What Can I Take Off Your Plate? A Structural Approach to Countering Teacher Burnout

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_02:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Dr. Jill Handley and Dr. Laura Donnelly. Jill is the Assistant Superintendent of Multilingual Learners in Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky. Prior to this role, she was the award-winning principal of Kenwood Elementary, and during her 16-year tenure as principal, She led the school to be recognized for several achievements, including National School of Character, National Distinguished ESEA School, and the first family-friendly certified school in the state of Kentucky. Dr. Laura Donnelly is a veteran teacher and school counselor in Jefferson County Public Schools, Kentucky.

[00:45]

She is an education consultant, speaker, and author supporting schools and administrators with burnout, family engagement, and multilingual learners with trauma and mental health concerns. Donnelly has been featured in podcasts, news articles, and televised interviews for her expertise in supporting mental health. And they are the authors together of the new book, What Can I Take Off Your Plate? A Structural and Sustainable Approach to Countering Teacher Burnout.

[01:09] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[01:12] SPEAKER_02:

Jill and Laura, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[01:14] SPEAKER_01:

Thanks for having us, Justin. Yes, thank you so much for having us.

[01:18] SPEAKER_02:

I'm excited to talk about this book and I'm grateful that you've written it because I feel like as a profession now, we're finally asking the right questions and you are offering, as you say, structural and sustainable answers I have my own opinions about this, but in your view, what did we initially get wrong about teacher self-care, about the sustainability of the profession, about dealing with burnout? Because I feel like we heard a lot right out of the gate, especially during and after the pandemic, that just got a lot of these issues wrong and resulted in school leaders and district leaders saying things that kind of backfired and getting teachers to do things or trying to get teachers to do things that kind of backfired and just didn't land right. So take us into kind of your diagnosis of kind of the state of this world and how you're looking at it differently.

[02:07] SPEAKER_00:

I was getting ready to say, we'll probably have the same answer, but I think historically a lot of us in education, I know myself and Jill were particularly this way. We are often very passionate about what we do, especially when we start. So we are working all hours. A lot of us are perfectionists and we're I don't know why that tends to be in education, but often administrators are the model. So it doesn't really matter what we're saying, like have a nice break. If we're also doing that overwork, working all hours of the night, sending emails at 11 o'clock, our staff sees that and we're setting a precedent for what work is supposed to look like without really knowing realizing that we are modeling that overwork behavior.

[02:48]

So I think a lot of it is sometimes because we are so passionate about what we do at the beginning, we kind of overwork ourselves. And then we, as administrators, there's so much to do and we have so much to get done. We are modeling that and we are also contributing to the burnout because we are just in that hustle pace all the time, it feels like.

[03:06] SPEAKER_01:

I think the other thing too, and this is really kind of what led us to write our book, is that so much of what has historically been on the market for teacher burnout is, hey, teacher, you're burned out, go fix yourself, right? Go take a bath, go light a candle. And while certainly self-care, we're going to call that like the bad word. I'll tell a story about when we presented on this one time, one person said, I'll come to your session, but if you say self-care, I'm leaving. But I think that that term has really gotten a negative connotation because the implication was teacher, you're burning yourself out, now go fix yourself without really digging deeper into the root causes of why is it that teachers are getting so burned out. That's what we really found is that the approach that we took as school leaders to really recruit and retain high quality staff over, you know, over a five year history, we had, I think it was around a 94% retainment rate.

[04:00]

And so our teachers that left either retired or their husbands moved. And so what we found was that it's a hard job. Teaching's always been hard. Leadership's always been hard. And after the pandemic, it probably got a little more challenging just because the ways of the world changed, quite frankly. People started to figure out a new way to do things.

[04:17]

And so we had to reevaluate the way that we were approaching everything. I won't say quit expecting so much of everyone, but we talk about in the book that everyone only has so many minutes in a day. So it's not like we can give teachers more minutes in a day, but we can really prioritize and determine the best way to spend those minutes that give them the most bang for their buck with what they're expected to do.

