Holding Onto Millennial Teachers: Word on the Street
This is the 6th piece 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.
At about this time last year, when our heads were still spinning (like really spinning) from moving School as a physical institution to something called Remote Learning (not to be confused with Virtual Learning or Distance Learning — both of which were actually designed to be engaged with online), I had the esteemed pleasure of speaking with a group of five principals about teacher retention. Four of these five school leaders are actually millennials themselves and what struck me was that even as millennials, they very much struggled with and wondered about how to get their teachers to stick around longer. As we got in the weeds and talked more, some thoughtful trends emerged.
Why do your teachers who stay…stay?
This was the question I started with. As I have shared in previous pieces in this series, there is a significant body of research on why teachers leave. There is considerably less information about why they might stay. And of course, as Lee Atwater so succinctly stated, “perception is reality.” So it’s useful to explore the perception of principals who have a nuanced understanding of who stays on staff and why.
Trend #1: Collegial Relationships
One leader shared that when she began her principalship, she had to hire a “cohort” of teachers simultaneously to address the shortage and turnover in her building. She noted that now, three years later, almost that entire group of hires is still there. Why? She attributed their retention to the community that was built both formally and informally by the cohort themselves. They became a team through the shared experience of being onboarded together. She noted, “one thing that is kept them is the level of community and relationship building that we did with that group of teachers. They, themselves, have really close relationships with one another in a way that I think has kept them committed to our community.”
Another leader seconded this notion: “I think that when we empower teachers to help other teachers so that no one is drowning, you create this community where it’s okay to fail.” Positive and supportive relationships between and among the staff create a culture where teachers feel safe to take risks and feel safe to make mistakes.
Teachers stay when leadership clearly communicates, in myriad ways, that adult culture and community are a priority.
Trend #2: Being Mission-Aligned
Something else that came up in discussion with these principals was the importance of being mission-aligned. One leader talked about how retention was actually an unintended result of holding high expectations for her staff in terms of living her school’s mission.
Setting some ground rules around what it means to be a teacher [here] and the standards that you have to live up to…how you show you believe in our mission and our vision and our values has weirdly grounded the people that are still here. It makes them believe that, like, I have standards, and that I really care about who has a seat at the table.
As I noted in my first post in this series, in general, Millennials value working for socially responsible organizations that do good, so it is not surprising that by putting the mission of a school out in front of teachers, the teachers’ commitment to stay will increase. Believing in a movement toward equity and the chance to be an authentic change agent are powerful motivators.
Teachers stay when they are mission-aligned AND leadership is explicitly mission-driven.
So, what do these trends mean? What action steps can be derived from this data? You can check out previous Powerful Practices here, in my last post. This post introduces Powerful Practice #7 where we look at how leadership can prioritize building a mission-driven community.
Powerful Practice #7: Mission Builds Community
As Brett Michaels so eloquently sang back in the 90s, “give me something to believe in.” By leveraging the Millennial desire to make the world a better place, a school’s mission statement can be a very powerful tool for teacher retention. When I was Chief Learning Officer at Public Prep, Janelle Bradshaw, CEO, began every meeting by:
- Having us read the organization’s mission statement.
- Choosing a particular statement or phrase to connect with.
- Turn & talking with elbow partners to share what & why.
Poof. A mission-driven agenda is launched through a quick 5-minute activator. It’s a simple and elegant way to ground folks in the mission before doing anything else.
Shared purpose births community. Some open-ended prompts to consider using as you plan for end of year reflections with staff and in coaching meetings are:
- Why did you decide to be an educator?
- What drew you to this school or network in particular?
- What are examples of how our mission lives in our work?
- Name 2 actions you can take to be more mission-aligned in your practice.
Prompts such as these give people permission to share their stories, their core values, and their stake in the work. They provide low-stakes, high engagement opportunities to build shared purpose with colleagues. Leveraging your mission statement by trying out the suggestions above will help prioritize the purpose of the work while concurrently bonding those doing the work. Mission builds community. Community lives the mission. And, a mission-driven community contributes to increased teacher retention.
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