Retention for a Change: Motivate, Inspire, and Energize Your School Culture

[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 be joined today by Joe Jones and TJ Vary, who are authors, speakers, and district administrators who've written four books together. And we're here today to talk about their latest book, Retention for a change. Motivate, inspire, and energize your school culture.

[00:36]

Joe and TJ, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thank you, Justin. Great to be here. Thanks for having us. Well, I'm very excited to talk about teacher retention because this is a critical topic. It has become a very challenging topic.

[00:49]

for many school leaders who are just trying to staff their schools to make sure that there's a qualified teacher in every classroom. And of course, one of the big keys to that not only is hiring, but also keeping the people that we hire. When we've gone through the hard work of finding the right people, we have to also invest some of our effort, a lot of our effort, in fact, in keeping the good people that we hire. How did you decide to write a book about this? What led up to this book?

[01:17] SPEAKER_01:

It's a good question. I'll try to hit it first, Joe. We actually wrote an article for a magazine about the fact that teacher retention starts long before you have the person on staff. And so a lot of folks think about teacher retention in terms of the people that we've hired and the people in our school. And we made the case that just like the famous literacy structure of BDA, before, during, and after you read, there's a before, during, and after you hire, before, during, and after you retain. And so we wrote that article and Roman and Littlefield contacted us and said, this would be a great book.

[02:00]

And we wrote actually what's called building a winning team. It's the first part of this book. You don't have to read that before retention for a change, but the case that we make in that book is that you need to have the right culture. You need to build the right story around your culture. You need to have the right brand and. Then you can go out and do the recruiting.

[02:22]

So the before is the brand. The during is the recruiting. That's when you have the vacancy. And then after that is when you start your retention practices. And so that's building a winning team. The BDA, right?

[02:36]

The after is the retention. And that's how retention for a change was born. It started with that article, BDA, and it ended up with two books. And we make the case that you got to really think about this comprehensively if you want to have the right people on staff, if you want to keep them.

[02:53] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, TJ does a wonderful job summing that up. I would like to just add, as practitioners, district leaders, I think we're kind of hit with this. And I'm sure the audience, Justin, it hits them as well. You invest so much time, so much energy into hiring great personnel. And we know there's no greater space in the school for student achievement than the classroom. So we do all of this work.

[03:23]

Yet. at times, then they leave us. And none of us are perfect in this sense, but looking at the whole process holistically, as TJ just described, the BDA, we have found some greater success with that. And really what we're driving, whenever TJ and I try to talk about issues we're facing, and we're in two totally different districts, which kind of helps he and I together, one thing that we try to think about is how do we increase student achievement and we know consistency and longevity of teachers in the classroom has that impact as well so i would just say you know just from a very practical standpoint we look at how can we improve student achievement what's one of the easiest ways and this just hit home for us uh very clear

[04:15] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I wonder if we want to start with some of the reasons that people tend to leave, because obviously there are people who leave the profession. There are people who just decide that that education is not right for them. And there may be only so many things we can do about that. But of course, everyone has a choice of where to work, and they may choose at any time to to find a different employer. What are some of the reasons that you found in your research that people tend to say, you know what, I'm out.

[04:40]

I've had enough. I don't want to continue working here. Obviously, things like money come to mind. But what are some of the other things that are maybe more directly in our control that do lead people to that point where they decide to move on?

[04:52] SPEAKER_01:

Well, you mentioned money, Justin. I think that's definitely a factor. But more than money, I think, is opportunity. I think a lot of times when people leave, it's not just because they're going to get more money to do the same thing. It's because they're going to get more money usually to have a greater influence. You know, educators are altruistic.

[05:12]

They want to make a difference and they want to know they're making a difference. And so when we see people leave teachers and so forth, a lot of it is for leadership positions. Maybe even just there is an opportunity to coach or be a yearbook advisor someplace else. And so we write about this in the in the book about titles, not just pay scales, but titles and creative titles. And the ways that we can reward people and demonstrate to them that they are making a difference. And then the second thing I'll say is isolation.

[05:42]

It's a number one thing, man. We teach in these boxes. The school's a box. The classroom's a box. We got to open this up. And we got to, you know, it got worse during COVID, right, because everybody was at home.

