Teachers Deserve It: What You Deserve. Why You Don’t Have It. And How You Can Go Get It

[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_01:

I'm honored to welcome to the program today, Ray Hewitt. Ray is the CXO, the Chief Experience Officer of the Teach Better team, former Executive Director of the Association of Middle Grade Schools, TANF. head ex-speaker, educator, and author of two books, including Teach Better and Teachers Deserve It, which we're here to talk about today. Growing up with IEP support after being diagnosed with specific learning disabilities in reading, writing, and math, Ray has worked with other educators and districts on designing mastery learning classrooms nationwide to reach all learners. After being inducted into the Illinois State University Hall of Fame in 2017, Ray was awarded the 2018 first place Henry Ford Teacher Innovator Award for her innovative educational impact, through the Teach Further model. In 2021, Ray presented on the TEDx stage, challenging educators, students, and community members to consider progressive data-supported practices to further 21st century learners.

[01:09] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[01:11] SPEAKER_01:

So, Ray, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[01:13] SPEAKER_00:

Oh, I so appreciate the invitation. I'm so excited to be here, talk shop with you, and get to know your audience a little bit better.

[01:18] SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you. So the book is called Teachers Deserve It, What You Deserve, Why You Don't Have It, and How You Can Go Get It. Let's start first by talking about what teachers deserve, because we've certainly been hearing a lot about this topic lately, that there are things that perhaps we should have been asking for a long time ago, that leaders should have been prioritizing but have not. And there's really been an awakening in the last couple of years that teachers need certain conditions to do their best work and are, in many cases, not getting them. So what are some of those?

[01:48] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you know, when I started working on the Teachers Deserve It project, which I co-authored with Adam Welcome, it was kind of in response to this book that originally hit so many different people in such a wonderful way called Kids Deserve It. That was written by Adam Welcome and Todd Nesloni. And they wrote this beautiful book. It's an incredible book if you guys haven't picked it up. And it's listing all the things our kids deserve and all the things as educators we need to do our best to provide to students. And we realized that while all of that's true, a thousand percent, it's not at a disadvantage for teachers.

[02:23]

We need to also give teachers the ability, the resources, and the confidence to be able to do all those things. So Teachers Deserve It was a project that as we got started, we started by listing all all the things teachers deserve. And I was really nervous about that. I thought that we were going to kind of go against leadership teams and say, oh, it's leadership team's fault that teachers don't have this or, oh, the community, it's so terrible. But the reality is, is that while teachers do deserve a whole heck of a lot, respect, smaller class sizes, more money, strong leadership teams deserve positive colleagues, all these things. And gosh, we have a list, a never ending list of all those things.

[03:06]

Teachers are actually at the forefront of getting these things started and making them happen. And so I feel like we could go on and on talking about what teachers deserve. But one of my favorite elements of this book was giving teachers and principals the resources to be a part of the solution rather than just griping about the problem.

[03:25] SPEAKER_01:

You know, for a long time, we've heard that schools need to be organized around meeting student needs, not adult needs. But I feel like maybe that was a false dichotomy. Maybe that framing was unhelpful. Talk to us a little bit, if you could, about why those are compatible, why we can meet student needs and adult needs and not have this kind of zero-sum perspective of either students or teachers.

[03:47] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you know, in mathematics, there's this property where it's a transformative property where it's if something happens and something else happens, and that in turn makes a third thing happen. And the reality is, as well, we do need to do what's best for students. We do need to dig into the research and dig into our practices and say, okay, how do we really successfully build a 21st century learner? The reality is, is that there is a really long chain of reactions that need to happen on a consistent basis to make that scalable, effective and efficient. And so while focusing on students is something that I think feels good and that mindset is appropriate. We also need to be cognizant that there are a lot of layers in that process and you can't just focus on the end result.

[04:32]

So I think as we talk about wanting to do what's best for kids, there's a reality that that mindset might be something to celebrate, but the work actually needs to be done in the layers prior, like supporting teachers, like getting the community's investment and take some ownership in this process and everything in between. So I don't think it's wrong. I just think sometimes we forget that the end result isn't always the first goal, right? When we set long-term goals, like to run a marathon, it's not that we won't run a marathon right away, but the first goal is to like put your shoes on. And the second goal is to like maybe go walk outside for the first time. So we need to focus on the fact that those small steps first need to happen.

