Stop Fake Work in Education: Creating Real Work Cultures That Drive Student Success

Educators at all levels have increasing demands keeping them working harder than ever, but they are often working hard on things that don't really help them reach the loftiest of goals -- student success. This "Fake Work" can mire the most dedicated educator in exhaustions, burnout, and a lack of confidence that improvement is possible.

Neilson and Surks show leaders and their teams how to stop doing Fake Work, by providing tools for gaining focus, building high-performance teams, and identifying and driving the right work with the right behaviors. When you offer your team a better way of working, planning, and collaborating, you turn FakeWork into Real Work, and stagnancy into dynamic change.

This data-driven, research-based guide shows you:

An overall approach to addressing your culture, the foundational elements that supports the change that sets you up for maximum performance

A simple, three-part model -- strategy, alignment, execution -- for shedding Fake Work

Roda maps for aligning organizational strategies and actions

Tools for gaining focus, building teams, and cultivating productive behaviors

Real educators' stories

Exercises, reflection questions, charts, checklists, and more

School change remains elusive when the path to success is murky. Clear the way for pincipals, teachers and student by turning Fake Work into Real Work, and uncertainty into true success.