Retention is the Result Part 1 of 5
đ Hey Ruckus Maker, Welcome to a đ subscriber-only đ edition of The Ruckus Maker Newsletter. You can learn more about this newsletter here. When you become a paid subscriber you get:
Micro-books focused (like this one today) on how to Do School Differentâ˘.
Stories and case studies of the worldâs most legendary Ruckus Makers of all time.
Tools and other resources that will help you produce positive results that will make you proud.
An ad-free version of the Better Leaders Better Schools Podcast â ranked in the TOP 0.5% shows in the world + bonus content not available on the regular podcast feed.
How This Book Can Help
This micro-book will teach you about the three principles of teacher retention and how you can rethink every step of your hiring and development process so that teachers (and everyone else at school!) can flourish.
In Part 1, weâll introduce the book and talk about how to attract the right team through your vision, create a teacher pipeline, and cultivate diversity on your team.
In Part 2, weâll bring the interview process under the microscope, since so much of a successful relationship depends on the expectations that are set at the beginning. (Note, this lesson works for life, too!) We will also discuss onboarding teachers and why the old ways we do âinductionâ need to change.
In Part 4, weâll talk about mentoring and coaching so that teachers continue to grow and feel challenged in the best possible ways.
And finally, in Part 5, weâll talk about how the three principles of retention can help us create a culture where teachers can thrive.
Youâll also find a set of reflection questions to help you apply the three principles consistently in every step of the process.Â
We canât stop teachers leaving the profession. Some teachers arenât meant to be in educationâand thatâs ok. We can wish them godspeed and good fortune wherever they go. But weâre here to find the ones who want to stay, the ones looking for reasons to stay, and give them a hope they can hold onto.
Introduction
I had never received an email like Amyâs before.
It was the night before our Ruckus Maker Mastermind⢠event, and I was excited to welcome several of the school leaders I had been coaching for two in-depth days of mentoring and community. But Amyâs email stopped me in my tracks.
Amyâs principal, Rick, was a leader in the Ruckus Maker Mastermindâ˘. Two years earlier, I had spoken at their district about leadership best practices, and I had told the staff that if they ever had any concerns about Rick, to call me, text me, or email me, and I would try to help.
Now here Amy was, cashing in on my offer. On behalf of several of the teachers at Rickâs school, Amy was writing me as a last ditch effort, hoping that I could help them resolve what they felt was the key problem at their school: Rick didnât have teachersâ backs when it came to conflicts with parents. Things had gotten so bad that several teachers were ready to walk.
âWe know he will be meeting with you,â Amy wrote, âso wanted to share with you in hopes of being able to address this or bring it up. We want growth⌠Otherwise he may start losing good staff members.âÂ
Wow. When you make an offer like I had at Amyâs school, you hope people will take you up, but you donât really expect people will. Iâm so glad Amy did.
You can probably think of at least one or two (or ten) teachers like Amy and her colleagues. According to new research from McKinsey & Company, there are roughly 900,000 teachers (about one-third of the teaching force) planning to leave (McKinsey, 2023). Maybe you were one of these teachers as well: depleted, demoralized, and unconvinced that things would ever change.Â
The truth is, every teacherâand every leader for that matterâwants to believe that theyâre doing meaningful work, and that their efforts are worthwhile.Â
Thatâs why people give up hope, isnât it? Because theyâre convinced that nothing will change.Â
But thatâs where theyâre wrong.
Because now, these teachers have you.Â
Youâve probably heard the old saying that âPeople donât quit jobs; they quit bad bosses.â The reverse is also true: People donât stay for the job; they stay for the people on their team. They stay because they have support and a leader who believes in them.
But to be that kind of boss, we have to understand whatâs driving our teachers away in the first place.Â
Teachers Are Suffering
I knew I had to talk to Rick during our mastermind eventâand it wasnât going to be easy. I decided to frame the conversation using a strategy I had learned from one of my podcast guests.
âRick, this might be a bit uncomfortable and awkward,â I started, âbut I want to have a difficult conversation with you, and I think youâre big enough to handle it, and youâre going to grow as a result. Are you open to it?âÂ
âYes,â Rick answered, a little cautiously. âI trust you, Danny.âÂ
I told him about Amyâs email, keeping her name anonymous. I told him that several of his teachers were ready to quit if we didnât address their concerns about his lack of support when it came to parent interactions.
Rick was taken aback, and understandably hurt. And yetâthe news wasnât a total surprise, either. This problem had been a recurring issue throughout his leadership at this school and at previous schools. We talked through it. There were parts of the story that his teachers were unaware of.
But the fact remained, and Rick absorbed it: His teachers were suffering.Â
Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, and Carver-Thomas write, âPreretirement attrition, due to school staffing decisions, life changes, or dissatisfactions with teaching, accounts for about two-thirds of all attrition,â meaning that most teachers are leaving well before their retirement dates. Why?Â
Teacher attrition isnât really the problem here; itâs a symptom that something much deeper is happening. Although it looks like teachers are leaving voluntarily and some leaders may even be tempted to blame them, the reality is theyâre being forced out. Teacher attrition is a sign of teacher suffering.Â
In fact, I find the definition of âattritionâ to be a helpful reminder here:
âThe process of reducing the strength or effectiveness of someone or something through sustained attack or pressure.â
Again, if youâve ever thought about leaving yourself, then you understand this feeling perfectly. Who wants to live like that?
So the question is: how do teachers feel they are being attacked? Where is the pressure coming from? Here are a few sources.
Stress
Stress is a constant problem in teachersâ lives. Ever since the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act was passed in 2002âover 20 years ago!âthe increased emphasis on standardized testing and harsh accountability measures has meant one thing: more pressure on teachers. Throw in a pandemic, where all of us were left floundering and wondering how to continue the already difficult job of serving students, and itâs a wonder there are any teachers left at all.
