Leading Better and Growing Faster with Joe & TJ: Guest Debbie Silver Talks about Inspiring Educators to Enjoy the Job They Once Loved

Leading Better and Growing Faster with Joe & TJ: Guest Debbie Silver Talks about Inspiring Educators to Enjoy the Job They Once Loved

When you stop believing that what you do matters, you can’t make a difference anymore. ~ Debbie Silver

About Debbie Silver

Dr. Debbie Silver is a former Louisiana Teacher of the Year, a best-selling author, and a highly sought-after speaker. She has presented to educators, administrators, parents, and students in 49 states, Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and the Middle East. 

Her best-selling books include Drumming to the Beat of Different Marchers, Teaching Kids to Thrive, and the recently updated and revised Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8, and Deliberate Optimism: Still Reclaiming the Joy in Education

Debbie’s high-energy sessions address both the art and heart of teaching. Audiences delight in hearing this 30-year veteran teacher whose presentations are described as “where learning collides with laughter.”

 

What You’ll Find in this Episode with Debbie Silver

Debbie starts off with the fact that her book Deliberate Optimism focuses on leadership, specifically teacher leaders. 

Dr. Silver talks about the need for teachers to have more time without students so they can break the stagnation and build a relationship culture.

Don’t miss what she says about optimism and “what matters.” 

Debbie talks about incremental steps rather than massive changes. We need to balance the art and the heart of teaching. 

She reminds us to look for glimmers, not triggers. 

She dives into the idea of failing better and building our collective efficacy.

She talks about teaching educators to vent properly and not pull the profession down. 

Don’t miss what she says about new teachers not having more than 4 hours of teaching a day so that they can spend more time observing master teachers. 

T.J. asks Debbie about modeling. Don’t miss her response and her call for unity. 

Her insight about teacher training and isolation is thought-provoking. What we expect from teachers, specifically new teachers, is impossible and unlike any other profession. 

Joe mentions the potential that PLC has to support teacher capacity and growth. Listen to what she says they cannot be. 

Her ingredients for leadership success are straightforward: common vision, shared value system, mutual respect, and optimism. 

Debbie brings up Brene Brown, Rick Wormli, Association of Middle Level Educators, and other resources that you’ll want to check out. 

The one thing people should do more regularly is to give others the benefit of the doubt. She reminds us that adults want to be treated like adults. 

Dr. Silver ends with wanting to learn more about how to use Artificial Intelligence. Our riff on Chat GPT is great.

The Leading Better & Growing Faster with Joe & T.J. Show

Let us know if there’s a guest who you want us to have on the show by leaving a comment below or by contacting us at contact@theschoolhouse302.com. And don’t miss our leadership content updates every week by subscribing to the site.

We can’t wait to hear from you. 

Joe & T.J. 

Five Actionable Strategies for School Leaders Who Want to Avoid Initiative Fatigue and Maintain a Positive Culture

Five Actionable Strategies for School Leaders Who Want to Avoid Initiative Fatigue and Maintain a Positive Culture

Leading Better and Growing Faster with Joe and T.J.

 

In this podcast, we are completely focused on successfully implementing and managing the multiple initiatives that can be found in every school system. What you’ll find in this episode:

 

1. Despite the enormous amount of various initiatives in schools, maintain a mindset that sees how they all fit into the system versus it being “one more thing.” 

2. Zoom out to gain a greater perspective so you can successfully organize the initiatives and work into buckets. Very often the area of focus may gel nicely with work already being done. 

3. As a school leader, be sure to include the teacher’s voice and their perspective. They will point out obstacles and roadblocks that will save an enormous amount of time. 

4. Let teacher leaders run with the work, but don’t leave them out to dry. Providing ongoing leadership development and capacity building is key. 

5. Lastly, do an inventory of all the programs and initiatives. Sometimes the work overlaps with other efforts and either something can be eliminated or coupled. 

 

Let us know if there’s a topic you want us to cover in our short Leading Better & Growing Faster episodes by leaving a comment below or by contacting us at contact@theschoolhouse302.com. And don’t miss our leadership content updates every week by subscribing to the site. 

We can’t wait to hear from you.