[04:43] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And as you say in the subtitle of the book, it is a structural set of issues. So yeah, saying to teachers, fix yourself, light a candle, exercise more, take deep breaths, that kind of stuff that we heard early on just does not solve the problem, does not address the problem at all. And I think thankfully, there are some things that we can do as leaders to actually change those structural issues. Not all of them. I mean, we can't magically come up with dramatically more funding to reduce the workload, to cut class sizes in half.

[05:14]

I think if we could do those things, we would. So what are some things that are both meaningful, both significant and structural, and within our ability to actually implement as educators that you recommend in the book?

[05:29] SPEAKER_00:

I think one of the biggest things we talk about is time and how we utilize our time. We have realized we are big systems and structures people because we feel like if there's a system and a process that it streamlines everything, but we have realized not everybody views systems in the same way. So a lot of times when we say that we see this like, glazed overload. People don't want to talk about systems. It's not the pretty thing, right? But really and truly, it's how we use that time.

[05:54]

So if we have things set up where teachers know how to find things, where to find things, if we have a good use of that time, they're not constantly spinning their wheels. There's so much more that can be done. So we talk about the gift of time a lot in the book. How can we give teachers the gift of time through strategic use through having particular systems and structures, how can we give them that gift of time in meaningful ways?

[06:20] SPEAKER_01:

I think something else that we mentioned a lot is just ways to make your teachers feel supported and valued. Because at the end of the day, I mean, teachers, particularly new teachers, you know, they're looking for their next side hustle that's going to bring in more money. And rightfully so. But what we have found in one of our favorite quotes is people who feel appreciated will always do more than is expected. And so really, how is it that you're making people feel valued for the work that they're doing? Because the truth of the matter is that in our district, for example, we've got 156 schools.

[06:52]

So teachers have choice of where they can go. And so when we started researching reasons why teachers were leaving. You're right, Justin. There are factors that we can't control. Pay. We have no control over that.

[07:03]

You know, a political climate. We really don't have a whole lot of control over that outside of our building. So we focused on what are the things that we can control inside of our building. And a lot of that centered around the reason teachers were leaving. You know, we have a chapter around behavior supports. That's one of the primary reasons is that teachers are feeling unsupported in the classroom.

[07:22]

Lack of clarity and ineffective communication. We talk about that as well. And then we have a whole host of ways, like I mentioned, that just talk about how do you make your people feel seen, heard, and valued.

[07:33] SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Now let's talk a little bit, if we could, about the kind of administrator in the school building. And certainly there are lots of implications here for central office administrators as well. I've found common cause with the principal on social media, Mr. Lam, who's always talking about being out in the hallways and supporting teachers with discipline and checking in with them every day and just doing those kind of common sense things to build relationships, to be supportive, to provide the backing that teachers need from their administrators. It seems like a lot of that comes directly at the expense of the administrator.

[08:06]

You know what I mean? Like we are doing, you know, something that is a necessary job for us. Help us see how that doesn't just burn out the administrator 10 times as fast though, because I think in the cases where administrators are not doing that, it's because they don't have time either, right? They don't have the bandwidth either. Do you see any way out of that dilemma?

[08:26] SPEAKER_01:

I'll start with that. Just being a seasoned principal, because I was a principal for 16 years. And, you know, admittedly, my first few years, I really didn't have a lot of great systems in place. So what it felt like I was doing was every single day I was going to work putting out fires. I was always in the here and now of triage. And then over time, I became more experienced with implementing not just systems, but integrated systems that really allowed everyone to see, you know, what the purpose and vision and mission and collect commitments of our school were and then how each of those systems really work together.

[08:58]

So it didn't feel like one more thing. You know, teachers are asked to do so much as our leaders. And so if I don't have effective systems, And let's say, you know, an angry parent comes into the school or a situation occurs. Hmm. If I don't have a system today, I might handle it this way and tomorrow I'm handling it this way. And then if I'm busy, then what?

[09:17]

And then there's inconsistencies, which leads to frustration with teachers. But then as a leader, I leave the end of the day like, wow, what did I accomplish? I think about my first few years. I was there all the time, exhausted. What did I accomplish today? And what I found, and you mentioned, you know, at the district level now, I work at the district level now.

