Teachers' Retention Tips for School Administrators | EduCeleb
Kayode Oluwaseun
8th January 2018
I know you’ve done so well to sail the boat of your school to coast in 2017. Through your expertise and experience, you were able to manage to keep the school opened everyday for learning.
While that sounds great, you can still do better…
This is 2018 where the competition in school business would get fiercer. Have you heard about the new innovative schools that are coming to town? Introducing really low cost education and creating chains of school counting to hundreds. Yes they are growing, and one would open close to you soon.
This is a question you should think of right now. Sit down to reason on this. It would never be business as usual. Its time to put pen on paper, draw strategies that would help you retain your students and teachers, bring in more students, improve on your learning standards, and bring in more money.
Yeah I did, like I said in my post yesterday, this is the major part of the work neglected by school owners and administrators. Low cost private schools are known to have high attrition rate of teachers, and this affects the services they render to both students and parents negatively.
So, since you would like to play it with the bigger boys this year, I would like to share some tips with you. This I would start by talking on Teachers’ retention.
Yeah, you want your quality teachers to stay?? Follow me:
Only if you employed a dullard as a teacher should you lose trust in him/her. Most school owners don’t trust their teachers, and they are always snooping around to find faults one place or the other. It gets worse as this makes the teacher feel uncomfortable.
You can’t expect a teacher who sees himself as a suspect to deliver well in the classroom, or expect him to stay in that school after he gets his paycheck for that month. If you trust your teachers, they’ll trust you. The cycle goes on.
Sincerely, this is gold. No teacher works better than an appraised one. Everyone loves to be praised for the job they do. Its one of the need on Maslov Hierarchy of need. The need to be loved and accepted.
One crime most school owners and administrators commit is always dwelling on the negatives and neglecting the positives. If you want to retain a teacher, appraise them every time they do something good, no matter how little it is. This encourages them to do more.
At least, this is what we want them to do in their classrooms with their students too. Lead by example.
Quit nagging, deal with negative behaviour objectively and not with shouts and yelling. I won’t like to work in an environment where all I get is nags and shouts all because I made a little mistake.
The moment you get shouted at for one wrong, its psychologically proven that you would go on making more things wrong that day. You need to treat your teachers with respect, see them as professionals and nothing less.
I worked in a corporate organisation where everyone treated each other with respect, and this increased our productivity. We weren’t afraid to admit wrongdoings and once we did that, we move on to correct them immediately. The environment was very positive to work in, and we were always excited to show up in work the next day. Your school can be like this too.
If you ask some teachers, they are frustrated each time morning comes and they have to dress up for school. The school environments frustrates them.
Yes, this is very important. That you are the school owner or administrator doesn’t mean you are perfect. You make mistakes, and so you must admit them. Say sorry to whoever when necessary, even to your teaching staffs.
Its horrible when we have school owners or administrators who try to push faults to their teachers, and cast all the blame on them for what they themselves have done wrong.
Just try and imagine if you are the one being blamed for what you didn’t do, how would you feel? So accept your imperfection, and admit to faults.
Have you ever tried to put yourself in your teachers’ shoes? No, I don’t think so. You just issue orders and expect them to be followed to the letter. This won’t help you in 2018.
Your teachers are human beings with families, personal issues, goals and dreams, etc. Have you ever talked to them about it? Or when have you tried to feel what they feel?
Especially for school owners that pay meagre salaries, being empathetic is the least you can do. You expect teachers to show up every morning at the school door, wear nice clothes to school, when you know that their pay can hardly feed them and their family. Be empathetic in your dealings with teachers. Put yourself in their shoes, care about them and about their life outside the classroom. The relationship you build with them today through empathy, would be evident in their work in the classroom and in the school as a whole.
The best product of an organisation are its people. Only a well treated staff would be productive and would work towards the organisation’s growth and development. So it is for schools and teachers too. I believe if you put these tips into practice, there would be a new air in your school this school new year.
Till I come your way next time, keep impacting lives.