“The data has long shown that a key factor in teacher retention is the issue of voice: how much input and say teachers have into the key decisions that impact them and their jobs,” says Ingersoll. “Teachers often have very little voice; school systems are often run in a top-down manner. The people on the ground get frustrated with all kinds of reforms and mandates that come down the pike where they’re not consulted. It’s things done to teachers as opposed to with teachers.”
Building an Emotional Intelligence Charter allows teachers some say in what’s expected of them—and also offers the opportunity to share what they expect from you. Rather than coming up with top-down solutions to the stresses and challenges your teachers are facing, you can work together with them to find the most effective paths forward.
Decisions at the district level are affecting your teachers’ lives, not only professionally, but also personally—especially now. “The lack of autonomy was significant before the pandemic,” says Cipriano, “but now it’s coming up in different ways. Due in part to the rapid rate of change across the demands on the education system, educators are not being involved in the decisions being made.”
As California’s Turlock Unified School District closed its doors in late March, Marshall Beyer and Sitara Ali knew they had their work cut out for them. Beyer, the district’s Coordinator of Educational Technology, and Ali, an Educational Technology Instructional Coach, set out to create effective, virtual professional development for their teachers—as quickly as possible.
You may not be able to bring your teachers into all your decisions right away, but you can take small steps now toward including their voice and affording them greater autonomy.
“Sitara and I knew the makeup of our teachers,” Beyer tells us. “We knew that there was a group that had some tech savviness, but there was a big group that didn’t. We needed to do something for those teachers.”
Let teachers drive their own professional development.
Build an Emotional Intelligence Charter. To make sure you’re considering your teachers’ feelings and needs as you make decisions, Cipriano and her colleagues at the YCEI recommend building what they call an “Emotional Intelligence Charter.” This will be a living document in which leaders and teachers can work together to agree upon how you all want to feel about work, and how you will behave to achieve those feelings. To build your charter, begin by asking how all your teachers want to feel at work. Try to narrow it down to a top five that you feel represents the whole faculty. Then, work through that list, asking for specific, actionable ideas as to how you can create those feelings in the workplace. For example, say your teachers want to prioritize a work-life balance, especially if they work from home and those lines blur. “If you want to set boundaries, set them together,” Cipriano suggests. “Commit to how often you’re going to check your email, or what should be the norm for response rates. That way, you aren’t feeding into a system where everyone is continuously overtaxed and under-resourced.”
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Just a week after Turlock closed, Beyer and Ali began releasing their first professional development series for teachers. But instead of telling the teachers what they should be learning, they asked teachers what they wanted to know. “A lot of it was based on teacher feedback,” Beyer explains. “We would ask them what they wanted, take that feedback, and put a PD together.” Sessions covered everything from engaging students over Zoom to building a Bitmoji classroom—whatever teachers were interested in. Teachers could also choose how they consumed the information Beyer and Ali shared. They could watch video presentations, listen to an audio podcast version, or simply look at slides and handouts—whatever helped them learn best. “There’s all these different modes in which students learn, whether it’s visual, auditory, or something else,” Beyer explains. “We wanted to provide those for teachers as well.” The choice of whether to participate fell to the teachers themselves as well. The sessions weren’t mandatory. “We felt that giving teachers that choice of whether to attend or not put it all in their hands,” Ali says. “Some teachers, especially our new teachers, don’t need that extra help to learn how to navigate those tools.”