Teacher retention part 3. This is the third part of a series of posts intended to help administrators keep good teachers.
Fix the copy machine
If you aren’t a teacher, you won’t get it. Teachers need access to consistent copies. Every day!
Copiers break. Teachers understand that. But, if you want to keep your great teachers you’d need an immediate back up plan. You will destroy morale if you pass the buck to the repair guy.
“The repair guy can’t come for a few days, he says he needs a part and has to wait to get it.” “The repair guy couldn’t fix the machine.”
Those statements might be true, but teaching life goes on. Teachers can’t give high quality instruction if they can’t get information to the students!
The administration needs to move heaven and earth to make sure teachers can get copies every day! A great deal of teacher morale rises and falls with the health of the copier.
Stand with your teachers
Parents will get upset with teachers. Sometimes the teacher is right and sometimes they are wrong. If you want to keep great teachers you need to react in the teacher’s favor. Especially in front of the parents.
There will be time for you to investigate the situation. If the teacher has done something wrong, you can take steps to discipline them. But parents and teachers need to know that you are going to have the teacher’s back.
Especially with the kids
Kids will say anything to stay out of trouble. Stand with your teachers when they have a problem with a student.
If a teacher sends a kid out of class, don’t send the kid right back. I rarely send a student out for discipline. The following story is indicative of why.
I sent a student to the office for an offense that I thought was unacceptable. 5-10 minutes later the student reappeared and said, “Mrs. __________ said to say that I’m sorry.”
What was I supposed to say? “You don’t sound sorry?” Was I supposed to send him to the office again?
I realized that day that the office would give me very little support. I was on my own.
Develop your teacher’s skills
Great teachers want to grow and become even better teachers. If you want them to stay at your school, develop a systematic professional development schedule.
In 37 years of teaching I have learned that professional development day means that nothing is going to happen. We’ll be told to make sure we’re enforcing discipline and we’ll be reminded of our professional responsibilities. And then they’ll let us go home early.
When do we improve our teaching?
Professional development can focus on:
- Improving school culture
- Classroom management
- Content delivery
- Educational technology
That list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a great start.
Summing things up
I get tired of hearing about the problems in American education. Every few years someone comes up with a new test or ‘plan’ that will ‘fix’ education. I am weary of hearing about how much more money it’s going to take to ‘fix’ things.
We focus on the wrong things. Education rises and falls on the backs of teachers. If we want education to improve then we need great teachers. And, we need to keep those great teachers.
Focus on retaining your teachers! Good luck!
P.S. You may have noticed that I didn’t say a word about paying teachers more money. Everybody wants more money! Teachers need enough money to live in a reasonably comfortable way in their community. Once that threshold has been reached, more money won’t improve morale and it won’t help retain teachers.
Great teachers don’t teach to become wealthy.
Click here for parts 1 and 2 of this series.