Process Design

Work by Erika Sanneman · Everyone on Process Design

The Multilingual Mind helps schools and education teams close the gap between what they know they want to do and what their people actually have the time, training, tools, systems, and support to impl

Oct 10, 2026 · Facebook ·

If you lead a school or program, you have probably lived some version of this: a strong initiative that made complete sense in August quietly stalls by October. Not because people stopped caring. Because the conditions around the work never quite caught up to the expectation. That gap is most of what I think and write about. Before we decide a staff member is resistant or a team is underperforming, I find it is worth asking a slower question first. Is this a skill problem, a will problem, or a system problem? The answer usually changes what you should do next, and it often saves you from adding one more thing on top of an already full plate. I have started collecting that thinking in two places, and I want to make them easy to find for the leaders following this page. The blog is where I work through the bigger ideas with real examples: how to tell whether a problem lives in the person or the conditions, why professional development so often fails to transfer into daily practice, and what it actually takes to make a new routine stick across classrooms. It is the slower, more honest version of what I share here. Alongside it, I keep a library of practical tools your teachers and coaches can pick up and use, things like diagnostic prompts, co-teaching agreements, and classroom language supports. Those are there for the moment you have named the problem and want something usable the next day rather than another training to schedule. If you only have a minute today, start with the blog. I would genuinely like to know which questions are most alive in your building right now, because the patterns I hear from leaders often become the next thing I write or build. Read the latest over at www.themultilingualmind.com, and tell me in the comments: what is the one initiative your team believes in but the current conditions do not quite make possible yet? …more

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Told 6 times, Oct 6, 2026 – Oct 23, 2026

Oct 19, 2026 · LinkedIn · Open

Most schools I work with already believe culturally responsive teaching matters. The gap shows up somewhere else: in whether it is built into the curriculum, the calendar, and the hiring, or whether it lives on the goodwill of a few teachers who care. When inclusion depends on individual effort rather than design, three things tend to happen. It becomes uneven. One classroom honors students' languages, histories, and contributions, and the one next door does not, because there was no shared expectation or usable material. It becomes fragile. The teacher who carries it leaves, and it leaves with them. And it gets thin under pressure. A heritage month display is easier to produce than a sustained look at whose stories, authors, and experts are present in the actual content all year. There is also a quieter risk worth naming for leaders: the difference between representing a culture with respect and borrowing its surface as decoration. The line between appreciation and appropriation is not a gotcha. It is a design question. Who chose this? Whose voices are centered? Are we teaching students to honor difference, or to consume it? I think about this less as a values statement and more as a conditions question. If we want culturally relevant content and genuine respect for difference to be consistent, we have to design for it: in curriculum review, in which authors and experts students actually encounter, in professional learning, and in the agreements a team makes about how they handle culture with care. Difference is data, not a deficit and not a decoration. The question is whether your systems treat it that way by default. If you lead a school or program, I would like to hear it: where does culturally responsive practice currently depend on a few committed people rather than on your systems?

Oct 23, 2026 · LinkedIn · Open

Before I send another reminder, I want to understand what completing the task actually requires. “Communicate with families” sounds clear. But who gathers the information? Who writes the update? Who arranges language support? Who responds when a family replies? In my new video, I walk through a hypothetical co-teaching example and show how the next step changes depending on what we find. An unclear responsibility may need an agreement. An unfamiliar task may need an example and practice. A task competing with several deadlines may need a different workflow. More than one can be true at the same time. I use these questions in coaching and educational consulting because I want the support to fit the work people are actually trying to do. Watch “Before Another Reminder: What Does the Work Actually Require?” here: https://youtu.be/YVqwKJbqvZE What would you want to understand before repeating an expectation to your team?

Oct 6, 2026 · LinkedIn · Open

When a new practice isn’t showing up consistently, what do we need to understand before deciding why? Do people know what to do? Have they had a chance to practice it and get feedback? Is there time for it in the day? Is ownership clear? Does another expectation make it harder to follow through? I’m interested in the space between agreeing that something matters and being able to make it part of everyday work. A teacher can value collaboration and still have no shared planning time. A coach can understand the importance of feedback and still be unclear about where coaching ends and evaluation begins. That doesn’t remove accountability. It gives us more useful questions about what we’re holding people accountable for, and what support the work requires. This is part of the thinking behind The Multilingual Mind: looking closely at the conditions around the work before choosing the next intervention. What is something your team is expected to do that the current conditions make difficult?

Oct 7, 2026 · LinkedIn · Open

When a new practice isn't showing up consistently, it's tempting to jump straight to why. But there's a set of questions worth sitting with first. Do people actually know what to do? Have they had a real chance to practice it and get feedback? Is there time for it in the day? Is ownership clear? Does another expectation quietly make it harder to follow through? I keep coming back to the space between agreeing that something matters and being able to make it part of everyday work. Those are not the same thing, and the distance between them is where most implementation quietly stalls. A teacher can genuinely value collaboration and still have no shared planning time. A coach can understand the importance of feedback and still be unclear about where coaching ends and evaluation begins. The commitment is real. The conditions are not there yet. This doesn't remove accountability. If anything, it sharpens it. It gives us more useful questions about what we are actually holding people accountable for, and what support the work genuinely requires. It moves us away from treating a system problem as a motivation problem. This is part of the thinking behind The Multilingual Mind: looking closely at the conditions around the work before choosing the next intervention. Often the most helpful move is not adding something new. It is clarifying a role, protecting time, or removing a competing expectation. So here is my question for you. What is something your team is expected to do that the current conditions make difficult? I'd like to read what comes up.

Oct 7, 2026 · Instagram · Open

Slide 1 Before adding another reminder… Check what the work requires. Slide 2 Choose one expectation Make it specific. “Communicate with families” is broad. “Send this week’s learning update by Friday” gives you something concrete to examine. Slide 3 Check clarity What does completing the task involve? Who starts? Who contributes? Who follows up? Compare answers before assuming everyone understands it the same way. Slide 4 Check practice and support Has the person had a chance to try it? Is there an example, a useful tool, or someone who can offer feedback? Slide 5 Check the conditions When will it happen? What access or resources does it require? What other work competes for that time? Slide 6 Choose one next move Make an agreement. Model the task. Practice together. Adjust the workflow. Protect time. Choose the response that fits what you found. Slide 7 Try it with your team “One thing we expect is ___. One condition making it difficult is ___. One change we’ll try is ___. We’ll check back on ___.” Caption Before repeating an expectation, it can help to make the work underneath it visible. Try this with one task your team cares about but keeps struggling to complete. Compare what each person thinks the task requires, then choose one change to test. Save this for your next planning conversation.

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