[05:15] SPEAKER_01:

And I think we've only really fully realized that since, you know, the great resignation when we realized, you know what, actually, a lot of people who are teaching don't have to, they could walk away if they don't have what they need, if they don't have the support and the respect that they need. And I think we're starting to finally realize that we're starting to see talk of higher salaries, better working conditions. What do you see happening as far as like positive movement in the right direction since the book has come out?

[05:43] SPEAKER_00:

The book came out in 2020. So as we took a year to write it and then obviously all the steps to publish it, COVID hadn't happened yet. And so this book really did focus on a world that is a little different now, which I think is a strength because I think we can now read it with a different lens. But I will say I have a fear that as we start to look at what teachers deserve, the first step is people typically lean on leadership. And while we talk about the mass exits of teachers that we have seen over the last few years, we also have seen that aggressively in the leadership level as well. And I want to be cautious and careful.

[06:20]

As we talk about what teachers deserve, also recognizing that everyone, teachers included, have a process, have a ownership in making this become a reality. I think it's so easy to blame leadership, to blame principals to say, oh, teachers are leaving. You better do something about it. And the reality is that most of our principals, whether we like to admit it or not, don't nearly have the power they would need to have to keep those teachers in place. Not often do you find that principals actually dictate the salary at all or dictate the resources that they have in those schools. So this really is a balance, I think, of really educating our community, educating our boards, educating our government staff.

[07:02]

for how to have our teachers be successful. And then truly not only supporting teachers, but supporting leadership so they can support teachers. I've never met a principal that's mindset is like, screw the teachers I hate who I work with. That's not true. Like people don't become teachers hating kids. People don't become principals hating teachers.

[07:21]

And yet there's this connotation that leadership doesn't do what teachers deserve. It's just not true. So I wanna be cautious as we look at what we can do to best react to supporting teachers better, I would say arguably it actually comes into supporting our leadership teams a little bit better because that is a trickling effect.

[07:41] SPEAKER_01:

It's almost like asking of a machine or a system that's not working correctly, like, which part of the system should I be mean to? That's not a very good question. We need the whole system to work. Even if we think we've pinpointed the problem, we're not just trying to get mad at part of it. We're trying to make the whole thing work well together. So let's start with leadership, if we could, because our audience is largely leaders and we don't want to blame leaders.

[08:02]

But help us understand the role of leaders in supporting teachers and giving teachers what they need. You can check your middle desk drawer and see if there's a magic wand in there that will allow you to raise salaries and reduce class sizes and give everybody everything they could ever possibly want. But in the world that we do live in, what role do leaders play in all of this?

[08:22] SPEAKER_00:

You know, I had a principal. I loved working for him. And every time there was something absolutely ridiculous that happened in the school or ridiculous that happened to a teacher or a student, he'd look at me and go, I'll add it to the how to be a principal handbook. And it's like this mystical handbook that nobody gets handed when they take on that job. You're supposed to have all the answers right away. So somebody needs to write the like principal handbook.

[08:44]

I'm sure there's a title out there of a text, but it really should be like, when this happens, here's the appropriate reaction. I wish that that magical magic wand existed. But it's interesting. I think leadership teams have a lot of different roles in supporting our teachers. And we know that. My two favorite, I really believe, is the leaders not only being advocates and supporters for the teachers that are in the school building.

[09:09]

A lot of the work I do on a day-to-day basis deals with instructional design, supporting staff with creating dynamic, sustainable, and scalable ways of lesson planning so that we can truly help our teachers be facilitators of learning rather than content delivery systems. And I think our principals have a big role in that, really allowing their teachers to be learners. And that's truly something internal that comes with the culture and everything else that principals do have a responsibility for. But the other element, which I think some leaders have taken on more than others, is truly being the voice of the building. And that's such a powerful and incredible role, but that role does require a lot of strategy. You know, if you want your community to know about what's happening in your school, not just with sports, not just with individual student recognition, but what does it look like day to day to be a student in this building, to be a teacher in this building, to really be the face of our community?