[05:54]

But really, the best cultures we've seen are the ones where we're going in and out of classrooms and we're providing praise and we're celebrating people. We even have a praise model in the retention for a change book to help leaders see that that's an accelerator. That's a retention accelerator, celebrating people and learning to lift.

[06:12] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I think one of the things we first have to do is decide where are they going? What does the data tell us? Are they leaving the profession? Are they leaving the school district? Or are they leaving a particular school, even for another school? We know the research indicates that schools that are challenging Maybe it's Title I, whatever it may be, the setting, the situation.

[06:41]

But those more challenging environments are also where we see teachers leaving more. And so we have to build supports. I do think that's where, you know, just very granular conversations need to occur that says, you know, if I'm going to recruit teachers for this district and this school and retain them, maybe there is some incentive pay involved. Maybe there is additional compensation. I think that's a part of it. But again, just a part.

[07:10]

I think what we really have to dig deep and realize is education flat out is a relationship business. TJ mentioned this. The isolation that occurs is huge. So people recognizing that it's a relationship business and this doesn't just stick for education. This is in most industries. The number one reason people leave is because of their direct supervisor so what is the relationship like that you have with those that you lead and if you do it right it doesn't mean that you're always friendly it doesn't mean you're always in agreement but there is always a level of support there is always a level of understanding Those are different things.

[07:53]

And people mix and sometimes confuse those type of different factors that go into really supporting a staff member. And I just think that is, you know, understanding what the data is really saying, where are they going? And then always reminding ourselves, this is a relationship business, period. And it's through relationships that we not only build our staff to be strong, but ultimately help our students.

[08:21] SPEAKER_02:

So I think I heard this phrase first in the tech or the corporate world, the idea that people don't quit companies or employers, they quit bosses. And certainly a lot of what people experience day to day does depend on the larger organization, the pay, the professional environment and so on. But a lot is within our control in terms of how people feel, how people are treated, how people are given opportunities. So as direct supervisors, as people who do have that supervisory relationship with so many teachers and other staff members, what are some of the things that we can do? You mentioned praise and praising people in a specific way, and of course, an authentic way. But how do we cultivate those relationships that make people want to stick around and make people say, you know what, even if this district doesn't pay the most, even if another district down the road has better benefits, I love it here.

[09:15]

What are some of the things that are within our power as administrators?

[09:18] SPEAKER_00:

i would say honestly it's taking a genuine interest in the individual and listening to them you know education is notorious for putting staff members in positions and doing things that's a little outside of the realm of their primary job and i get it you know i as a superintendent i find myself in checking myself to try to prevent this. The primary job of the teacher, just say, is teaching and learning. But yet we do have to do trainings. We do have to improve their capacity in various ways. But are we taking a very realistic look at the first week of school? How much time are we allocating for teachers to get their inner rooms prepared after maybe COVID we just cleaned out and shut down the whole room?

[10:11]

Or are we always expecting them to do things on their own time? And that might be small, but that I will say is the type of stuff that really starts to wear down people. It's the lack of understanding. Like, look, I just need a little bit of time and trust the time you give me as a professional. I am going to use wisely. You don't need to script out every moment of my day.

[10:36]

Trust me. And I think that's where we can start making some serious inroads and just setting the expectations and then having teachers deliver. TJ and I talk about this all the time. You know, one of, you know, we will contend that there's a lot of positives and negatives to No Child Left Behind. But one of the negatives was how accountability became a little just like a very, you know, small micro view of success in a classroom. And we're trying through our books and really in our own districts to broaden that view of what accountability is and what success looks like.

[11:15]

But I think listening to people, understanding them, genuinely taking interest, those are the type of things, especially in a very altruistic environment like schools, where That people need. And again, I don't want to make it sound all flowery, like you never have disagreements or you're not pushing people. We talk quite a bit about a push and pressure model, a pressure and support model. But it is, again, just knowing truly what's going in the lives of your educators and, you know, responding appropriately.

[11:48] SPEAKER_01:

I think also professional growth. I mean, it's a natural human instinct to want to get better and to do better. I mean, a lot of times, Joe said it before, like we schedule trainings and professional development that's wholesale without really looking at the individual and doing an inventory. We recommend that inventory of where people think their strengths are, where people think their opportunities are, and then trying to build at least one professional learning experience per person that's unique to their needs. And it's not that expensive to do. And so it's just really important.