Joe & T.J

 

Retaining Teachers: 3 Important Strategies for School Leaders

Retaining Teachers: 3 Important Strategies for School Leaders

Teacher Retention: A School Leader’s Top Priority

Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together. ~ Scott Hayden

                                               

Retaining teachers is at the top of the priorities for every school leader. This has always been true; effective school leaders have always worked to retain their top talent. But, these days, school leaders are counting their blessings if they’re fully staffed. The teacher shortage is real, and although it has impacted some regions of the country more than others, having a quality teacher in front of every student is a must. “More teachers are choosing to leave the profession, with the teacher supply shortage expected to reach 200,000+ by 2025.” 

 

One problem with teacher retention is that school leaders don’t always have the tricks, tips, and tools associated with technical human resource training. The fact is that school leaders haven’t traditionally thought about their schools within the marketplace of hiring and retention. We’ve argued that school leaders ought to think about things like branding, marketing, storytelling, and recruiting–all important aspects of being a great place to work and filling vacancies quickly when they arise. The truth is that retention starts long before you have positions to fill. That said, we have to work hard to keep the people we have by making our schools the best places possible to work and learn. 

 

Remember, though, there are things that are out of your control as a school leader. You probably can’t alter the compensation and benefit package that your school or district offers, sweetening the pot to keep people from leaving (see picture below regarding teacher pay). You also probably can’t change work hours, increase flexibility, or give people more days off. The rigidity of the profession is contributing to the diminishing number of people entering it. But, this shouldn’t stop us from pushing back on these boundaries or putting forth the effort to create an awesome environment for teachers. 

 

Source: NEA, Educator Pay Data

Let’s talk about what we do have within our sphere of influence as school leaders. We want to bring three critical areas of educator retention to the forefront of your mind. The first may seem simple and obvious, but the data tell us that managers around the world, including school leaders, get it wrong and don’t do it enough. The second may seem out of reach given the constraints we listed above, but that’s not the whole story. And, the third is a missed opportunity in schools to build collective efficacy while putting your teachers’ voices on center stage. Let’s dig deeper. 

Three Critical Areas of Educator Retention

#1. Celebration and Praise Your Teachers

Praise in the workplace is arguably the most misunderstood and underused form of feedback. We train school leaders how to use specific praise in districts all over the country, and it often takes months and years before the power of praise is realized through effective language selection. One reason for this is that our brains are wired to find the negative so your praise may be falling short for the mere fact that your teachers are looking for what you’re pointing out that they did wrong versus what you may be trying to communicate that they did right. 

 

We built a praise model in Retention for a Change that’s steeped in research from neuroscience and behavioral psychology. We wrote about it again in Invest in Your Best (to be released in December of 2023). Here’s a sample that you can use for practice in your school. The point is that your praise needs to use language that is very clear to the receiver that you’re impressed, happy, and excited with their work, that you’re specific about what it is you’re praising, and that you provide a reason for the importance of the desired outcome of their work. We praise people for two results: increase their pride and fulfillment with their achievements and reinforce what they’re doing that we want them to repeat or do more often

 

Unfortunately, many school leaders and organizational managers use praise sparingly, sometimes on purpose. We get this question all the time: what if I use praise too much and people become less focused on improvement because they think they’re good enough? If you use praise well, that won’t happen. The opposite is true. Praise is motivational, inspirational, and energizing. The good news is that with leaders out there who think like this, your school can be a place that attracts and retains talents because you’ll be using praise well and more often than other school leaders. 

#2. Find More Time for Teachers 

Many teachers would actually like more time for their job-related tasks than they would like more money to do them. We’ve seen survey results that demonstrate that teachers rank the need for more time over the need for increased pay. Wow! That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t also pay them more; we’re advocates for better compensation for educators, but, like we said, that’s more likely to be out of your control as a school leader than the time requirements that you put in place for your staff. 

 

This is another important strategy for retaining your teachers, and one that we dedicated a chapter to in Invest in Your Best. Especially with your most valuable staff members, the last thing you want them doing is spending their time on tasks that don’t result in the impact that they have the potential to achieve with students. The goal is to analyze and inventory all of what we ask our teachers to do day-to-day. Each day matters. What are the regular daily routines and duties of our teachers? What do we ask of them on professional learning days? And, what types of reports and paperwork are they submitting? We have to think about eliminating anything that isn’t directly associated with teaching and learning. 