[10:07]

I think that's probably the most challenging, especially when the community isn't always so willing to hear the wonderful things happening.

[10:14] SPEAKER_01:

Well, let's talk about getting that kind of validation and that voice. You talk in the book about how teachers deserve to be heard and they deserve that validation from the community. It's interesting there in surveys, the local perspective on schools and teachers is that they're great. And then the national perspective is that they're terrible. And there's this kind of mismatch that like, I love my kid's school, but I think schools are failing in general. Like that's kind of how the public has always reported thinking about education.

[10:38]

How can we get the word out and get the respect back? out there in the community that the teachers need, and especially from parents who play a crucial role in sending messages to their own children about what school is, why to value it, how to succeed in it.

[10:52] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. One of my favorite chapters in the book is Teachers Deserve Respect. And I think that's the one that people tweet at me or email me about as well, because we wrote that chapter focused on why teachers deserve respect. Every chapter is structured the same. At the very beginning, it's like teachers deserve respect and here's all the reasons why. And then it goes into the negative of like, and here's why we don't have it.

[11:14]

Oh, that's so terrible. And then the end of every chapter is, and here's how you can start being a part of the solution. Here's some actual takeaways. And what I really love about that format is it allows you to really get on that even playing field of, okay, now I understand what we want. Now I understand how we got to this point. How can I start making some action even just later today or later this week?

[11:37]

When it comes to principals being a part of that, I think it has to do with modeling the practice. So many of our educators are saying that they're not respected in their role, not respected by their community. And yet I don't see many educators celebrating that. all the things they do that actually gain respect, right? We respect things that we understand. And whether we like to admit it or not, most of our schools are relatively a mystery.

[12:01]

And I don't think it's anyone's fault that that occurs, right? Everyone in the community is so busy and that's okay. But when you have an opportunity to invite parents into your school or you have an opportunity to talk to parents, are we really doing the best job we can to make really encourage our community to see the incredible things happening in schools and truly start to build up that respect. A simple one is we have parent-teacher conferences. Most schools have parent-teacher conferences every single year. Parents come into the classrooms and talk to teachers.

[12:32]

And I visit schools for a living. I go into classrooms literally every single day. And it is a rarity that I ever see a teacher have their degrees on the wall. or have their certification in their email sign off. And yet educators are some of the most educated people in the world. I mean, in Illinois alone, you not only have to get your undergraduate degree, you have to also consider getting a master's.

[12:56]

And then every three years, you need 180 professional development hours in the space of education to keep your license. And yet most elementary teachers, middle school, high school teachers just have a classroom full of color and a few posters. Like we need to be showing our community the hard laborious work that we continue to do to keep our role. And I think principals can model that. It's often very rare that principals have their certifications up. And it's also very rare for principals to encourage teachers to brag on themselves and show their expertise.

[13:30]

So to me, that's just a little like a little step that we can do a little bit better every single day to start working towards that respect level.

[13:39] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So you're saying put the diploma on the wall, put the degree on the wall.

[13:42] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, hey, at the beginning of this, Justin, you read my bio like an all-star. I really appreciate it. I put fun awards in there, but I will tell you that when I'm on Zoom with you or when I'm doing stuff where I'm on camera, I very rarely have those on display. But let's take steps to make people aware of the hard work that every single one of us is doing.

[14:05] SPEAKER_01:

And I think that applies to students as well. I mean, one of the things that came to mind when you're talking about what people see in the classrooms is, you know, student work, like just being able to see the work that students are doing on a day-to-day basis is so powerful. Like every time I've gone up to my kids' schools, that's what stands out at me is like the student work that's displayed. And if you don't have those opportunities to see your child's work, everything gets reduced to like a grade, you know, a two-digit number, right? You have X grade in this class and it's easy to just have a feeling about that grade and an opinion about the teacher based solely on that and not really see the richness of the learning that's been taking place. Yeah.