[12:26]

And you said something about the relationship between the boss and the subordinate and where that concept comes from business. It's so true. We also ask, what are we doing for our direct supervisors? What type of professional development are they getting so that they have the capacity to support their teachers in the school? And so it doesn't just stop at teacher retention. Our leaders need support as well, or else they're going to lose teachers.

[12:54] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I think it often catches leaders off guard when people leave because we see that as the thing that people get from working. They get this job security, they get this job. And if that's kind of what we're holding over people's heads, you know, in order to get them to do things, often people will respond by saying, no, actually, I'm not interested in working here. So that kind of accountability and control model, I think sometimes, you know, leaders need more tools than simply I'm the boss and, you know, and if you want to work here, you do things my way. And it's very interesting to see some of the conversations that happen among principals online where I'll see, you know, all the things that are principles non-negotiables and all the things that they demand from teachers many of which seem quite far removed from actually teaching and then i see in some cases some of the same people saying i just had five teachers quit what's going on here and sometimes i think you know we we've got to see our own role in this as people who are creating the conditions for people to to succeed and i want to go back joe to something you said a moment ago about noticing people

[14:05]

i very distinctly remember in about my third or fourth year as a classroom teacher feeling like i could probably go weeks without any other adult having any sense of what i was doing in my classroom like nobody really knew everybody was busy with their own stuff and i had i had great administrators but just you know they were they were slammed all the time with you know just very challenging work And I just felt like I wasn't really accountable, not in the sense of, you know, of anything negative, but just I didn't have anybody seeing what I was doing, aware of what I was doing and able to talk with me about it. And I think that's something that stuck with me as I've tried to get principals into classrooms And often I find that principals want to get into classrooms to give feedback and to say, here's what you're doing well, here's what you're doing better. But I think so much of the value is just in showing people that we're noticing what they're doing, that we're paying attention, that we care, that we have an interest.

[14:56]

I love that word that you used, showing an interest in people. What are some of the ways that we can build people up when we are paying attention? What are some of the ways that we can show that we value people and provide that specific praise?

[15:11] SPEAKER_00:

It's a great question. I think at first it's an, it's what you just mentioned, Justin, it is that interest, a genuine interest. that when you're a leader, TJ and I always love this phrase by John Maxwell, if you're a leader and nobody's following you, you're not leading, you're just going for a walk. And it's the truth. I think something that we've embraced is when you take a genuine interest in people, you're recognizing their professionalism. So rather than saying, oh, we just bought and purchased this new curriculum and then you teach it to them.

[15:47]

You should have teacher leaders in place already that one helped make that decision to begin with, then have helped with the plan on how that's going to roll out as it rolls out. Who's going to lead the PD? Who are the support personnel for that? And then you can even have individuals that say, OK, listen, I don't want to lead the PD. So but you have a veteran instructor that's dynamic. All right.

[16:11]

Well, this is going to be a curriculum that we're going to live with for several years. Can you start building a plan for our new teachers next year as they acclimate to the district? Would you be willing to head up a committee and take up that initiative in charge? So when I say about a genuine interest in people, it's leaning on them and their professionalism. Teachers are incredible, not only in the classroom, but what they can benefit administrators. But administrators, I think, sometimes confuse their roles that they have to have all the answers.

[16:44]

And I struggled with that for a long time as a leader, that not only should I have the answer, but I should have it before anyone else. And that is something I had to get over and get over quick and say, no, a strength of mine is building relationships and creating an environment where people feel comfortable deliberating, problem solving. And they know that I may have an answer, but I guarantee the answer of six is better than just my own. So it is that interest. It's leaning on them, getting their advice, hearing from them. And then be also, you know, we...

[17:21]

really harp on this, being candid up front. I'm looking for your opinion. I also want to be clear. I may not use it. So sometimes we like do all of these things and then never circle back to the person. Look, we really loved your feedback.

[17:37]

I took X and Y, but honestly, Z wouldn't work out, but I do appreciate it. People are okay with that. What they don't like is you asking them when you already knew the plan or you already knew the answer and then wasted their time. That's what people don't like. So I think as long as you become genuinely interested, embrace the role of like an ethnographer, a sociologist, and just really start observing what's going on. That's the qualitative data that really turns around schools.