 

Here’s a quick list of 6 questions to think about with your school leadership team: 

 

  1. Do our teachers have duties that put pressure on their planning time? Is it essential to have them do these things or can we find another way? 
  2. How much planning time do we have within the work day and can we increase that…even by five minutes? 
  3. Are there reports, lesson plans, PLC minutes, observation forms, etc. that we can eliminate or streamline? 
  4. What do our professional learning days entail? Can we give teachers a period of reflection time on PL days and decrease the “learning time” from 6 to 4 hours (as an example)? 
  5. Are there days in the year–PL days, beginning and end of year days, etc–that we can make more flexible? 
  6. Do we have any days of the year or partial days where teachers can work from home?

 

We’re not devaluing professional learning or even the need for teachers to cover lunches and recess, but the exercise of answering these questions on a regular basis should give you some ideas about how to create time and space for your teachers. With these questions in mind, as you approach a professional learning day, for example, you may realize that there are opportunities to create flexibility.  

 

One last aspect of time. Everyone has the same 1440 minutes in a day and not all people manage those minutes the same way. How we view time is often driven by our perception of it and our capacity to use it. This means that as a leader you can capitalize on others’ perception of time by helping them manage themselves better so that they can accomplish more. In short, don’t assume that people know how to take a series of tasks within an allotment of time and complete them efficiently. Our job as leaders is to help everyone else maximize their potential and help them learn to navigate their day effectively amid all the demands.

#3. Create Leadership Opportunities for Teachers 

When we consult with schools and districts, and we find out that they don’t have a school leadership team–composed of teacher leaders–it’s the first thing that we help them to develop. After that, we help them to build the capacity of their teacher leaders to take control of new initiatives so that they unfold successfully. Here are the two basic concepts: 

 

Concept #1: School leaders can’t do everything themselves. They need a supportive and reliable team.

 

Concept #2: Great teachers don’t automatically make great leaders. Their prowess in the classroom doesn’t change the fact that they need leadership training. Our best teachers have the potential to lead, but only if we support their growth and development. 

 

We contend that the all-hands-on-deck approach is the only way that great schools thrive, and that a positive school leadership team is the best avenue to collective teacher efficacy. In a school environment where both are true–everyone working toward the same goal with teachers at the helm–you’re retention efforts don’t land squarely on your shoulders but live within the culture of the school itself. 

The Final Word on Teacher Retention 

We were talking to a school principal recently, and he was worried about a position he had vacant and the lack of applicants in the pool. We asked him what he was doing about it. Perplexed, he told us that he was checking the posting several times a day, but nothing beyond that effort. Unfortunately, postings alone fall short. They are a great traditional method of hiring, but there are countless other steps to take. 

 

We gave him several strategies for becoming far more aggressive in his outreach, including a search on LinkedIn that we modeled, which revealed several teachers in the area who were #OpenToWork but who certainly didn’t know about his posting. 

 

The point of the story is that attracting, recruiting, and retaining talented teachers has to be strategic. Gone are the days of passive culture building or relying on the HR department to fill our positions. School leaders need to learn to play an active role in maintaining a culture that teachers desire. Using praise, finding time, and developing teacher leaders are at the top of our list of ways that we can work to retain teachers, and we hope that you find value in making an effort in these areas in your school or district. 

 

As always, we want to hear from you. Please hit us with a like, a follow, a comment, or a share. It helps us and it helps other readers, like you, to find our work so that more school leaders can lead better and grow faster. 

 

We can’t wait to hear from you. 

 

Joe & T.J.

 

Five Actionable Strategies for School Leaders Who Want to Avoid Initiative Fatigue and Maintain a Positive Culture

Two Must Reads on Navigating the Challenges of Implementing Initiatives for School Leaders

Walk into any school and you’ll find countless different types of work being done. Yes, teaching and learning are at the heart of what we do, but a great school culture, one where teaching and learning can thrive, is about so much more. Creating this kind of culture places a huge demand on countless people who are doing exciting work. But, at times, with all of the spinning plates, it can also be overwhelming.

It’s easy to get caught up in the fast-paced, whirlwind of initiatives and responsibilities that can tax even the most formidable educator. The goal is to successfully lead initiatives, striving to achieve the goals of the school, yet without burnout looming. This requires the effective use of proven leadership strategies along with a collaborative approach, paving the way for successful implementation.

That’s why we picked these two books as our recommendations for school leaders who want to implement initiatives well. They provide the tips, tools, and tricks for the necessary learning and insight to do just that.

