From Slogans to Stances: Beliefs That Do Real Work

Written by Allison Zmuda | May 8, 2026 3:56:02 PM

A belief worth writing down is one that generates conversation, not nodding.

Part two of a three-part series.

By Allison Zmuda, Sam Bennett, and Cris Tovani

In Post 1, we made the case that when a team or organization works together to identify, clarify, and curate its core beliefs, those beliefs become more than private convictions. They become shared commitments — things that shape how we teach, design, lead, and decide together.

A reasonable next question is: why should we care? What does this actually do for an organization that is already stretched thin and asked to do too much?

A useful learning belief earns its place because it does three kinds of work a slogan cannot.

It can be tested against practice. A useful belief is one we can hold up against an actual decision and ask: does what we are doing reflect this? When the answer is consistently no, either the practice or the belief needs to change. A slogan, by contrast, never gets tested. It floats above the work.
It takes a stance. A belief worth stating is one not everyone automatically accepts. "All students can learn" sounds obvious — but a richer version, like "all students arrive with assets worth building on," carries a stance with real implications. It says something about what we look for in a learner, where we begin a unit, and how we respond when a student struggles.
It invites productive friction. A real belief opens the door to perspective-taking and dissonance — to the kind of conversation where lived experience reshapes practice. For example, one belief we have heard a faculty wrestle with is this: "If we show up as fixers and helpers, we are more inclined to be overly invasive with the learner, which takes away agency, trust, and room to think." It's not a slogan. It's a sentence that asks something of every adult in the building.

A small example before the larger one. Compare these two statements, both of which appear in plenty of school documents:

Students learn best when they are engaged. Struggle is where learning happens.

Both are true. But the first is the kind of statement everyone nods at and no one argues with. It does not ask anything of the reader, and it could appear on any school's website without changing what happens on Monday morning. The second takes a stance — that productive difficulty is not a problem to solve, but the actual site of learning. That stance has implications for how we plan, how we respond to frustration, and how we define a meaningful learning experience.

Here is what that shift can look like across some of the familiar slogan beliefs from our last post:

Version 1: Slogan / Nodding Belief	Version 2: Useful / Efficacious Belief
Generic to the point of uselessness; nodded at but not internalized	Names complexity or paradox; invites conversation and potential dissonance
Students learn best when they are engaged.	Engagement is complex, and each learner needs compelling internal and external reasons to read, write, and talk. Teachers can create conditions that influence both individual and group engagement. Students learn best when they have a "just right" amount of struggle.
All students can learn.	All students arrive with assets worth building on. Teachers are researchers of each human's condition — teaching is researching, the work of coming to know each learner deeply.
All students can learn to read complex text.	Teachers can shape a student's courage and will to engage with complex text. Behavioral and emotional engagement influence cognitive engagement — and teachers can create the conditions, through planning and classroom practice, for all three types of engagement.
Learning should be student-driven.	Teaching is listening more than it is talking. Teaching is researching and coming to know a learner as much as it is knowing a subject. Teachers play an active role in creating the conditions for students to lead their own learning.
Learning should be active.	Activity is not the same as learning. Learners need cognitive and emotional engagement — opportunities to make meaning, take risks, and revise their thinking — for activity to do real work.

Notice what each of the second-column beliefs does. It names a complexity rather than wishing it away. It says something a thoughtful educator could, in good faith, disagree with or want to push on. And it gives us something to plan from on a Tuesday in February.

A natural next question: what do we do when we feel stuck — when the slogans are easy to write and the real beliefs feel out of reach? Part of the answer is stamina. Useful beliefs are not produced quickly. They emerge through intake — reading, listening, watching learners, paying attention to what surprises us, and being willing to change our minds. They are the product of coming to know — our students, our colleagues, our subject, and ourselves as practitioners. That kind of coming-to-know does not happen on a single retreat day. It is iterative, slow, sometimes uncomfortable, and worth it.

Some questions to sit with as you read:

How do the beliefs in the second column compare to the ones operating in your classroom or your building? Which one creates friction, gives you something to push back on, or makes you want to try something new?
What learning beliefs might a visitor to your classroom infer based on your systems, structures, rituals, and routines? Would those match the ones you would say out loud?
Pick one belief you say you hold about learners. When was the last time it was tested against an actual decision — about a unit, a schedule, a student?

In our final post, we turn from the beliefs we want to build toward the small sentences that quietly close doors before planning even starts — the claims about kids, about colleagues, about what is possible inside a school day, that pass for common sense and do an enormous amount of damage. We will offer a way to hear those sentences differently — not as failures of character, but as flashing yellow lights worth slowing down for.

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