[14:41] SPEAKER_00:

Well, and I think it's interesting that you say that because I think that's another layer that principals and leadership teams can help with. The reality is, is that a lot of our teachers need support in creating scalable, efficient, and effective routines. And so many educators love putting up student work and love communicating to parents on the incredible things happening in their classroom. But you look at a teacher, they have an endless to-do list. And to be honest, that Friday newsletter goes away after October because it's too much to work on. And I don't fault teachers for that.

[15:11]

What I hope is that our leadership teams can actually do some professional development with teachers to show them how they can start embedding some of their systems together to work for them so they can start working smarter and not harder. And that way, some of that communication that builds respect. can start to be organically done rather than another thing in the to-do list. Because you know, as a parent, you love seeing your students work. And I think the only reason sometimes you walk into school and don't feel like you've been communicated with or don't feel like you see that student work is truly based on exhaustion. It's not because nobody thought to do it.

[15:47]

And so those scalable routines, I think is something leadership teams can automatically commit to as a professional development opportunity.

[15:55] SPEAKER_01:

I love that. Like one example that comes to mind for me is team newsletters. Like several times I remember getting a newsletter from the sixth grade team or from the math team. And obviously there's a labor savings that comes from working on this together. There's a sense of professional alignment. We're not just independent contractors.

[16:13]

We actually are a team. People are working together. It really sends a message of, you know, we have things together. We're professionals. We're growing. We're collaborating.

[16:22]

And those are things that otherwise are just kind of a black box to parents.

[16:25] SPEAKER_00:

Well, and I will say, you know, that's a great example. Another one is a lot of the work I do is related to mastery learning, and we encourage students to reflect and goal set every day. Now, even if you don't use any sort of system like that, you could have students on a daily, weekly, monthly basis reflect on how their day's going so far. How does it feel about learning? All that good stuff. Well, we encourage our crew, use some sort of digital platform where the student can reflect and it immediately can go to your parents.

[16:53]

So I use like a free Seesaw account, right? This is not an ad. It's just a really free, easy to use system. And what I love is that I get the documentation as the teacher of the reflection of how the student's feeling about their learning. I have four easy questions. But also every single time we do it, their parent gets a notification on their phone saying, And they have a quick portal into my classroom, three to five minutes of how their students feeling in my class.

[17:17]

And so I didn't have to do any work. I just had to set up the account once. And whether you do it on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, you're now just giving your parents more and more access to see the hard work that your staff is doing.

[17:31] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Ray, one big area that I wanted to make sure we talked about is teacher evaluation. This has been a big emphasis over the last 15 years or so. We saw some big changes during the pandemic when everything got disrupted, and maybe now we're settling into kind of a different equilibrium on this. But most teachers are evaluated, and not to cast any blame on leaders, but with so much on leaders' plates, often evaluations are kind of an afterthought or kind of done in the the most efficient time-saving way possible. What do you see as some of the opportunities for giving teachers more of what they deserve in the evaluation process?

[18:09] SPEAKER_00:

The evaluation process has had this negative connotation simply because, like you said earlier, it's just something that's a checkbox and not truly done authentically. And I think the one element I can really be an advocate for related to teacher evaluation is, again, finding a scalable routine that is efficient and effective, not only for the leader and the teacher, to get feedback. I truly could care less about the entire evaluation process. And depending on where you are around the world, you may not get to dictate how those evaluations are done. And that's made someone higher than me. But I will say, I think one of the toughest parts of the evaluation system is it not feeling authentic and genuine in the feedback provided.

[18:50]

So often I either had a principal that popped in one time a year and said, hey, Ray, you're doing great. And I asked why. And they said, well, I don't know, you were smiley, you gave a lot of energy and your students seem engaged. And I'm like, OK, if that's all it takes. And then other evaluation years, I would have a principal saying, hey, I think you're doing a really good job, but you need to improve on your questioning. And then I would lean in and say, oh, that's a great thing.

[19:13]

How do I do that? And they would say, well, you know, just go find a resource to improve your question. And I'm like, wait, that's not it. I need support. I want to be a learner. I think feedback's hard.

