Supporting New Teachers: A How-To Guide for Leaders

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:14] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by my guest, Lynn Howard. Lynn is an independent consultant and author and consults with the Leadership and Learning Center as well as Corwin and has served as an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in the Charlotte Mecklenburg school system. And we're here today to talk about her book, Supporting New Teachers, a how-to guide for leaders.

[00:40] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:43] SPEAKER_01:

Lynn, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:44] SPEAKER_02:

Hi, Justin. Thank you so much for having me on today.

[00:47] SPEAKER_01:

So tell us, Lynn, why did you write this guide for leaders on supporting new teachers? What were some of the specific needs that you saw within the profession that prompted you to write this, which I understand is your fifth book?

[00:59] SPEAKER_02:

Yes, that's true. I'm really excited about it. It just came out by Corwin, actually. I received a copy yesterday. I really have a passion for new teachers. I remember very distinctly being one.

[01:11]

I know that was a good bit of time ago, but I remember how hard it was to look at 187 eighth graders. and expect to manage and instruct and assess and be a relationship builder with them. It goes way back in that regards. I know as an assistant superintendent, I worked with a man and we had 24 schools, 21 were low-performing by all standards. In those 21 schools, we had 19 first-year principals and 92 percent first-year teachers in these K-12 schools. So we had a lot of work to do as we began to try and improve student achievement and morale and get these schools to a recognized state.

[02:00]

So it goes way back in that regards. In that position, it was not actually my job description to do anything with new teachers. But I knew that if I needed to improve instruction and achievement, I had to start with the leaders and the teachers. One of the things I found was that my principals were learning how to be principals and didn't seem to take the time to actually work with my new teachers or their new teachers. I know in one of my elementary schools, they had a staff of 52 teachers and 51 were first year. So we really had a lot of work.

[02:41]

One of the things that bothers me is that teacher retention is not happening. When you look at the news today, 50% of our new teachers leave within the first five years. There's a tremendous amount of induction going on, but it doesn't seem to be working. And we all know there's things that are beyond our control, but there's so many things that we can control.

[03:04] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And I look forward to talking about some of those with you. But I think we've got to acknowledge that issue of kind of the revolving door. And, you know, I think most consultants have had that experience of working with the school and saying, wait, this is your first year and it's all of your teachers' first year. And, you know, how are we going to help students be successful in that context? Because, you know, if we look at, you know, where the experienced teachers are staying, They tend to be clustered in certain schools.

[03:32]

And if we look at where inexperienced teachers are concentrated, it tends to be in a different set of schools. And we can kind of guess who benefits and who suffers from that as one of many inequalities that we face in our society. And I think that issue of bandwidth, you know, if I'm a new principal and I have 27 new teachers, you know, obviously me surviving is one of my top priorities. But there's also a reciprocal relationship between how many of my staff I'm able to keep for the following year and have not be first year teachers again or leave mid-year or something like that. And, you know, the work that's on my plate and whether I make it through. And of course, there are, you know, there are best case and worst case scenarios and many people in between.

[04:20]

But what are some of the key actions that school leaders take to either retain or, you know, or on the other hand, kind of repel teachers who need that support, who are new to the profession, who are coming in and maybe having a a harder time than a more experienced teacher. What are some of the key actions that we need to take as leaders to make a difference there?

[04:46] SPEAKER_02:

I think one of the main keys is that the new teachers that I interview for this book and other books that I have done They over and over tell me that the number one thing that keeps them at a school is the visibility and the support of the building principal. Now, they have mentors. They have master teachers possibly or possibly not. But it is what the building principal does on a daily basis that makes the difference. And that's as simple as just walking the hall in the morning. or at lunchtime and asking, what can I do for you?

[05:24]

One of the things I told my principals was that you never ask a new teacher, how are you doing? Because they will say, fine. And they're not telling you the truth. You need to rephrase your questioning. So, and I think as an instructional leader, being able to not only manage a school, but to understand what true best practices and instruction and assessment, and more importantly, building relationships with Helping your new teachers build relationships, not just with you, but with their students and the school community is a key piece. The other thing that I think is absolutely critical, and I learned this from my favorite boss, Calvin Wallace, always told me, celebrate.

[06:08]

celebrate and you'll get more success and it's the simple things uh principals can go into a classroom and this is not just new teachers but all teachers and just leave a little sticky note that says uh thank you for being here or walk the halls and say thank you i appreciate what you're doing it speaks volumes to your teachers and your staff when you're doing those kinds of things The other thing is that if you're designing professional development within your school building, it needs to be differentiated. It needs to be based on the needs of your staff. I know in our 21 schools and the schools that I've worked with now across the country, we I don't see that as much. And I really believe that if we would go in and do a little conversation with our teachers, some major observations of what they need, and then design site-based staff development for everybody.