To make matters worse, NCLB was passed because of a concern that the U.S.âs education system (and therefore its kids) was no longer able to compete with other countries. All of that added pressure, though, hasnât seemed to have the desired effect. As of the most recent scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the USA still ranks mid-tier at #22, behind countries like China, Singapore, Estonia, Japan, and South Korea in the top five slots.Â
Workload Overwhelm
Teaching is a demanding profession, with long hours often required for lesson planning, grading, and professional developmentânot to mention managing the learning management systems, learning new technologies, responding to parents and proactively keeping parents informed, and taking care of other administrative duties. Plus, many teachers are being asked to pull extra weight: to chaperone dances, coach a sport, mentor others, supervise study hall or detention, and a dozen other obligations.
All of these tasks are well-intentioned, but if everything falls back on our teachersâespecially if they donât have proper compensation for themâthen weâre setting ourselves up for failure.
Lack of Support
As stressful as the job is, thereâs no doubt that some leaders make it immeasurably worse. They do that most often through benign neglect: by being so wrapped up in their own lives and stressors that they fail to hear and take action on the cries for help from their staff. In Rickâs case, he had failed to communicate the full picture with his team, assuming that they would just trust that he had their best interests at heart. He was a nice guy, he always told his team how proud he was of themâand yet, in this one area, he had been blind to how his actions were affecting others.
Occasionally leaders make it worse through more nefarious meansâscandals, deliberate acts of sabotage, failing to show up with integrity and decencyâbut thankfully that is by far the exception than the rule.
Lack of Compensation
McKinsey & Company (2023) cites inadequate compensation as a top reason that teachers leave. There are many incredibly talented educators in our workforce. They could have any number of higher-paying jobs, and they know it!Â
Itâs not that theyâre money-hungryâafter all, they got into education knowing that this profession has a bad track record of turning out multi-millionaires. Theyâre here for the right reasons, just like you are. Itâs just that all of us deserve to be able to comfortably provide for ourselves and our families, and in many places, teaching does not allow for that. And the previous problems take away whatever meaning and purpose might have convinced some teachers to stay despite the poor funding.Â
Charged Political Environment
Many teachers are understandably frustrated at moves happening at levels higher than you or I can controlâbook bans, curriculum changes, restrictions on what they can or cannot say in the classroom and how they are expected to meet studentsâ needs. Increasingly, teachers are asked to be in the painful position of having to act against their conscience, which creates a tense, toxic environment that no one should have to work in.Â
Itâs time that we recognize teacher attrition as the cry for help that it is.
And when teachers suffer, all of us suffer.Â
Three Principles of Teacher Retention
Together, Rick and I made a game plan for how he would communicate with his team and work to support them better with parent interactions.Â
We also realized that Rick isnât a mind readerânone of us are!âso the communication would have to be two-sided. Rick couldnât offer his teachers better support if he didnât know what that looked like. Amy and the other teachers would have to be brave and vulnerable to tell him what they needed.
At their next PD meeting, Rick thanked his staff for their honesty and for having the guts to seek to fix the problem before leaving.
He promised them that prior to meetings with parents, he would ask the teachers involved what it would feel like to be supported during that interaction. Together, they would pre-game the meeting to make sure they were on the same page about what they wanted the desired outcome to be.Â
Then, after the meeting, Rick would ask the teachers, âDid you feel supported? Where could I have improved?âÂ
This type of leadership takes vulnerability. It goes against everything most of us have been taught about what leadership should look like.Â
The forces at play causing teachersâ suffering are difficult to change. Decades of societal and legal forces have shaped education into a system that creates and sustains this suffering. Every system is perfectly designed for the results you seeâand this is no different. As many educators know, itâs crazy hard to change this system.Â
And yet we know it needs to change. Weâll just have to fight harder to change it.
Math educator Peter Liljedahl says, âHow do we change a system? Number one is when you try to change the system, the system will defend itself because you have all these forces that have now reached the stable point. âŚthe way you affect change is you have to overwhelm the system. You either have to apply a single force or multiple forces in a way that overwhelms the stability of the system. So the system has to restabilize into a new form.â (Young, 2023)
This is what weâre attempting to do hereâand what we know works. If we can apply three new powerful forces, or principles, to this system, then maybe we can change it.
These principles are:
Be innovative: Remember, our current system is self-reinforcing. To stop it from continuing the way it has been, youâll have to be willing to rethink every part of your hiring, training, and developing processes.Â
Be proactive: If we donât take initiative to make changes, then nothing will change. An object at rest wants to stay at rest. Weâve got to proactively look for the places where we can shake things up.
Be intentional: You canât just break down what isnât working; we also have to rebuild the system intentionally so that itâs designed to encourage teacher thriving.Â
When we use these principles to rethink the way we attract, interview, onboard, coach and grow, and support teachers, the result is a place where teachers want to stay.
Rick put these principles into action with his team, and Iâm proud to say that Amy and the other teachers have stayed. They wanted growth, and they got it.Â
Whatâs moreâAmy decided to reveal herself to Rick and talk to him personally about what had been going on. Together, theyâre working on improving their communication so that the teachers at their school feel supported.
Chapter 1. Attract Top Talent
In order to keep teachers, you have to bring in talented teachers in the first place.Â
Itâs not that weâre trying to weed out the âbadâ teachers or the teachers who âdonât have what it takes.â This isnât about putting any aspiring teachers down. Rather, like trying to find a missing puzzle piece, we want to find teachers who will fit perfectly into the vision for what weâre trying to create.
And the beautiful thing is that when everyone feels like they belong, when everyone knows exactly how theyâre contributingâtheyâre more likely to want to stay.Â
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Ruckus Makers to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.