District administrators out there reading this, I don't envy you right now. As I said in the intro post, everybody out there with an interest in the teacher shortage has their opinions on what "they" should do to solve it.
And I think for a big chunk of people, "they" is you.
You're probably up to your ears in advice about what to do about all this. And frankly, I'm sure most people think you have the power to double our salaries and halve our class sizes with the mere wave of a magic wand that you, for some strange reason, refuse to wave.
And at the same time, teachers want you to back off. Legislators want you to bear down. You spend an unthinkable amount of time hearing from the small number of most dissatisfied (and unsatifiable) members of the community.
You're in an impossible spot.
And when it comes to doing this impossible job, you have no good reason to listen to me.
But hey, you clicked over here, so I may as well try!
Of the seven reasons most commonly cited for teachers wanting to quit, you as district administrators, I believe, have the ability to have a big, positive impact on six of them of them - far more than any other stakeholder group: time, expectations, voice, recognition, over-assessment, and support. That's a lot of responsibility, but it is also a lot of opportunity. It can be uncomfortable to know that so much rides on you - especially when so many decisions are pushed down on you from above - but it can also be somewhat freeing to know that it is at least somewhat within your control.
The accounts of teacher burnout being published come with suggestions for major, systemic changes that I hope you're taking seriously and moving quickly to enact. However, I think there are other things that you can start doing right now, on your own. All of my advice regards your work with local school administrators. They lead us the way you lead them. They push down to us what you push down to them. It makes a huge difference when they are at the school. It makes an even bigger difference when they are at the school and have the time and freedom to coach us, support us, and interact with us.
Want to win us over and keep us around? Here are five ways you can help influence our schools right now and on your own so that the teachers working for your district today stick around and the ones you need in the future want to join you.
1. Tell school administrators specific things you appreciate about them
When school-level administrators feel incapable and underappreciated, they act in ways that make those feelings seep down to their teachers. The people you supervise need to know that you appreciate them, and they need to know why. Generic, group-based compliments to telling a whole administrative team or telling all the principals at their monthly meeting “you all are doing amazing things” won't cut it. Their jobs are insanely difficult, and they have to do more different things than literally anyone else in any other job that I've ever heard of.
Tell them which of those million things they're doing well.
And mean it.
Give individual people genuine, authentic, and specific praise for their strengths and accomplishments. When you do, their spirits will lift. The energy we see in our administrators is extremely important for our overall morale. When we see our administrators struggling, it makes us really feel like things are going off the rails. When they look energized and confident, we feel like things are on track and we want to make sure we’re doing our part to keep up.
And I think for a big chunk of people, "they" is you.
You're probably up to your ears in advice about what to do about all this. And frankly, I'm sure most people think you have the power to double our salaries and halve our class sizes with the mere wave of a magic wand that you, for some strange reason, refuse to wave.
And at the same time, teachers want you to back off. Legislators want you to bear down. You spend an unthinkable amount of time hearing from the small number of most dissatisfied (and unsatifiable) members of the community.
You're in an impossible spot.
And when it comes to doing this impossible job, you have no good reason to listen to me.
But hey, you clicked over here, so I may as well try!
Of the seven reasons most commonly cited for teachers wanting to quit, you as district administrators, I believe, have the ability to have a big, positive impact on six of them of them - far more than any other stakeholder group: time, expectations, voice, recognition, over-assessment, and support. That's a lot of responsibility, but it is also a lot of opportunity. It can be uncomfortable to know that so much rides on you - especially when so many decisions are pushed down on you from above - but it can also be somewhat freeing to know that it is at least somewhat within your control.
The accounts of teacher burnout being published come with suggestions for major, systemic changes that I hope you're taking seriously and moving quickly to enact. However, I think there are other things that you can start doing right now, on your own. All of my advice regards your work with local school administrators. They lead us the way you lead them. They push down to us what you push down to them. It makes a huge difference when they are at the school. It makes an even bigger difference when they are at the school and have the time and freedom to coach us, support us, and interact with us.
Want to win us over and keep us around? Here are five ways you can help influence our schools right now and on your own so that the teachers working for your district today stick around and the ones you need in the future want to join you.
1. Tell school administrators specific things you appreciate about them
When school-level administrators feel incapable and underappreciated, they act in ways that make those feelings seep down to their teachers. The people you supervise need to know that you appreciate them, and they need to know why. Generic, group-based compliments to telling a whole administrative team or telling all the principals at their monthly meeting “you all are doing amazing things” won't cut it. Their jobs are insanely difficult, and they have to do more different things than literally anyone else in any other job that I've ever heard of.
Tell them which of those million things they're doing well.
And mean it.