[09:35]

And so what I find is that when principals or school leaders don't invest in creating embedded systems that are interconnected, what seems to happen is that people don't understand the bigger vision. And then everything feels like a one-off and it feels like one more siloed thing to do.

[09:54] SPEAKER_00:

I was definitely going to say, I feel like we can't say the word systems anymore. And also we can't say them enough. But the systems that we had in place as administrators, for example, like when we would be having an administrative meeting, if there was something that we were planning, for that particular time of year. Not only were we planning it and making sure that it was done for like right now, but we're also linking everything that we were using for our year at a glance calendar for the next year. So we already had things in place that we could just tweak and refine when we needed them. So we cut down our workload significantly by doing And having some of those things in place so that we were able to be more present and readily available during the school day because we weren't having to do so many of the organizational checklist things during the day.

[10:44]

Did we still have those? Absolutely. And I was responsible as the counselor for chairing a lot of the special education meetings for a lot of the years as a counselor. So I still had a lot of paperwork and that wasn't something I could do ahead of time. But having all of those things that you can kind of plan and set yourself up for in the future helps you to be more readily available and present for teachers because they do need to see you in the building. And if you're trying to do all of the things all of the time, administration burnout, when we started doing the research for this, like we know teacher burnout's bad, right?

[11:15]

It's not a new topic. Everybody's been talking about it for years. But what I wasn't expecting was to see the numbers for administrators. for like principals and other school-based administrators staying past five years is almost unheard of. It's like, pretty rare that people stay. I think it was something like 24%, right?

[11:34]

It's really low. Superintendent's hours is the longest in this large of a district. I think his tenure has been one of the longest and he's only been in there for like six or seven years, right? So like it is important that as administrators, we are also practicing what we preach, not just doing and showing up for teachers, but also practicing some of those things and modeling for our teachers and because of things that we need to.

[12:02] SPEAKER_01:

One of the things that Laura talked about, I mean, we talk about it in the book. I mean, it sounds simple, Justin, but just a structure for administrative meetings. Working at the district level, that's something, you know, when you do things a certain way, you know that not everyone does things exactly the way that you do them, but you assume everyone has some type of approach to it. Not so. And so something as small as, hmm, have you defined roles and responsibilities specifically based on the strengths of your administrative team. And what does your system look like?

[12:29]

What are your meeting structures look like? And we talk about that in the book. And again, that seems like a small thing, but that is something that we were committed to that was very coveted time for us as an administrative team, because so much future planning happened there. And that was the other thing I was thinking is that when you're in the day-to-day of fire putting out, you never have time to future plan. So you have to create these systems that allow for time for you to have a future plan so that you can, you know, that distributive and shared leadership with, you've got so much strength in your teachers and the rest of your team, and not that you're putting one more thing on them, but leaning into people's strengths so that people see what gifts that they have that are contributing to the bigger vision and mission of the school.

[13:11] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, very well said. And I think the undercurrent of all of this is that there aren't really any true one offs in school, right? Like we're all going to have some unprecedented events. But for the most part, what's happening, you know, in our school today happened last year, it's going to happen again next year, we're a very, very cyclical profession. And that gives us the opportunity to learn from year to year to plan ahead to anticipate to put systems in place. And if you look at a lot of the things, the boring, reliable things that just happen, the schedules go out, the lunch reminders go out, it's because there are systems in place.

[13:44]

We know what's coming. We have dedicated the time. And I think because, especially as administrators, we tend to be exception handlers. We tend to be the people who do deal with the curve balls, the fires that need to be put out that we weren't expecting. that can lead us to forget that a lot of this really is predictable. Like we're going to have angry parents.

[14:04]

We can't predict necessarily which person, which day, but we can have some systems in place and we can work with our office staff and we can align our resources to deal with those predictable systems so that we're not burning ourselves out. We're not bringing our teachers out. and everybody's on the same page. And I'm glad you mentioned so much of that and aligning with the mission and vision of the school. If this is something that people have heard before, and because they've heard it before, they let it go in one ear and out the other. I think that's a big mistake.