[07:05] SPEAKER_01:

Well, and I think that distinction between isolation and connectedness is so huge. One of the things we talk about in the High Performance Instructional Leadership Network is this idea of having a high leadership culture where it's not just the principal who's supporting know teachers and and sharing information but the principle is absolutely essential as kind of a hub and and being aware of what's going on not being disconnected yourself as as a leader i think is really essential to uh building leadership among you know your entire staff and it's it's one of those things that you know it's it's like wiring you know, if you have the circuitry, if you have the wiring to handle the load, then you're in a very different situation than when everybody's kind of disconnected and at their limit. We have a house that is very poorly wired and we're constantly flipping breakers.

[07:58]

You know, we'll run an air conditioner too high and three breakers will flip. And I think that happens in our schools too when we don't have those relationships and when we as leaders don't really have a map of that we don't have a sense of where the strengths are who's you know who's connected to who who can serve as a resource so i think that's that's an absolutely uh critical and powerful place to, uh, to focus. But I think sometimes, and maybe you can help me with this. I think sometimes we don't see it as necessarily our job to turn people into competent professionals. I think, I think that's one of the kind of mindset barriers, uh, that we bring to working with new teachers. How do you see that issue?

[08:42]

If I think that I've hired a grownup who's capable of doing the job, and this is one of the challenges I think of the profession is that it's structured so that on day one, you're supposed to be as effective as a 30 year veteran. But how can we kind of re-envision that responsibility for ourselves that once I've hired someone that I think is gonna do a good job, You know, my responsibilities can't stop there. Help frame that for us in terms of administrator's responsibility.

[09:12] SPEAKER_02:

I think it's an administrator's 100% responsibility. In some cases, the principal or the administrative team does not hire the teacher. That's done through a human resources department. And the person is sent out to the school based on whatever criteria human resources might have at that time. It's very analogous to me to buying a car. If I go out and buy a new car, I've got to maintain it.

[09:39]

I can't replace it. I don't have the money. I don't have the time and the effort to go get a new one. I have to keep going on and on. And I think that the leaders, not just the principal, coaches, mentors, all of the people who are in charge, if they don't take that responsibility, I think they're letting...

[09:59]

their school community down. I always ask my leaders, is it better to recruit or retain? And they always say retain. Now, I know that upon occasion, there are some people who are just not really cut out to be teachers. That's the bottom line for that. But the majority of the teachers come to school.

[10:18]

They want to work. They want help. The problem I see with new teachers is a couple of things. One, they feel isolated. They feel afraid to ask. They think they know it all in some cases based on wherever they've been.

[10:32]

Experience, background, you know, age does have something to do with it sometimes, especially with the technology. But if you're not checking on your your flock. then your flock is not going to do what they need to do. They have to be there. It has to be, you know, I ask the question to my leaders of how do you let your teachers know if you're an instructional leader? How do you model that?

[11:01]

How do you show? It's more important to really do what to do rather than talk. Another piece I always talk about is how well do you listen? Are you talking too much? Are you listening or are you observing? And then are you making some kind of an action plan that's going along to say, I have I am modeling these expectations.

[11:26]

What are my expectations? Here they are. This is what I need. And if you need help, I need to have an open door policy. That's not an intimidation piece, but one where we can meet once a month. You can come into my office.

[11:42]

One of my favorite principals has a sign on his door and a little sack of post-it notes. And he has a calendar and he allows the teachers. He says, you know, write a time when you want to talk to me. And we'll set it up. It is an absolute 100 percent open door. I mean, those are the tricks and those are the things that make great instructional leaders.

[12:04]

The other thing is knowing what the teachers are teaching, understanding the standards, understanding the curriculum. My background is math and science. And so if a principal goes into a science classroom and they see a lot of noise and chaos, which happened to me with 45 eighth graders, it's going to happen. They need to know what's going on. So they need to have those conversations that are both sided. It's not just one side.

[12:31]

And if you're going to go in to evaluate a teacher, tell them what you expect. You know, what system of evaluation are you using? So there's no surprises. I just don't like surprises. And I think that's an injustice to having someone come in and then say you're not doing a good job when I haven't told you what I expect.

[12:53] SPEAKER_01:

right and i think especially if that's the first visit in a very very long time um i think that that relationship and that that awareness and being in the classroom throughout the year i think are so critical um what are some of the domains that you see as uh key for for principals to provide support for new teachers in in terms of you know what what do they specifically need help with beyond the uh you know the kind of basic support of relationships and communication and you know and being connected What do they actually need help with skill-wise?

[13:24] SPEAKER_02:

I think there's a couple of those. One is classroom management. That's at the top of every new teacher's list. One of my favorite new teachers, McKinley Johnson, used to tell me with his eighth grade science kids, it was like herding mosquitoes, that one would pop up and you'd get him and then another one pop up and it just continually changed. Every time that you would talk to them, you talk about classroom management and then you provide opportunities for them to go see good classroom teachers that are modeling the management. The other piece is the instruction piece.

[14:00]

How do you teach? You might know your content. You might not know. But how do you make the connections for your students? How do you access prior knowledge? How do you know which standards to teach and the ones that are most important?

[14:14]

Those are the pieces that I think are very critical. Relationship is number one, though. If the teachers don't have a good relationship with their students, then instruction is hard. Management is very difficult. And so monitoring, observing informally, having these chats, having these little celebrations along really help leaders to develop action plans that are differentiated for each of their new teachers.

[14:43] SPEAKER_01:

And I think that classroom management is one of those things that, you know, we do tend to feel like teachers should come in knowing how to teach and knowing how to manage a class. But the reality is, I think everybody, you know, every school is different. Everybody's, you know, background is different. And I think it's so often the case that that's...

[15:02]

That's the starting point. And I'll have to say, I feel like we tend to emphasize instruction from a very ambitious standpoint when it comes to wanting the most from our new teachers. And we think, well, we really want teachers to be able to teach engaging lessons so that their students are on task. and behave well. So we're going to embark upon this wildly ambitious professional development program to move to these, you know, what are good practices and well-known best practices, maybe around project-based learning or competency-based learning or standards-based grading. And we kind of ignore the basics sometimes around classroom management.

[15:44] SPEAKER_02:

We do ignore the basics. And one of the things I would teach my principals and work with them on was that you do one thing at a time. New teachers can't do everything at the same time. And if we put too much on them to change, we're not going to be able to make changes.

[16:03] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I have to say, I think back to working with my mentor as a new teacher. My friend Ann Fitzpatrick was my mentor and we later worked together as principals in Seattle Public Schools. And I remember one thing that she modeled for me was, you know, she said, Justin, you're really having a hard time controlling this class. It's after lunch and kids aren't really aren't really listening. And you're you're. you know, talking to students and you're calling them out and saying, hey, okay, pay attention.

[16:29]

But what if you just write their name, write down the names on the overhead of the kids who are doing what you want them to do, the kids who are paying attention. And that one little technique made such a difference. And there is no way on earth that I was ready for some kind of grand, ambitious plan to modernize my curriculum or anything like that. I mean, that tiny starting point I think was really critical for me to get my feet under me as a new teacher. So a little shout out to Anne there. But let's also think, or let's talk a little bit more about what we can do kind of big picture, because my heart goes out to the schools that are in that position where maybe not for the first time, they have majority first-year teachers.

[17:18]

And I think... most people know someone who works or has worked in a school like that. What do you think we can do as a profession or perhaps at the district or the state level, talking more from a policy perspective, to prevent principals from being in that situation? Because honestly, if I'm the principal of that school, one of my top priorities the following year might be self-preservation and might be finding a different school.

[17:45]

And then the problem perpetuates itself where the principal is new, the teachers are new, nobody wants to work there, and the kids are really not that different from any other kids anywhere else. They're just in a bad situation. What do we need to do big picture to put those supports in place and to dig out of that hole that we're in in so many schools?

[18:03] SPEAKER_02:

I think that's a million-dollar question that we're all facing right now. We have in my own district here in Charlotte a tremendous teacher shortage. We have a high turnover rate. We've got to go back to having teachers as a respected profession. We have to have the funding to pay them, and that's beyond my control totally. But I think we have to pay attention to the needs, especially in some of the high need area schools and then provide that support.

[18:36]

And that would come through a district plan or a school based plan. I know within my own district, when I was working with the 19 priority schools, I set up a new teacher support program and we did it on site. It was not at the district level. And we held monthly professional development sessions. And it was based on the needs of the teachers, such as classroom management, creating environments, communication, the normal things. Stress management was a big one.

[19:05]

Time management. And coming up with some kind of a plan that is... in place when teachers come. It's not a rookie camp.

[19:15]

It's not the two days before school starts where you put all your new teachers in a big room and say, rah, rah. But it's an ongoing support that you provide help from special areas. You provide special education help. You provide someone that comes in and talks about stress. paperwork, technology issues. It has to be well thought out.

[19:37]

And that's one of my roles. I've been doing that for the past 15 years and going in and helping principals and school leaders to establish an ongoing plan that would target the needs that they have. And then bringing teachers together at the same time, having master teachers as a panel. There's a lot of things that you can do on site that will make the difference. And that's part of it. We want our teachers to feel valued.

[20:10]

And that's a site-based thing. We want them to not feel isolated. So putting them together during part of the day or part of a month. So you have a little celebration, food and goodies and all those things. Helping them with paperwork, understanding the new online grading, those kinds of things. I think if you start at the ground level and help them understand that it's the day-to-day and in some cases in secondary, it's the hour-to-hour survival and what I need to do in order to survive to get to my next class and tackling one thing at a time.

[20:50]

I don't know how to tackle all of the big political pieces. We have to at some point. But my whole philosophy is let's start at the school level. Let's help my principals. Let's help my leaders become the support that the new teachers or all of their teachers actually need.

[21:07] SPEAKER_01:

I love that. And it comes back to that, you know, that practical support. What can I do for you right now? And to listening, kind of where we started, to just being aware, being there and being aware of how people are doing, what they need. Because if you ask, they're probably going to say fine, as you mentioned earlier. But just really being in the classroom and seeing what people need.

[21:29]

Well, I would love to continue to chat about what we can do as leaders to support our new teachers, but you've written the book on it, and we'll turn people over to that resource. The book is Supporting New Teachers, A How-To Guide for Leaders. Lynn, if you could have your way and have... All principals everywhere do one specific thing to make sure that new teachers are always supported.

[21:56]

And we've talked about some great examples already. What's one thing you can leave us with, though, if you had your way?

[22:02] SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's a tough one. I think they need to really take a look at the day they first walked into a classroom. And remember what that was like. And for the leaders who do not remember their first day of teaching, I think they need to go back and do some self-reflection. Because if you put yourself into those new teacher's shoes and take a little walk backwards and remember that times have changed since they might have been a first-year teacher and realize, you know, I might be their only lifeline, especially in some of the small schools. But I want everybody to understand that what you do every day makes a difference.

[22:51]

It might be a little small difference, but it will impact the relationship between your teachers, your school community, but more importantly, your students. And if we lose track of the fact that we work for students, then we need to reevaluate our thinking. We need to find tools that will be realistic and a plan of support and then move forward.

[23:16] SPEAKER_01:

Very well said. Lynn Howard, thank you so much for joining us on Principal Center Radio.

[23:20] SPEAKER_02:

Thank you, Justin. It was a real pleasure.

[23:23] SPEAKER_00:

And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.

[23:28] SPEAKER_01:

So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Lynn Howard? One thing that strikes me is how seriously we need to take this issue of supporting new teachers. Because as we said in our conversation, it is a reciprocal relationship. It is either a virtuous cycle or a vicious cycle. If we support our teachers...

[23:48]

and they're successful our job gets easier and if we don't support our teachers and they're unsuccessful and they don't stay and we have to replace them or they're if they're unsuccessful and they do stay either way our job gets harder so i want to encourage you to check out lynn's book on supporting new teachers and what we can do as school leaders and i also want to encourage you to reach out to the resources around you even if you don't have a person designated as the new teacher mentor in your school or in your district, ask around, ask your colleagues what they're doing to support new teachers. Look for people who can serve as mentors, look for people who can serve as coaches, because as much as this is a responsibility that we have to take seriously personally, as leaders, it's not necessarily something we can pull off single-handedly. So don't be afraid to spend money on this. Don't be afraid to ask for help because we know the costs of failing to support our new teachers effectively.

[24:43]

And I think this is really one of the foundational responsibilities of instructional leaders. Something else that we touched on today was that idea of getting into classrooms and of just listening and being aware of where people are and what they need from us so that we don't throw more at them than they're ready to handle and so that we can provide the support that they need. And I want to encourage you, if you haven't already taken the 21 Day Instructional Leadership Challenge, or if you have taken it, go through that free online program that we offer at instructionalleadershipchallenge.com and develop a habit of getting into classrooms every single day. And we recommend specifically that you get into every classroom once every two weeks. And I would say for your new teachers, it probably needs to be more than that.

[25:27]

And that has the potential to be an intimidating experience. But if you follow the process that I outline in the Instructional Leadership Challenge, It won't be. It will be encouraging. And in fact, I encourage you to do exactly what Lynn said, which is start by leaving notes of encouragement and then go up from there into the more substantive feedback that's based on your instructional framework. So you can get into the Instructional Leadership Challenge. Again, that is free at instructionalleadershipchallenge.com.

[25:55] Announcer:

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