Give individual people genuine, authentic, and specific praise for their strengths and accomplishments. When you do, their spirits will lift. The energy we see in our administrators is extremely important for our overall morale. When we see our administrators struggling, it makes us really feel like things are going off the rails. When they look energized and confident, we feel like things are on track and we want to make sure we’re doing our part to keep up.
|
2. Tell the community about your school administrators and their schools
Even better than telling your local administrators themselves individual things you appreciate about them is telling everybody else about them! Tell the other administrators in the district. Tell the community. Tell the local newspaper. Tell your social media network. Send pictures and testimonies to the district PR person. Really want to make an administrator feel like their community can’t live without them? Tell the world why. When you do, they’ll transform into the kinds of leaders that teachers want to keep showing up for. |
"It says here you're actually allowed to share good news online, too. That can't be right, can it?"
|
3. Learn what makes individual school administrators feel appreciated
A really tough thing about being a high-level leader who wants to show appreciation is that different people feel appreciated in different ways. I’m not sure how scientific these are, but I’ve always found the five “love languages” to be a pretty good way to categorize the ways different people express appreciation, and, most importantly for my point here, the ways they feel appreciated by others. If you haven’t seen them before, those are:
- Acts of service
- Gifts
- Quality time
- Affirming words
- Physical affection
What’s so hard about this is that it means there’s no way to hit everybody at once. When you schedule an hour with all the people you supervise to chat with them, it only makes the people feel validated for whom quality time is the way they express and receive gratitude. Everybody else just feels like you put another meeting on their schedule. Harder still is that whatever YOUR love language is, you are most likely to express appreciation that way, but only a fraction of people are validated by it. It’s tough.
If you want to reach expert-level status at appreciating your school-level administrators to keep them motivated and validated, you’ve got to appreciate them differently. Quality time will work for some (me!), but others need you to help out at the school fundraiser (#1), give them a “World’s Greatest Principal coffee mug (#2), write them a handwritten note (#4), or give them a hug (#5). I wish I could make this easier for you, but that’s the way it works.
This really matters, though. School administrators who feel appreciated in the way that makes them personally feel appreciated will do the same for us.
4. Try to solve school administrators’ problems by subtraction rather than addition
As I said before, I truly, honestly don’t think anyone on earth has a job that requires them to know and do more things than a school administrator. You used to be one, in all likelihood, so I don’t have to sell you on on this point. We are long overdue to start solving problems in schools by subtraction rather than addition. Every year there are more and more and more things administrators are asked to do. There is always a new position at the district office, and that new person gets to tell the schools even more things they ought to be doing. Each year we do more and more things, start more and more initiatives, those things don’t move the needle, then more are piled on the next.
|
Want to make a principal or assistant principal feel like they can keep leading for years to come? Next time there’s a problem to solve, frame it like this:
|
She wisely chose subtraction as the path to results.
|
I love reading books about productivity and excelling in your career, and a major theme in them right now is that productivity isn’t about doing more things in less time, its about doing fewer things better (here are one, two, three favorites). All we ever do in schools is to do more things worse. Maybe the results we want to see are just around the corner of simply doing fewer things. Even if they’re not, we have pretty great evidence that doing more won’t improve anything, so at very least, doing less will help you keep more people around without sacrificing any results.
What you really want - and what you know in your heart would empower teachers in your district - is to free up administrators to lead us to better results that will motivate us and make us feel like we can change the world. (We're suckers for that.) You can free them up to do this. Want to keep more teachers? Liberate their administrators from every burden you possibly can.
5. Protect school administrators’ time at all costs
As I said above, you ask your school-level administrators to do a lot. They in turn ask teachers to do a lot to carry those expectations out. And in addition to all you ask of them, there are all the things they ask of themselves. Don’t forget, the people who report to you are leaders - they have dreams and initiatives of their own in addition to the ones you put upon them.
Every hour that administrators spend in meetings with you and hearing the latest in compliance expectations is an hour that they aren’t leading, supporting, or motivating us. Yes, we know when they’re gone. And when its a leader we actually want to work for, we feel it. When they’re in meetings at the district office, we expect to have a meeting shortly after knowing all the new stuff we’ll have piled on to us.
Resist the urge to think that you're already doing this. Also resist the urge to use the excuse that there will be times you have no choice. Make the tone of the meetings “how can we help you reach your goals,” rather than “here’s what everybody has to start doing.”
Additionally, you wouldn’t believe the morale boost of giving time back. My current administrators regularly send us emails that say “I know we had a meeting scheduled for today, but I figured out how to condense it into a 6 minute video. Here it is. The rest of the time is yours to work.” Man-oh-man do people love that. Got an upcoming scheduled meeting that could be a six-minute video? Do it, send that email, and tell your administrators to use the newfound time to get in classrooms and help us. Everybody will be better for it.
There you have it. Five ways for you as a district administrator to single-handedly start to have a positive impact on the teacher shortage today.
- Specific, individual appreciation
- Tell the community about your schools and their leaders
- Find out what makes individuals feel appreciated
- Problem solve by subtraction rather than addition
- Protect leaders' time
Unless, of course, you finally want to wave that magic wand of yours and double our salaries or halve our class sizes.
Is more needed than just this? Absolutely. I'm sure you've seen more of the teacher burnout reports than I have (I've only seen this one and this one) The bigger, systemic changes suggested in these are important and serious. But they aren't easy to take action on yourself or right away.
So at least for getting started right now, on your own, I suggest these. If you manage to master even 1-2 of these and word gets out, I suspect you'll weather the teacher shortage better than anyone else around. To think, you - yes YOU - can help end the teacher shortage starting today.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it!
Want to make sure you never miss a new post? Subscribe below for email notifications of new content.
Want to make sure you never miss a new post? Subscribe below for email notifications of new content.
Want to read more right now? You're in luck! You can browse past posts by category:
