According to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the pipeline of incoming educators has been dwindling over the last several years. Teacher education enrollments decreased by more than one-third between 2008 and 2019, for example.
After a brief improvement in 2022 and 2023, shortages are spiking once again, and the effects seem to be lasting.
Now, we all understand that high teacher turnover has adverse effects on student learning. Not only is it disruptive for our students, but it creates teacher shortages and forces schools to hire new teachers who may have less experience and fewer certifications. Schools may have to increase class sizes or cut offerings.
Teacher turnover tends to be higher under certain conditions. Data from the Learning Policy Institute suggests that Title I schools see turnover rates that are nearly 50% greater than other schools, for example, and the rates among Title I math and science teachers are nearly 70% greater. These factors are further aggravated in schools with a larger population of students of color.
Getting on a roll
I’m extremely passionate about teacher retention and increasing consistency in our faculty and staff. That consistency and continuity is critical, especially when it comes to keeping great people in your building.
I’ve been an educator for over 20 years, and I’ve always worked in Title I schools. Working in high-turnover environments led me to develop strategies that I continue to employ today.
Here are the four things you can do today to transform your role as a principal:
1. Get out from behind your desk often
Create a conference room space. I was working at a school with 800 students, and we didn’t have a conference room, so I thought that would be a productive space to have based on the size of our school.
Creating this space led to my office becoming a mobile cart. I had an AV cart that was out in the hallway, and I put my laptop on it. Having a rolling cart forced me to be mobile. Even if I was writing an email, I found that suddenly I had this portable desk that could be out in the hallway, so I could jump into classrooms.
I didn’t intend to go fully mobile at the start but today I spend 80% of my day with my cart in classrooms, hallways, the cafeteria or even at recess. This has increased my awareness; I know what’s happening. If there’s a particularly tough student transition—which happens frequently with our middle school student transitions—I’m out there in the middle of it, addressing it and talking about what steps our team needs to take.
2. Do consistent morning check-ins.
I do morning check-ins with every team member. I greet students in the morning as they arrive on campus, and I do a brief morning meeting with all of them in the gym. I lead a very brief, five-minute morning meeting with students before they transition to class.
I take my cart around from classroom to classroom, greeting every teacher in the morning. I ask every member of our staff how they’re doing, whether it’s a teacher or a front office staff member or the school nurse.
I check in with everyone. It’s as simple as asking them, how are you today? Is there anything I can help you with?
When instruction starts, I respect the instructors’ time and space, but some of them like to pause and check in with me—even if they’ve already started a lesson. Those check-ins are helpful because they give me a pulse check on how each member of our team is doing.
3. Send a daily memo
I send out a daily two-sided memo. The back is a full calendar of everything that’s coming up and the front includes all of our day-to-day happenings, news and information.
You can use a platform like ClassDojo to make this process very easy and streamlined; it doesn’t have to take a lot of your daily time. Generally, when people first join our team, they’re like, wow, this is more communication than I’ve ever had. Once they get in the swing of it, they love it because they’re not surprised by anything that’s coming up.
I pass out a paper copy of our memo and then I also email a copy around 6 a.m. daily. My goal with this is twofold: to make sure everyone is updated and to decrease the number of emails that I’m pinging my staff with over the course of a day.
On the average day, I send out one communication. If something comes up, I add it to the memo for the next day.
4. Get your administrative team members mobile.
We started moving all of our admins over to carts like mine. Two years ago, was my first year of fully rolling out the cart for the whole school year. We now have a “rolling dean” and we have “rolling assistant principals.”
To help to build some buy-in for this, I let everyone choose their own carts. People were trying to find the sleekest looking carts or seeing who could decorate the best, which is really fun.
This one strategy has increased administrator presence across campus and ensures that everyone has the support they need. Whether it’s a supply need, a student emergency or someone needs to go to the nurse, there’s always a person around the corner to help triage and provide support.
