What Teachers Can Learn from Traction
Assuming your class or teaching team is naturally aligned just because everyone is working hard is the specific trap Traction names, and it's an easy one to fall into when everyone seems generally on the same page.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
0 of 3 selected
The core lessons, applied to you
Get everyone aligned around the same shared goals and priorities
A class or teaching team can't move forward together if each person privately holds a different picture of what matters most right now.
A teacher assumes students understand this term's main learning goal because it was mentioned once, and later discovers each student had quietly filled in the details differently.
Write down your class's top learning priority for this unit in one sentence, and check whether students would describe it the same way.
Focus on a small number of priorities at a time
Trying to make progress on too many learning goals simultaneously means none of them gets the focused attention needed to actually take hold.
A teacher keeps adding new objectives to a unit without removing anything, and every objective ends up getting less depth because attention is spread too thin.
Pick your top three learning priorities for the next few weeks, and explicitly set aside anything that doesn't serve them.
Meet consistently and resolve problems as they come up
A regular, disciplined rhythm of short, focused check-ins that surface and resolve issues keeps small problems from quietly growing into big ones.
A teaching team only gathers when something has already gone wrong, and issues that could have been caught early have had weeks to compound.
Set a short, recurring check-in whose only job is to surface and resolve open issues before they grow.
Track a small set of key indicators on a consistent schedule
Watching a few meaningful indicators of student progress regularly catches drift and problems early, well before they'd otherwise become visible as a crisis.
Covering today's lesson and building a disciplined teaching rhythm aren't opposites — the rhythm is what prevents today's small gap from becoming next month's larger one.
Name one thing, honestly
Would your students describe this unit's main learning priority the same way you would?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
0 of 3 selected
Run this for seven days
Set a short, recurring check-in whose only job is to surface and resolve open issues before they grow.