[19:24]

I think we all need to practice how we give feedback. But finding some way where you can give feedback over the course of a year, whether it be with Post-its or an automated system, I think is really going to be the key to making evaluations effective and not just a checkbox. It's focused so much more on the feedback component than the scoring component.

[19:44] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I've definitely seen the cart get before the horse on that. When it becomes all about the score, then of course, we don't really have the chance to talk. We don't really have a chance to develop a shared understanding. Yeah, I think those conversations really can do so much to build trust and to build just a mutual understanding of kind of where practice is and what people need to move to the next level.

[20:05] SPEAKER_00:

And something I really enjoyed, so I told you we get to go in the classrooms all the time with different school districts all around the US and Canada. When we get to go in, we're really there to be a teacher advocate. We get to observe what they're teaching. We have a whole like, we have this really, really long observation thing that we get to fill out. And then we get to conference with the teacher and give them all this juicy feedback, right? Positives, areas of growth, all this great stuff.

[20:27]

And what I love about that is that it does support the teacher's evaluation because then the teacher can choose Thank you so much for watching. Sometimes the toughest part about giving evaluation feedback is that you don't feel like you have collected it enough to give the feedback. So bringing in like an outside party or bringing in other teachers to kind of partner with you and collect and curate that information allows those conversations to be easier when you do have time in front of that teacher to be able to talk shop and celebrate the work they're doing.

[21:14] SPEAKER_01:

Reminds me a little bit of almost like of archeology, right? Like when you do some field work, you do some digging, you collect some things. It's not even just a one person job to figure out what you've got, you know, to make sense of it, to figure out what's there. Cause you know, so much of teaching isn't just sitting there on the surface. It's not just an inscription on the side of a building that you can read it. You know, there's so much thinking and planning and professional knowledge and judgment that goes into teaching that I truly believe we have to talk about it to understand it.

[21:41]

If we just observe and say, here's what I thought, we've missed 90% of what's there.

[21:46] SPEAKER_00:

Well, and being able to collect different feedback, like truly positive, negative feedback from all different vantage points, right? Like bringing in a colleague to give you feedback, bringing in a leader to give you feedback, bringing in a parent or a student or a different grade level teacher, all of that, if it's viewed as a way to develop. So the teacher has all this autonomy to say, hey, look at all the great things I'm doing. All these people said I was doing so well. It only gives the principal more data to celebrate. That really should be the focus anytime we're talking about evaluation.

[22:16]

I really appreciate the time I know that there's so many different things we can talk about as far as what teachers deserve and how they can go get it but as principals like I said as any leadership team I think we have an opportunity here to really empower our teachers after a really tough few years and let's be honest it wasn't so great and glamorous before COVID either so finding some way to do that I think is really my big call to action to the incredible audience you have here and If there's any way I can help, if you need some free books or you need some whatever, I hope people choose to reach out because I would love to help in any way as leadership teams really build back up a stronger staff.

[22:54] SPEAKER_01:

And if people want to learn more about your work or get in touch with you or your team, what are some of the best places for them to go to online?

[23:00] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Oh, gosh, I love networking. So I'd love for you guys to connect with me, of course. But to be honest, connecting with the Teach Better team is probably going to be way more valuable for you. But on social media, I'm just at Ray Hewitt, just my name, all social medias. And I really would encourage you to connect with the Teach Better team, which is at the Teach Better team, just Teach Better team.

[23:18]

What I love about that is that's truly a community of educators that get together and talk shop. And while we do have a lot of resources for teachers, we actually do a lot of administrative work, including a free mastermind every single week to get principals and leadership teams together to talk shop and share ideas. And, you know, there's so many great places for us to learn. So I would encourage everyone here to just continue to collect those great resources. You can get all the information and more over at teachbetter.com.

[23:45] SPEAKER_01:

So the book is Teachers Deserve It, What You Deserve, Why You Don't Have It, and How You Can Go Get It. Ray Hewitt, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. Thanks so much.

[23:55] Announcer:

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