What Schools Still Need To Learn About Recruiting And Retaining Teachers

The stories have graduated from a steady drip drip drip to an ongoing drizzle. Across the country, states are confronting a huge number of unfilled teaching positions as the teacher exodus, well under way long before the spread of COVID and the conservative attacks on public education, continues unabated.

And yet many school districts, particularly medium-sized and small districts, have failed to adjust.

Many are still using the old recruitment model, which consists of posting a job opening and then waiting for a bunch of applications to come in. This is not working any more, and I am seeing districts where administration literally does not know what else to do. 

Contrast that with schools like Haines City Senior High School, in Florida of all places, or Lamberton High school in West Philly. In these schools, the principal has recruited teachers by building relationships with future teachers while they are still students in the school, and then grow those relationships with support. Consequently, these two schools, located in hard to staff areas, somehow have staff.

As has been noted at great length, the teacher pipeline is busticated. Here in PA, a decade ago the pipeline produced 45,000 newly certified teachers. Now the number is closer to 15,000. Just sitting in your district office dangling a posting while singing, "I have a job here...." will not cut it. 

Districts need to build, starting with their own students. They need to do outreach to college teacher prep programs. And they need to develop a pitch. When prospective hires ask, "Why should I want to work here?" the answer "We have a job" is not sufficient. Administrators, do you know why a teacher should want to work in your district and not at some other district, because if you can't answer that question, you are a step behind. 

The other piece that schools are missing is the retention piece. Much has already been written about what should be obvious-- pay and respect. But for new teachers to be successful, support is essential.

And yet new teacher support often depends on crazy strokes of luck. Which teachers do you share lunch period with? Who do you meet regularly at the copier because you have the same work period? Who teaches in the room next door? Who feels inclined to occasionally check in with the new teacher?

Some states, like PA, require new teachers to have "mentors," but that job can end up being another matter of scheduling convenience. In other words, nobody in the office is asking, "Which teacher would make a good pairing of style and technique with this new person?" Instead, they're just checking to see whose work period lines up. 

But that initial support is critical. I was fortunate enough to be in a grad program. The same prof who saw me almost weekly through student teaching came to observe monthly in my first teaching year. I took education courses with a dozen other first year teachers in my program. I had a whole support system for that first year (and I was lucky to have useful supportive colleagues who ate lunch the same shift). Schools should be thoughtful and deliberate in providing support for those beginning teachers and pick a mentor who's a good fit (which means, of course, that administration has to know their people well) for the newbie--even if it makes scheduling inconvenient for the front office.

Many districts don't offer that kind of support, but just hand teachers a key and directions to where their textbooks are stored, leaving first year teachers to fend for themselves. This leads to a great deal of frustration and failure-- and not just failure, but failure that's hard to process and learn from. It leads to lots of first year teachers asking, "Did I make a terrible mistake by going into this profession? Do I just suck?" Because teaching, no matter how good your prep was, is hard for most people to get good at. In all my years of teaching and having student teachers, I've met two "naturals" who were great teachers right out of the box. Everyone else had to ride the struggle bus, or as I have consoled more than a few sobbing student teachers, "If you don't cry at least once during student teaching, you don't understand the situation."

And yet in those first few critical years, what most districts offer as support is... nothing. There are dozens of ways to put a support program in place. And as a bonus, such a program would make a great recruiting tool ("We are going to work with you every step of the way to make sure you succeed!" would be such a powerful pitch). 

If your district does not have a plan for recruitment and retention, they are depending on dumb luck These days that's a bad bet.