Simple; Not Stupid

In 1975, a McDonald’s franchise owner in Sierra Vista, Arizona, faced an unusual problem: soldiers from the nearby Fort Huachuca Army base weren’t allowed to enter restaurants in uniform, cutting off a huge chunk of business.

His solution was simple. He cut a hole in the wall, installed a speaker and sliding window, and served customers in their cars. That small local workaround became the world’s first McDonald’s drive-thru, transforming how fast food is served and consumed. Nowadays, drive-thrus account for the majority of McDonald’s sales, born from one practical fix in the Arizona desert.

I tell this story because in education we often look for big ideas or silver bullets to fix our problems. In chasing alluring and often workload-heavy ideas, we sometimes overlook the simple fixes that can make a real difference in classrooms.

I’m a firm believer that the most effective schools are those that have absolutely nailed the basics. Teachers deliver high-quality lessons day in, day out. Nothing magical. We can improve education massively by addressing small, common problems like these schools do. Schools are complex, and there will always be cases that need adapting, but in general, effective teaching looks similar across most contexts.

One example involves lesson starts. When I first started working for Carousel Teaching it was evening work alongside my role as Head of Department. At the time, I was fairly pleased with our lesson starts. Do Nows were used for retrieval, teachers greeted students at the door, routines were in place for collecting materials, and teachers circulated after silence to check understanding and address misconceptions with whole class feedback. All of this had been built up over months, even years. I valued these routines so highly, but I overlooked one small but important detail: the slightly choppy transition from corridor to classroom. There was a bit of chatter, some fuss over books, and the usual settling. It worked, but it wasn’t as sharp as it could be.

Then I watched Jack’s lesson start and realised I had never seen such a focused and purposeful beginning to a lesson. I watched Jack’s students and thought, “These kids are all coming in completely silently, eyes on the board, engaged in the task immediately.” Many of the strategies Jack was using were things we already did, but one crucial element was missing: we were not Regulating Entrants.

This simple strategy involves letting small groups of students in at a time, ensuring noise doesn’t build, using non-verbal interventions to settle the class, and then allowing more in. It helps break up friendship groups, allows teachers to scan the room and recognise students who get on task quickly, and sets the tone that behaviour shifts from corridor to classroom. This was a real blind spot for me; it wasn’t a strategy I’d seen or heard of.

I tried it and noticed immediate improvements. Lesson starts were sharper, students engaged with the Do Now more quickly, and the small giggles and chatter that used to snowball were gone. We rolled it out across the department, and colleagues were instantly on board; the difference was palpable.

A simple step, putting your arm across the door and asking a student to “wait a second” while scanning the room, sharpened our lesson starts. We made the first few minutes of our lessons count in a way we hadn’t before.

This is why I’ve called this blog Simple; Not Stupid. Small tweaks like this can accumulate to take teaching from “good enough” to great. I hope the educational silver bullet does come, but until then, I’ll be keeping it simple with small concrete examples of improvements to teaching.

If you’d like to get in touch to talk about Teaching & Learning, Middle Leadership, or History Teaching, feel free to contact me at ben@carousel-learning.com. I’d love to hear from you.