[18:12] SPEAKER_01:

Can I say this too? This is a tip for administrators. And I mentioned that we built a model in the book for specific praise. And you said specific praise, Justin. Here's the thing. You talked about noticing people and accountability.

[18:27]

We praise, even we don't praise and celebrate enough in schools. That's period, right? So we need to praise. We need to celebrate. We open the book with learning to lift because we need to learn how to do that better. And in learning how to do that, and we studied the psychology and the organizational psychologists have been clear on some of these ways in which we praise people.

[18:49]

But I think the identifying, seeing people part, Justin, is really important. And here's the tip, specificity and rationale. Just telling somebody they're doing a good job doesn't help them to continue to do a good job or even really feel good about the job they're doing. We have to add specificity. What is the very specific thing that that person's doing that's working? And then the rationale is why.

[19:14]

Why is that so important? So we're praising the person, we're offering specificity, we're telling them the reason why, and we're driving that home so that they know what it is we want them to repeat and what we want them to feel proud about. And those two things, repetition with what works and pride in our schools and our teachers, that keeps people on staff. But I don't know that we do that all that well in terms of just being there in the first place, like you said, and knowing how to praise people the right way.

[19:47] SPEAKER_02:

I like that. I feel like there's a connection there with how we write good feedback on teaching. If we're praising someone for the contributions they made to an initiative or an event or something, I was taught to write teacher evaluations in the CEIJ format from John Safier, Claim, Evidence, Interpretation, and Judgment. And one of the things I like about that is in the interpretation phase of that, you say, here's why this matters. So there's that rationale, but there's also the impact. Here's the impact that you had.

[20:19]

And people can see how they are having an impact beyond their own classroom. And I think that leadership, that opportunity to be a part of something that's bigger than the four walls of the classroom, as we alluded to earlier, is something that's quite motivating to people. And I wanted to ask about this from the angle of professional development, not training, but professional growth, the development of people throughout their career. Because I feel like our profession is odd in that teachers are full teachers on day one, at least in the United States. I know this is different in Australia and Canada and other places. But in the United States, if you graduate from college, you have your teaching certificate, you get a job, you're a teacher on day one.

[20:59]

and you retire at age 60 or whatever, having taught in a single classroom for 40 years, there's not any necessary career path that is there for people. And I feel like it's fine for people who want to become administrators, people like You and I who took the admin route, that's fine. But I also feel like we need ways for people to advance professionally. I don't think everybody should have to become an administrator to advance as a professional. I think there need to be ways that people can keep doing what they love, can stay in the classroom, but exercise more leadership. But we have such a flat structure.

[21:36]

All teachers are equal. I don't know. What do you think about that and what we can do about it?

[21:40] SPEAKER_01:

For certain, we need to honor people in the different phases, I would say, of their professional life and their professional life cycle. But I do go back to that inventory about where people feel they need to grow and where we've identified their growth needs. And they're very unique from person to person. We've even put a matrix in one of our books, I believe, Candid and Compassionate Feedback, at the end about how you look at a teacher in terms of their growth cycle and expertise. But I'll say two things about it, and I think it's the future of where we need to go in education, and something we write about early in retention for a change is micro-credentialing. In business, they have subject matter experts on staff.

[22:24]

And in education, everybody is kind of got the same certification. They may teach a different content area or have special education. But what if we had a SEL micro-credential on staff, right? What if we had a neuroscience micro-credential on staff? And this person's job was to help us to understand our lesson plans from a neuroscientific standpoint. And so I just feel like that micro credential and the concept of a subject matter expert, it lends itself to what we've been talking about before in terms of people feeling their value.

[22:59]

And it develops teachers to stay in the classroom, but to continue to grow. And maybe we could pay them for it. We can badge it. We can credential it. We can give them something extra. I don't know that I know there are people dabbling this around the country.

[23:14]

And I just think it's a next phase for all of us to get into in terms of the way we look at our teachers and their careers.

[23:20] SPEAKER_00:

TJ really summed it up well. The only addition I would make is, again, that's asking teachers where they would like to grow, what areas and having those conversations. And although education is flat in some regards to that, I do think we need to differentiate professional learning for staff and see where they are. I think that's where sometimes we also just don't do the best job. You have teachers with 20 years experts in something with like a second year teacher and maybe they just need something different. And I think doing a better job of tailoring PD for the teacher's needs would invest more in that individual.

