Try, Test, Learn: We're Not Gonna Mess Up the Kids

photo credit: Marija Zaric from Unsplash

My Motto

I remember the first time I said it.

It was the 2014–2015 school year. I was trying to convince my team to try something new — Genius Hour. I'd spent weeks sharing research, mapping out guidelines, nudging, prodding, answering the same cautious questions. The tension in the room was familiar. The kind that shows up when people care deeply but are afraid to get it wrong.

And then something in me snapped… lovingly. "We're not gonna f**k up the kids!"

It was probably something I shouldn't have said in a professional setting. But I was young and at my wit's end. A few people giggled. A few nodded. And into the quiet that followed: "We're not gonna mess them up. We care too much. But they need more!"

I cut the tension and we all could breathe again.

Because that was the truth underneath all the hesitation. We cared about these children.

We had their best interests at heart. But we weren't giving all of them what they needed. And if that was true — why weren't we willing to try something different?

I've never thought of myself as a rule-follower.

Angela the Student

As a student, I was probably written off as a hell-raiser who asked too many questions. But those questions made me a teacher who avoids the status quo. Someone who believes we can do better because we know better. Someone who finds it almost physically uncomfortable to keep doing something the same way when it clearly isn't working.

To me, school has always been about experimentation. Trying. Iterating. Staying curious — about students, about practice, about what becomes possible when you stop waiting for permission.

But even I needed a Margie to show me what that could really look like.

Margie* and the Experiment

Margie is probably the most gifted literacy teacher I've ever worked with. She had a magic ability to reach the most reluctant writers — including my own son Xavier, who had a habit of tearing up his work after writing conferences. Getting him to stop was no small feat.

But math? That wasn't her strong suit. And she'd be the first to tell you.

So we decided to do something unusual. A four-week experiment in our Grade 2 community: divide and conquer. I would take the math. She would lead an integrated reading and writing unit. We'd flip students — half with her, half with me in the morning, then switch after break.

It was uncertain. It was a little messy. And with some modifications, it worked.

Partway through, something unexpected happened. We'd added an extra weekly meeting to talk about students. Her notes on a student as a writer matched with mine on him as a mathematician — he was reluctant to receive feedback, and we needed to help him with that.

And then we talked about Lilli, and Ji Ho, and…

Then one afternoon, while our classroom assistants were preparing materials in the background, one of them quietly offered a piece of context about a student — something that added a whole new dimension to how we understood that child as a learner.

We stopped. Looked at each other. And iterated again.

We brought the assistants fully into the conversation. Because their observations mattered. Because the story of a child is always bigger than what two teachers can see alone. And honestly, a richer picture of a student was far more important than a tidy bulletin board.

What I Learned

At the end of the unit, I sat with our principal to review my professional goals. I found myself describing what Margie and I had done as a kind of action research — what we'd wondered, what the teaching objective was, how we'd iterated, what we'd found. He leaned forward.

I hadn't thought of myself as a teacher scientist until that moment.

We repeated the experiment in reverse, the following unit — I took literacy, she took math — because we both knew we had room to grow. And something shifted that didn't shift back. We knew students differently. Students worked confidently with both of us, and with the newly coined instructional assistants too. Collaboration increased. When it came time for unit projects, we worked as an entire grade level because we'd seen firsthand how much students could learn from one another across subject areas.

My work with Margie was the beginning of my transformation.

That's why, four years later, when I was sitting with a team that couldn't quite bring themselves to leap, the motto came out again: "We're not gonna f**k up the kids."

It may have been unprofessional. But it was the most honest thing I could say. And that moment — that's what the team needed.

Because underneath every experiment, every uncertain Monday morning, every moment of what if this doesn't work, the truth is the same. We care. We're curious. We have their best interests at heart.

And we are not gonna mess up the kids.

That's not a reason to be reckless. It's a reason to be brave.

Be brave. Find your Margie. Ask your questions. Try something new.

And for godssake — don't do it alone.

my future t-shirt designs

*names changed to protect anonymity

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