Teacher Morale: Empowering Educators to Focus on the Good and Not What Sucks

Laura Frost
Sep 3, 2018 · 6 min read

In June 2018, I wrapped up my 16th year of teaching and I was exhausted. I know my fellow teachers can understand many of the troubles facing our profession right now: lockstep standardization, abysmally low funding, questionable political decisions, weak unions, and public misunderstanding of best practices, just to name a few. Without going into too much personal detail, suffice it to say that I was burnt out, but storming into an admin’s office, dramatically shouting, “Shove it!” and turning imperiously on my heel, never to return is not a real option for me. I really do believe in what I do (yes, even on the worst days) and I cannot imagine leaving education.

Enter the Greater Madison Writing Project Summer Institute. A branch of the National Writing Project, the GMWP invites educators to spend a month of their summers engaging in learning about writing, presenting to one another about writing, reading about writing, learning about how to teach writing, and generally completely transforming everything they know about instruction and their own professionalism. And in the case of Madison, we are privileged to do so in one of the most beautiful settings in the entire city. To say this experience bolstered my own morale is an understatement. But more, the Summer Institute actually allowed me to study teacher morale itself, explore what is lacking in American education today, and present to my colleagues on how they can also bring best practices into their own classrooms when they feel down, discouraged, or despairing. Here is what I learned.

Right now, the profession is not really focused on morale per se. There’s a vacuum in the literature, which has been filled in two ways. First, it has been filled by publications on teacher and student mindfulness. Full disclosure: I meditate. I do yoga. I believe in mindfulness. Can these and other similar practices help me keep a calm perspective and lower my stress somewhat? Of course. But they also don’t actually improve the conditions themselves. So at the end of the day, I might be Zen and blissed out, but my admins and parents still don’t value my work. My school is still underfunded. The media still drag teachers (and students) through the mud. Politicians are still going to make decisions for me and my fellow professionals that they should never be in charge of making. Taking deep, mindful breaths might help me with my day-to-day stress, but at the end of the day, there’s still a reason my morale is so low.

The second topic filling the teacher-morale-void is books focusing on teacher excellence. While I understand that mastering my craft is important and also that being good at what I do makes me feel good professionally, these resources can be really overwhelming. It’s not enough to teach literacy; you need to be The Book Whisperer. 180 Days is not quick enough to improve your instruction; you need to Get Better Faster. You must be a loser if you don’t Teach Like a Champion (complete with sixty-two! strategies you had better be using, and if you don’t, why are you even in the classroom?). There’s even a guy telling me I need to Teach Like a Pirate if I want to be good at my job. (I don’t even know what that means, but one of the elementary teachers I mentioned this to spoke quite highly of this book.) And that’s only a very tiny sampling of what professional resources are on the market right now. Feel overwhelmed yet? I need another mindfulness meditation after just writing this paragraph.

Teacher morale matters. John Lambersky found that it has an effect on pretty much all aspects of a school, including teacher performance, student academic success, teacher retention, etc., and it is incumbent on school principals to foster high morale. Silver, Berckemeyer, and Baenen also write for school leaders, indicating what they can do to improve conditions for their teachers. Lester provides a helpful, short, and doable list of 50 ways that principals can improve teacher morale. Very fortunately, I am not a school principal, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing I can do in terms of school morale.

Even though I was not the intended reader for many of the strategies, I could implement lots of their suggestions on my own. I could focus my attention on what is actually under my control, and try to let go of the rest. I could commit to helping teachers who really need it, especially new teachers. I could encourage other teachers to present to our colleagues on areas in which they have a lot of expertise. I could recognize teachers whom I know are doing great work. I could thank teachers who support me in my work, preferably in earshot of an admin or two. I could share what I have learned in my own professional development with others.

While mulling these over, I realized I could combine what I was learning in the Summer Institute with what I so desperately needed: a boost in my own morale. To that end, I contacted my principal to kick off the new school year by celebrating what teachers already do well. I asked to submit a survey of just three questions to all teachers. The first two were: how long have you been in education? and what course(s) do you teach? The third was longer, but not crazily so because our teachers tend to be surveyed to death and I wanted this experience to be uplifting. It asked teachers to write about their most wonderful moments with their students. They could write about a favorite lesson or unit, a mountaintop experience in the classroom, what they love most about teaching, or pretty much any other positive experience that they have fostered or otherwise been involved in. I knew from my experience how healthy it was for my own morale to reflect on what’s good and right and meaningful in a professional context. But I also wanted to share all the responses with everyone else, and to do so publicly, publishing them one at a time in the faculty memo, the parent newsletter, the school newspaper, the school’s social media accounts, and possibly even the local news outlets in the city.

The good news? My principal approved it immediately. “What a great idea!” she said in July. The bad news? By August, she determined that there was simply no time during the back-to-school days for a ten-minute all-staff writing like this.

Teaching can be discouraging. It’s hard in a way that those in other professions simply cannot understand, and it can be so demoralizing in light of current circumstances. It’s also hard to write about morale without being cynical and negative. But good morale is essential, and even if your school leadership doesn’t recognize its importance, that doesn’t mean your situation is hopeless. My “great idea!” is on hiatus, but that doesn’t mean I’m totally powerless to shift morale in my building.

In the spirit of trying to remain positive, I’d like to close with one of the Write Outs I composed at the GMWP Summer Institute, entitled “Forget That.” I read it aloud for my peers there, to much appreciation. One even insisted I share it with her so she could print it out and reread it often throughout the coming school year. Of course I obliged, and I share it with you here, in the hope that it brings a little ray of light to your own context as well. As long as you are a teacher, doing what is best for students, you are fighting the good fight.

— — —

Forget that they say you can’t. Forget the voices that nag, that say no, that say “not enough.” Forget what your mom said, your teacher said, your partner said, your boss said, your inner critic said. Forget all that.

Listen hard, instead, for the voice of kindness, the song of reason, the whisper of confidence, the callings and invitations and graces. Forget harshness; embrace beauty. Forget cruelty; reach out your hand to accept your neighbors, accept your students, accept your flaws, accept your past, accept your future, accept yourself.

Forget your chains, your hangups, your neuroses. Like forgetting to take your lunch to work, just don’t put them on tomorrow morning. Forget that.

Be whole now. Be strong now. Be brave now. Be you now.

GMWP: Greater Madison Writing Project

Teacher as Artist, Teacher as Researcher, Teacher as Writer, Teacher as Teacher of Writing

Laura Frost

Written by

Teacher, librarian, YA lit maven, ed tech sherpa, curriculum & pedagogy enthusiast, coffee devotee, dog snuggler.

GMWP: Greater Madison Writing Project

Teacher as Artist, Teacher as Researcher, Teacher as Writer, Teacher as Teacher of Writing

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