[24:03]

But yeah, we've been kicking around the whole notion of micro-credentialing and we're excited too, even in my own district. we just had similar what tj just described a local university put out an e english a second language certification and we had several staff members take that very rigorous but it's a certification and truly excited to see that as our district really is diverse but is continuing to grow in diversity year after year after year and i'm i'm glad to see the higher eds embracing that a little more and being a little more flexible because I think it speaks directly to what this question is asking. How do we give people skill sets, empower them and grow them when they don't want to take necessarily an admin track? And then I think the next question is, all right, so can that look on a pay scale a little different than just those who get their master's degree and continue to earn credits?

[25:00]

which kind of dominates our pay structure. Are there other things that we can start crediting as maybe grad courses or credits that are what TJ is describing with the micro-credentialing, which I think as like E. Cornell students, and some other higher eds are offering these type of online. You know, we sent five or six individuals last year to go through the eCornell diversity training on top of what we were doing in our district because it was totally from a business lens and an organizational hierarchy lens, which we couldn't get anywhere but a school like probably Cornell or some others. So I think that's just an area where it can really start making education unique and grow. And I'm excited about it, quite frankly.

[25:49] SPEAKER_02:

So the book is Retention for a Change, Motivate, Inspire, and Energize Your School Culture. Joe and TJ, I have to ask, if you could get all of us in the profession to do one thing, if you could wave a magic wand and get all of us to make one change that would help us retain our best teachers, what would that be?

[26:08] SPEAKER_00:

That's an excellent question. I'm rarely stumped, Justin, and I'm a professional talker at this point in my career, but You know what? If I'm going to answer that, I would love, and this goes for me too. I don't say I'm outside of this. If everyone could start seeing obstacles as opportunities, if mentally we truly saw it that way, that challenges could be seen as change. Obstacles is opportunity.

[26:44]

And I know we talk about that sometimes, but I think if we truly embrace that, we would launch education in just a whole different stratosphere. But I will say, I think I'm on to this more because of COVID. I have seen teachers dig so deep and willing to do so much and administrators because the normal environment suddenly turned hostile. Classrooms were no longer areas and spaces for our kids. So we had to figure out what are we going to do? And I think when you're forced to totally think different, your back's up against the wall, you can come up with some really good ideas.

[27:31]

But I honestly think if people would not get frustrated, feel defeated, lack faith, and see really opportunities within every obstacle, it would be phenomenal. And I do want to say that I hold myself within that as well. I'm not above that.

[27:51] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think Joe and I think a lot alike. I'll add to what he's saying because I think it's true that we need to see obstacles as opportunities. I also think we need to experiment. We saw that during COVID as well. Try something, willing to take a risk, willing to let it fail. In education, we do a lot of reflecting on feedback, reflecting on what we read, reflecting on practices without taking action.

[28:18]

can point out all the ways that it will work it won't work it might work what i'm saying is let's take action and then reflect if it doesn't work that's fine but let's try it first before we decide that it's not for us and so there's a ton of stuff out there practices in the classroom things that we can do i mean ai is even seeping into some of the the the stuff that you can purchase and use, we got to experiment. And I hold myself accountable to that as well. Do something a little bit different and see if it works because doing the same things the same way and expecting different results, we all know that that's a definition of insanity. And so we could do better for kids and we could do better for teachers and we could do better for ourselves, but we need to start experimenting.

[29:05] SPEAKER_02:

Well, Joe and TJ, if people want to find you online, learn more about your books, where's the best place for them to go?

[29:11] SPEAKER_01:

You can find us at theschoolhouse302.com online. That's theschoolhouse302.com. You can contact us right at contact at theschoolhouse302.com.

[29:22]

And both Joe and I are on Twitter, active Twitter. Twitter users, anywhere else, Joe?

[29:27] SPEAKER_00:

I think the website is our primary driver. Doesn't we try to give, you know, very good resources out for free? And TJ and I started this, you know, really because it helped benefit us. You know, we're in two different work environments. We were running and sharing ideas and then decided, you know what, let's just kind of do this for others as well. So the blog is typically where it's at.

[29:54] SPEAKER_02:

And again, the book is Retention for a Change. So Joe and TJ, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you.

[30:02] Announcer:

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