[14:30]

I think this is really something to pay attention to because it's how so much of the work of the school gets done in a sustainable way compared to, oh, everything's a one-off, everything's an emergency, everything's a fire I have to put out right now personally, and we get burned out that way.

[14:46] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I agree. And I'm thinking, too, because you mentioned mission and vision and we talk about that in one of the chapters in the book. And so you're right. Like, I promise you, every school across the nation internationally, they have some type of mission and vision hanging in their lobby. Right. So did I.

[15:02]

And we talk about this in the book is that, so it can be one thing. It can adorn your hallways as kind of wall art, or it can really be the crux of what, which all decisions are made and what you ground all of your systems through. And then that's where the real work happens. And so to your point, and kind of, I think Laura said, you know, a lot of the things that you're going to read in our book, they're not new things. They're just ways that we have found to integrate them so that it really feels like a well-oiled machine and how things work interconnected. We really, you know, while there's a lot of research in our work, they're tried and true.

[15:35]

Like our goal was for any school leader to be able to pick this book up. You don't have to start at the beginning, but just look for ways that you can start where you are. There are some short-term wins, and then there are some long-term strategies, you know, that you need to embed as a leader over the long haul. And so That was really the goal, was just somewhat of a handbook that leaders could pick up, affirm a lot of the great things that they're already doing, and then pick up some new strategies or different ways of thinking in an area that might be an area of growth for themselves or for the rest of their administrative team.

[16:05] SPEAKER_02:

Let's talk a little bit more about appreciation and fun in the workplace, because the very fact that we have systems in place, that we do the same things over and over again, that people have expectations for what they're supposed to do, can lead us to take them for granted, to not notice when people really did something that took an exceptional effort, but we kind of expected it. So, you know, we don't say anything about it. So take us into a little bit about appreciation. And then I know you talk also about fun and I've seen fun sometimes backfire. Like I'm not a person who has like a fun lobe in my brain to know how to really plan fun. And I've definitely seen people plan fun that was not fun.

[16:40]

Give us your take on that if you would as well.

[16:42] SPEAKER_00:

I would love to talk about fun in the workplace because that was usually one of my things that it would be something that I would create or come up with. We had this point in our district where one of the superintendents was doing a salary study because one hadn't been done in so long. And so they were trying to decide which role groups, if every role group basically we were having to say what we did, all of the responsibilities that we had to determine if our pay scale was appropriate. So there were a lot of people fearful that we were going to be losing pay. So you can imagine how tricky that was to navigate as an administrator because we didn't have control over it and we didn't know what was going to happen. So it was a heavier time in our district and we knew that it was something that we wanted to keep infiltrating into our building.

[17:30]

So we were like, okay, we've got to change some things up and have some fun. So this was a time where we were supposed to be going into a faculty meeting. We had everybody come to the gym instead. And we had set up this game of human hungry hippos, which was a blast. And even if people weren't necessarily participating, they were standing around watching and still having a good time and you're right sometimes fun is forced fun and it's not always fun to people who don't want to participate but just getting people in some movement and having the opportunity to laugh typically at the end of a day teachers don't have a lot to give or left to give anyway so giving them the opportunity to have some fun and movement just allow them to be in a different headspace to receive whatever it is that we have to share at a faculty meeting. We would also do some just like quick minute to win it games right before a faculty meeting again, because teachers are all pretty tired by that point in the day.

[18:28]

So one of our favorites was we would get a tray of cookies and play this game called Cookie Monster where the teacher would put Or the staff member would put a cookie on top of their head, their hands behind their back, and the first one to get it to their mouth without using their hands was the winner. So just silly, fun games that can shift the energy of the room so that you're able to have some productive conversations when it's not always the best time to do it.

[18:54] SPEAKER_01:

And before, Laura, you talk about appreciation. Justin, I agree with you. Like when I hear the word icebreaker, like I literally cringe because I think like, oh, I do not want to do this. So we were mindful of that. Right. But the truth of the matter is, is even those people who had those same feelings as we had by the end of it, laughter was just such a common way to kind of let everybody take a deep breath and recenter.