Joe and T.J. Recommend that School Leaders Read These Two Books

 

These two books are powerful reads that can transform how you operate and manage initiatives in your schools.

T.J. tells us that one major takeaway that we had from Right From the Startwas to find bright spots. Jim Marshall tells us that school leaders often look for gaps to fill, but the bright spots show us the places that need replication. The bright spots are those areas that are working well and performing optimally. We often want to fix things, but it is within the bright spots where we identify what is working and potentially what can be reproduced elsewhere.

Don’t miss what we say about the power of preplanning as well!

In our recommendation that school leaders read Every Teacher a Leader we emphasize the need to build teacher leaders and to invest in the capacity to influence others. School administrators cannot do it all, and they certainly won’t do it well without the help of teachers. Schools are constantly implementing initiatives and that reality should prompt every school leader to embrace this mindset–the need for teacher leaders–and drive change through their development.

The classroom is the most important space in a school, and at the end of the day, teachers need to be inspired and empowered to teach, learn, and lead.

Our reading tip for this month is simple: find reading material and books that support the ancillary aspects of what you are trying to achieve. For example, if you are implementing restorative practices in your school, don’t only read books on that topic. Yes, it’s critical to become highly skilled in that space, and there are great books to help you on that journey, however, digging into Chip and Dan Heath’s book Switch, which covers the psychology of change, can prove to be invaluable. Pick something up that isn’t in the typical school leader’s library or playlist.

Enjoy these books to lead better and grow faster as school leaders. We always appreciate a like, a follow, a comment, or a share. And, if you read our newest book, please rate it on Amazon. It helps.

Let us know what you’re reading by contacting us at contact@theschoolhouse302.com. And don’t miss our leadership newsletter every week by subscribing to the site.

We can’t wait to hear from you.

Joe & T.J.

Learning to Lead Like A Teacher with Miriam Plotinsky–Leading Better and Growing Faster with Joe and T.J.

Learning to Lead Like A Teacher with Miriam Plotinsky–Leading Better and Growing Faster with Joe and T.J.

Talk less, listen more. ~ Miriam Plotinsky

About Miriam Plotinsky

Miriam Plotinsky is an instructional specialist with Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland, where she has taught and led for more than 20 years. 

 

She is the author of Teach More, Hover Less, Lead Like a Teacher, and Writing Their Future Selves (W.W. Norton & Company). She is also a National Board–Certified Teacher and a certified administrator.

 

What You’ll Find in this Educational Leadership Podcast Episode with Miriam Plotinsky

Miriam says that her new book–Lead Like a Teacher–was pretty much an accident. She simply found that the schools with more teachers at the table had stronger cultures. 

She talked about teachers’ misconception of school leaders as well as school leaders’ misconception of teachers. She called this “the empathy gap.” 

Miriam points out that “if you don’t know the story, you’ll create one. And, it might be wrong.”

Miriam acknowledges that we often learn from the models we have around us, which is only a good thing when the model is effective. Otherwise it works against us.

Hear Miriam discuss why visibility is so critical for a school leader. 

Miriam gave us some insights into how the book unfolds, including what she calls “macro” and “micro” aspects of school leadership. 

She calls for more classroom visits. We couldn’t agree more. 

Don’t miss what she says about “Wait Time 1” and “Wait Time 2” as both teaching and leadership strategies. We can’t disagree with talking less to learn more. 

Miriam mentions Twitter as a place to go to find like-minded people and new ideas. 

She identifies some well known and not so well known resources that are valuable for all educators. She points to Teachers Going Gradeless as a cool organization. She also calls out Edutopia and ASCD as well as Solution Tree as great resources.

Miriam uses the ten-minute reset each day to make sure that she does something that she loves. Tune into what she says about movement and breaks.

She talks about being a “dabbler” in a bunch of things, and she wants to learn how to write more nonfiction. And, we all agreed to learn how to be more funny.

Joe reflects on the need to get more people involved early in our process for any given initiative. 

Don’t miss what she used to think about those who wanted to go into administration and how her perspective has changed. 

The Leading Better & Growing Faster with Joe & T.J. Show

Let us know if there’s a guest who you want us to have on the show by leaving a comment below or by contacting us at contact@theschoolhouse302.com. And don’t miss our leadership content updates every week by subscribing to the site.

We can’t wait to hear from you. 

Joe & T.J.