can be everything to every child.

But a team can.

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The First Quarter-Turn Move Is Asking

Asking is where everything begins.

Start with the colleague you trust most (or for you brave souls… ask the entire team at your next planing meeting).

Just ask:

“Do you want to combine classes tomorrow?”

“Can we co-plan this lesson?”

“Would you co-assess with me?”

“Could we try this once?”

If you don’t ask, nothing changes. When you ask, you are not admitting weakness. You are creating possibilities. You are saying something deeper than I can’t carry this alone.

You are saying: We shouldn’t have to.

Relief Asks That Change Everything

These are small asks. But, in my experience, they create immediate relief.

Planning Relief: Shared thinking accelerates clarity.

• Can we teach the same lesson to both classes tomorrow?

• Let’s split subjects — I’ll plan literacy, you plan math.

• Can we co-plan for just 15 minutes?

• Can we both focus on this one student next week?

Teaching Relief: Support multiplies instantly.

• Might we combine classes for this activity?

• Can I observe you teach this lesson?

• Should we co-teach it together?

• Can we create mixed groups across our classes?

Assessment Relief: Fresh eyes change understanding.

• Can we mark together?

• Would you look at this student’s work?

• Can we split sections to mark for both classes?

Emotional Relief: You weren't meant to do it all alone.

• Can I talk through something that happened today?

• Have you noticed this too?

• Would you work with this student tomorrow?

Energy Relief: Sometimes relief begins with one small experiment.

• Can we run a shared work block?

• Can we create one activity both classes rotate through?

• Could we cover each other for 20 minutes?

• Should we try this once?

You Don’t Have to Wait

If you wait for structural change, you may be waiting forever. But culture doesn’t begin with systems.

It begins with teachers.

With one question.

One invitation.

One shared moment.

One quarter-turn move.

An authentic hive doesn’t begin with permission. It begins the moment two teachers decide: We are not carrying this alone anymore.

Note: This post was edited with AI as an assistant to help refine my structure and readability. My voice and words remain intact.

Here is a downloadable to help you ask! You've got this!

Relief Asks

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