[19:20]

And so it's, You're right. Don't plan something that's going to be laborious and take the whole time or assume that everyone wants to spend an hour doing something fun. Just a few minutes to recalibrate and reset and let people kind of shed off the heaviness from their day was just a really, we talk about a lot of different ways in which you can do that with your staff. I mentioned this a little bit earlier is that That's really the crux of everything right like just because you say thank you or you're appreciated. That's a start by no means or do we think that that's all that you have to do, but having an ongoing appreciation plan. And yes, that sounds maybe a little strange that, oh, you have to make a plan for making people feel appreciated.

[20:02]

That doesn't feel very sincere, authentic. And you're right. It may not. But here's what we found. If you don't have a plan, what do they say? If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

[20:11]

So having something on there. And then the other thing that we talk about is that. People like different ways to feel appreciated. One of the ways that we would do things is we would go around with an appreciation card. We'd knock on the door. Some people you would thought we were handing away like gold bars.

[20:27]

Other people would be like, oh, thanks. And it's real easy to sometimes get discouraged as a leader when you've put a lot of thought and energy into making people feel appreciated. But what we found was that just like the five love languages, the authors of that, Dr. Chapman, he's written another book around the languages of appreciation. People have different languages. So for some people, a tangible item is not their appreciation language.

[20:51]

So in addition to making group appreciation ways, we also talk about ways you can individualize appreciation just to make it a little bit more meaningful for your staff.

[21:02] SPEAKER_02:

So Jill and Laura, if you could give one piece of advice to central office leaders, to school leaders for taking things off teachers' plates and reducing burnout, what would that be?

[21:13] SPEAKER_01:

I definitely think that the piece of advice I would give kind of goes hand in hand is starting with your adult culture. So often, schools are made for children and that's why we all enter this profession is because we wanted to change the world with the students that we service. But as leaders, our employees are really our clients. If we're not supporting them, they can't support the little people or the big people that they service. So I would say two things, evaluating your current culture. Do you have a culture of appreciation?

[21:44]

How do people feel? And then being open to the feedback, the authentic feedback that you're going to get and then With that, I would say as you're analyzing your culture, I'd probably also do a time study. How are you asking teachers to spend their time? And then how are you being creative with how teachers are given time to complete the things that you're asking them to do? Really trying to shift your culture from one of compliance base to just really implementation of all the great things.

[22:13] SPEAKER_02:

Very well said. Laura?

[22:15] SPEAKER_00:

And then I think my advice, I'm going to speak more to central office administrators for this one, because often schools are very siloed within districts, or at least it can feel like that. As an administrator, it can feel sometimes like you're the only one or you're doing all this to support teachers, and then it can feel disjointed in other places. So just also taking a similar approach with school administrators and school leaders to help support them and give them access to connecting and whatever it is that they need that principals would be doing for teachers. If principals also had some of that from central office, I think it would go a long way in helping support the culture of the school. 100% agree.

[22:57] SPEAKER_02:

And then if people want to get in touch with you to learn more about your work, where's the best place for them to go?

[23:02] SPEAKER_00:

And then if you would like to get in touch with us, we both have different emails and websites. Mine is lauracdonnelly.com or you could email me at laura.c.donnelly at gmail.com.

[23:17]

And yeah, we would love to help support and work with other administrators who are trying to figure out that balance and support the culture of their buildings.

[23:26] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And if you want to reach out to me, you can look at BeTheLeaderYouDeserve.com. Justin, I also host a podcast called Be The Leader You Deserve. And then if you want to reach out to me directly, and this is all on the website as well, but it's BeTheLeaderYouDeserve at gmail.com.

[23:42]

So yeah, we work with districts, you know, from at the school level, at the district level. So reach out to us and we'd love to connect.

[23:48] SPEAKER_02:

Dr. Jill Handley and Dr. Laura Donnelly, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure.

[23:53] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you so much for having us.

[23:55] Announcer:

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