Holding onto Millennial Teachers: Developing Teachers as Leaders

This is the 8th installment in a series called Holding onto Millennial Teachers: Learning About Why They Stay. The series explores what motivates them to stay and how those meeting their motivational needs can generate talent pipeline and retention strategies in even the hardest to staff schools.

My previous piece focused on school culture as one response to the problem of teacher attrition. A second response is to focus on professional development, particularly in regard to building the leadership capacity of teachers as a means to retain them. School culture is a critical element in the success of school improvement initiations in schools, and certainly it influences teacher leadership. Building school cultures that embrace myriad versions of shared leadership is a challenge today’s schools must work to overcome. The established hierarchy of schools implies that unless a teacher wishes to become an assistant principal, principal, or superintendent, she will be forced to remain stagnant in her career, so she looks elsewhere for job satisfaction.

Studies have suggested that a combination of school leadership, collegial relationships, and school culture is crucial to increase retention. Thus, for schools to adequately prepare children to meet the demands of today’s world, our approach to teacher retention, leadership development, and adult development must be improved.

Research shows that investing in shared leadership models, models that promote both formal and informal leadership opportunities for teachers interested in flexing leadership muscles, can serve as an effective tool to curb teacher attrition and increase student achievement. The research also shows that efforts to address teacher shortages must include continuous growth opportunities that professionalize teaching and support teachers, especially in high-poverty schools where attrition and subpar professional development opportunities are rampant.

The fact is that teachers are uniquely poised to positively inform both teaching as a profession, and their respective school organizations. And teacher leaders are poised to be the most influential leaders in a given school. Actually, there is a direct correlation between opportunities for professional growth and increased teacher retention through two specific channels: formal development opportunities and informal development opportunities.

From: EPI — The role of early career supports, continuous professional development, and learning communities in the teacher shortage, The fifth report in ‘The Perfect Storm in the Teacher Labor Market’ series

Formal development of teachers as leaders.

Formal teacher leadership in terms of a promotion in title and salary bump, and participation in formal programming or coursework, pervades much of the teacher leadership literature. This formal development of teachers as leaders is illustrated through existing research as the three waves of teacher leadership. The first wave provided formal opportunities that were managerial in scope, touting titles like head teacher, department chair, or union rep, and implemented as administrative roles to further bureaucratic efficiency. The second wave provided formal opportunities that recognized teachers as instructional leaders with titles like curriculum designer, staff developer, and grade team or content team lead, working outside the classroom to control the goings-on inside the classroom.

The third wave of teacher leadership empowered classroom teachers to be leaders through flattening the hierarchy, collaborating with each other, and sharing best practices, work that is actually rooted in what students are learning and producing. This hierarchical flattening gives voice to teachers, a critical condition to inspire Millennial employee loyalty, and thus retention.

These waves of teacher leadership have historically depended on formal professional development taking the form of a “program” or a traditional classroom-type experience.

Informal development of teachers as leaders.

There is a fourth wave of teacher leadership that has recently been cited that includes formal and assigned leadership roles (including grade-level chairs or instructional coaches) as well as many informal roles. This fourth wave is the sweet spot for education reform in support of teacher autonomy, empowerment, job satisfaction, and thus retention. In their 2017 literature review, Wenner and Campbell define teacher leaders as teachers who continue teaching in the classroom, while concurrently shouldering additional and varied responsibilities beyond the classroom walls. This includes (but is by no means limited to) participating in school decisions, collaborating with administrators, and collaborating with each other. These informal roles may additionally take the shape of sharing best practices, mentoring novice teachers, modeling activities or tasks alongside colleagues, and facilitating professional development.

Teachers as leaders promote a better learning environment for students, increase student achievement, and result in a better working environment for teachers, which reduces teacher turnover. Moreover, teacher practice improves faster when working in schools with a higher degree of collegial collaboration. The simple act of engaging in a hallway chat with a fellow teacher can positively inform instruction, school culture, and teacher satisfaction simultaneously.

Powerful Practice #10: Empower Teachers to Lead

1. Open the Classroom (or Zoom room) Doors! Compel teachers to visit each other’s classrooms by identifying teachers who are practicing strategies you want to replicate. Empower those teachers to informally lead the charge around those strategies by inviting their colleagues in to see them in action. Word of mouth is a great tool to inspire informal leadership — once teachers begin to talk about what they saw, more teachers will feel compelled to visit each other and try out the strategies you are excited about!
2. Encourage Action Research Projects! Teachers are researchers, constantly experimenting to find the right way to move their students. Have them formalize the process by using data to create a SMART goal and then have them track their process toward the goal by recording the moves they make and the results of those moves. Later, they can present their research and findings to their teams or the whole staff or even at a conference as a way to develop their leadership skills.

By prioritizing the developmental needs of the individual teacher and erecting a culture through which teachers feel both supported and challenged to take risks, teachers can have the voice, choice, and opportunity they are craving and thus will be more likely to stay in the world of education. Teachers adopting leadership roles results in feelings of empowerment for all teachers in a school. Developing teachers as leaders catalyzes positive school change and reduces attrition.

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