Finding and keeping good teachers might be challenging due to the strain and disruption brought on by the two years of the pandemic.
Research shows that the longer you keep teachers, the more of an impact they will have on students’ progress. Thus, they continue to become more effective into their 12th year.
When school leaders and administrators encourage their teachers, they are more likely to stay in the classroom for a longer period.
This implies that school management can increase teachers’ retention by creating a better working environment for them.
Reasons for Low Teachers Retention
- School leaders are unable to retain teachers due to poor remuneration.
- School leaders and management struggle to retain teachers due to disrespectful behavior among students’ parents.
- Lack of value from school leaders and management leads to low teacher retention.
- Teachers leave the classroom for other professions due to inadequate professional training and development.
- Inadequate work tools and teaching materials cause low teacher retention.
- When the Government is slow in the implementation of education policy, teachers leave the classroom.
- Teachers resign due to loads of tasks.
- There is low teacher retention due to several manual processes involved in the classroom settings.
How School leaders can Increase Teachers Retention by 80%
Create a healthy work environment:
Building a healthy work environment for your school begins with the hiring process. Select your best team when hiring teachers. People whose visions align with that of the school.
After the hiring process, help your teachers settle down. Provide them with the necessary details for smooth work.
The fact a teacher is experienced does not mean that such a teacher understands your school environment. Let them know your values and vision as it’s peculiar to only your school.
Celebrate your teacher’s effort. When you see a teacher do the right thing, a candy and Weldone! would bring a spark.
You don’t go around as a School leader looking for teachers’ errors. When leaders of organizations look out for mistakes of subordinates they create anxiety and panic.
Get Teachers Involved in Leadership
Distribute leadership to make room for teachers to bring in ideas and suggestions that would make the team grow.
Set up committees among teachers to organize different school events. The members of the committee would ideate on the event, and see to the planning and execution of the school event.
The school leaders have to make funds available where required.
An agile school management and educators are developed through this retention strategy.
Support their Wellbeing
It is okay for your teachers to fall sick. When your teachers’ family member is sick, ask how they are faring.
To support teachers well-being ;
- Show empathy; some days can be bad for a teacher.
- Show teachers that it’s okay to make mistakes and learn from them.
- Encourage your teachers to rest and give them the opportunity to rest.
School leaders in the private sectors can adopt government guidelines that aid maternal and mental well-being.
Also, school management partners with organizations that support mental wellbeing of employees, so as to educate your teachers on a monthly, or quarterly basis.
Hence, being considerate of the well being of your teachers is a retention strategy.
See Also: Effects of Mental Health on your Child’s Learning
Practice Excellent Interpersonal Skills
One recurring complaint from lots of teachers is the manner school leaders and administrators speak to them. Several teachers complain of the ill-treatment they receive from school leaders and management. As school leaders, spice up your leadership role with humor.
Parents of students are your customers but are not always right. It’s professionally wrong to have parents walk into your institution to assault your staff.
Set up a digital channel for communication and ensure parents make use of them.
Therefore, the ability to retain your teachers increases with better communication.
Ease your teacher’s way of getting things done
With the outbreak of COVID-19, teachers learned to use technology to get work done. Introduce software that helps teachers to reduce paperwork.
Software that helps teachers reduce the time of carrying out teaching activities. These activities include
- Scheduling Homework
- Communicating with parents
- Documenting students’ activities.
- Assessment grading
- Staff meetings
- Students Attendance
See Also: Homework Strategies: How to help students
Through imploring digital means, you improve their digital skills and also ease their way of getting a task done. This increases your teacher’s retention capacity.
Value and Respect teacher time
Respect your teacher’s time. In a survey, 49 of 50 teachers said they worked for so long in a school due to the relationship with the management.
Oftentimes school leaders call for meetings weekly. While some school leaders see it as a norm, others see it as an opportunity to brainstorm and plan.
There is information that does not require the attention of the teachers. For such, school leaders can record a video message, telling people exactly how long it will take them to view, digest and respond to it, and the deadline by which you need to hear from them.
Also, when a decision demands contributions from educators. A form can be distributed with a scheduled time frame.
These options allow them full control of their schedules as they can complete the task when it is convenient for them.
This strategy helps to retain teachers
Timely Payment
Making your teachers payment available as at when due is a strategy to retain teachers. Like other employees,teachers teach to earn a living. Whatever remuneration is agreed upon, pay at the right time.
Money is a motivator. In order to retain your teachers, pay them in time. Also, encourage your teachers to leverage other teaching means on a part time basis. This is for the purpose of earning high income.
Buy: Become A High Earning Teacher
Appreciate them
Appreciation puts smiles on the faces of employees. It makes them see their works are not taken for granted. When teachers are appreciated they put in their best for better output.
Appreciation isn’t related to their salary. Staff salary is their payment for a service rendered. Apart from the weekly meetings, have staff lunch or dinner.
Also, make Teachers day memorable for them. This goes a long way to show how much they are valued.
Implore School Management Software
The world has gone digital and a teacher shouldn’t be carrying out all classroom activities manually.
When digital tools are implored in the classroom, it reduces the number of hours spent on getting tasks done.
Also, this make school leaders supervisor easier and less stressful
Activities that can be done with School Management Software.
- Result grading
- Scheduling of homework;
- Efficient parents-teacher communication
- Proper record of students daily activities during school hours. These include Nap, Meal, Games.
- Attendance Recording.
- Invoicing and financial records.
When school leaders are intentional about retaining teachers, they would be intentional with the use of digital tools.