Translate Into Adult: Teachers Get Food, Not 'Treats

School leaders, one way you can make sure that you're always showing respect for your teachers and making your teachers feel appreciated and supported as professionals is to translate into adult.

What do I mean by that?

Well, in a lot of schools, there's a tendency to treat the teachers like the principal's students, right?

As an administrator, if you move from the classroom into an administrative position, it's easy to see that The role as staying the same, but the audience is just changing a little bit.

So it's like your teachers are your students.

And that is not the case, right?

That is not the case.

Teachers are professionals.

They are adults with master's degrees.

They are employees in a workplace.

And if we forget that and we think of teachers as just our kids or our students or as like people we're throwing a birthday party for.

That shows up in a lot of ways that really need to be translated and really need to be rethought so that we're not infantilizing teachers.

We're not treating them as children.

We're not treating them as our class.

This is really crucial for professional respect and support.

And it's not just about terminology.

It really is about our whole way of thinking of teachers as professionals or not.

For example, one thing that I want to encourage you to reframe for yourself is food.

If you think of buying food for your staff, great.

I mean, I bought food for my staff whenever I could, whether it was donuts or lunch or breakfast or just whatever.

Food is great.

Everybody likes food.

Everybody appreciates food.

People have different food preferences and things like that.

And I just want to encourage you to think of adult food, right?

Adults like different kinds of food than kids do.

And the way we talk about food for adults is different than the way we talk about it for kids.

You can get your students treats, right?

You can get them popsicles, you can get them ice cream.

Treats are appropriate for kids.

Treats are not how we talk about food for adults.

Food for adults is food, not treats.

And if you don't see the difference there, if you don't see the distinction, if that seems like a weird thing to say to you, then you are probably deep in the world of seeing teachers as children.

And I want to encourage you to rethink that and make sure that you're being very intentional about seeing teachers as adults and talking about them as adults.

These are not people that you were throwing a birthday party for when you have a staff meeting.

So this idea of like, I know there's a lot of decoration that happens, especially in elementary school.

I get it.

I was an elementary principal.

But as an administrator at the elementary level or the secondary level, you are not throwing a birthday party when you have a professional development or a faculty meeting or anything for the adults.

They are adults and do fun stuff, sure.

But just remember that the fun stuff is still fun stuff for adults.

not children.

And I don't know why I have to keep saying this, why this keeps coming up so many ways, but like the temptation to treat your teachers as children just seems to be everywhere.

It just seems to be pervasive.

So watch out for that because it will cloud your thinking about everything else.

If you see your teachers as children, you will treat them as children in ways that are very, very consequential and they will realize it.

They will resent it.

They will quit.

Treat your teachers as adults, treat them as professionals.

Let me know what you think.