SchoolCEO Winter 2023

The What and Why of School Websites

The Power of Trust

THE RECRUITMENT ISSUE

Keeping in Touch

GREAT CULTURE STARTS WITH GREAT TALENT.

TikTok for You

Research

In the largest study of its kind, we surveyed over 1,000 teachers from ages 20 to 80 to learn what they’re looking for in a job.

Perspectives

Hear from a generational researcher, a superintendent revolutionizing team teaching, and an expert in board relations.

Strategies

Find tips on interviewing, writing job descriptions, recruiting career changers, and more.

“GREAT VISION WITHOUT GREAT PEOPLE IS IRRELEVANT.”

-JIM COLLINS

How can you recruit the best talent?

In the spring of 20 19, we were publishing our third-ever issue of SchoolCEO. Even then, the now familiar teacher recruitment challenges were already emerging. All 50 states reported teacher shortages in one area or another, according to a 2018 Education Week analysis—and school leaders were already feeling the pressure. In a 2018 Gallup survey, 83% of superintendents said that recruiting and retaining talented teachers would be a challenge for their districts in the coming year.

In response, we published an analysis designed to help school leaders attract an up-and-coming generation of educators, entitled “What Do Millennial Teachers Want?” Millennials were—and still are—the largest segment of the workforce, so it seemed they could be the answer to this mounting recruitment challenge.

But in the past four years, recruitment has only become a more pressing concern. This past October, the National Center for Education Statistics found that nearly half of schools (45%) have at least one open teaching position, and 4% of all teaching positions nationwide remain vacant. Low morale, inadequate pay, political controversies, and health and safety concerns are contributing to an overall atmosphere of burnout in schools. What’s more, as fewer

OUR TEAM

and fewer college students pursue degrees in education, our pipeline of future teachers may be running dry.

The broadening scope of these challenges demands an expansive solution. In 2023, you’re not just trying to hire millennial teachers—you’re trying to hire quality educators of any age or background. That’s why, in this issue, we’re bringing you an even more comprehensive look at the problems surrounding teacher recruitment than we did in 2019.

In the largest study of its kind, we surveyed more than 1,000 teachers from ages 20 to 80 to ask what they want in a job and how they find career opportunities. We’re also offering solutions and strategies for different stages of the recruitment process—from strengthening your employer brand and attracting career changers to writing job applications and conducting productive interviews.

Your top priority as a school leader is to make sure the right people are at the front of your classrooms. It’s our hope that with these insights in hand, you’ll have a clear picture of how to tackle staffing your vital, resilient schools.

Managing Editor: Melissa Hite

Writers/Researchers: Abigale

Franco, Barrett Goodwin, Brittany

Keil, Marie Kressin, Corey Whaley

Digital Marketing: Heather Palacios

Art Director: Sebastian Andrei

VP of Marketing: Tyler Vawser

Graphic Designers/Illustrators: Alex Barton, Marisol Quintanilla

Social Media: Thiphavanh “Bri” Vongvilay

Video/Podcast Producers: Ryan McDonald, Tanner Cox

6

What Teachers Want

In the largest survey of its kind, we sought to understand what teachers across the U.S. look for in an employer.

18 Building a Strong Employer Brand

How do your employees think and feel about your schools? And how can you shape that narrative?

24 Local Leverage

Location is a major factor for teachers deciding where to work. Are you marketing yours effectively?

27 Stand Out or Strike Out

In a flooded job market, innovative job postings are a critical component of your recruitment strategy.

32 Interviewing Like a Boss

By digging deeper and thinking differently, you can use interviews to find the best fits for your district.

38 Knocking Down Walls

Dr. Andi Fourlis is crafting a new vision of the classroom by knocking down walls— literally.

44 From Turbulence to Clear Skies

What can school leaders learn from airlines when it comes to taking off in the post-pandemic hiring market?

49 Turning Tides

Researcher Kim Lear gives us insight into how generational differences impact the workplace.

54 Taking the Leap

We explore the best ways to recruit and support career changers as they transition into the classroom.

58 Comfortable Tension

Dr. Matt Montgomery—who works with two school boards—gives his best advice for strengthening board relations.

62 Speaking the Same Language

We explore how districts around the country are revolutionizing their approach to supporting English learners.

Want to read up on all you’ve missed? Previous issues are available at: schoolceo.com

Plus, find us on social media: Facebook: SchoolCEO

Twitter: @School_CEO

LinkedIn: SchoolCEO

GOOD NEWS

Boise, ID

For the first time in the city’s history, a student has been elected to the Boise School District Board of Trustees. Climate activist Shiva, age 18, unseated an incumbent board member and will become one of few student school board members in the country with voting power. “I think my primary role on the school board is to serve as an example of just how much students can bring to the table when we’re given a seat,” he says. “I hope that students around the country know that our voices matter and that we can make a difference in our communities when we work together.”

( Education Week )

Newland, NC

Thanks to help from The Jason Project, a hiking program designed to build self-confidence, a group of ten students from Cranberry Middle School recently completed the “Grandfather Challenge.” Equipped with essentials like hiking boots, backpacks, and raincoats, these students navigated the rigorous physical challenges of Grandfather Mountain’s hiking trails. Now in its seventh season, the program is conducted and supervised by experienced hike leaders who teach student hikers about leadership, teamwork, courage, and respect.

( HCPress.com )

Vienna, VA

How do you spell “giving back”? Erdem, a Kilmer Middle School student, answered by organizing the country’s first-ever spelling bee for Mongolian American students. After winning his elementary spelling bee and placing first runner-up at a county bee, Erdem decided to help other Mongolian-speaking students who were interested in competing. For more than a year, he spent hours practicing English and spelling in weekly Zoom meetings with immigrant students from across the country. Then, in October, 34 participants from eight states gathered at the World Bank in Washington, D.C., for the historic competition. The event was also attended by the Mongolian Ambassador to the United States.

( WTOP )

Portland, OR

Getting to school has gotten a lot more fun for the kids of Alameda Elementary. Along with their families, students of the Northeast Portland school have been participating in a weekly “bike bus” every Wednesday. The bike ride, which now has over 300 participants, was inspired by similar bike buses in Barcelona and San Francisco. Alameda’s bike bus has weekly designated start points and is led by P.E. teacher Sam Balto. “It’s a great way to get kids to school and build community,” Balto says. “I hope that this gets city leaders and state leaders to pay attention to the importance of active transportation for children and that we fund bike buses and walking school buses just like we do school buses.”

( The Oregonian )

Pittsburgh, PA

Pennsylvania is getting a little greener thanks to the help of Shaler Area High School’s sustainability class. In partnership with the Allegheny Land Trust, students are raising funds to preserve 62 acres in the Girty’s Run Watershed, which is currently zoned to be a sprawling new development. Instead, students want the former farmland to be designated as a permanent green space. “A sustainability class is all about protecting our environment for future generations,” teacher Abbey Nilson says. The class has raised at least $5,000 by going even further to help the local ecosystem—selling milkweed flower seeds that attract endangered monarch butterflies. The funds will go toward purchasing the critically important property, which protects nearby towns from being flooded by about 51 million gallons of rainwater annually.

( Yahoo! News )

Crystal River, FL

Sometimes all it takes is a little creative thinking to spark student learning. Crystal River High School FFA advisor Aimee Owens and Assistant Principal Dr. Beth Branch teamed up to turn unused freshwater aquaculture tanks into the centerpiece of a saltwater mariculture class. Students get hands-on experience raising East Coast red fish, furthering the Coastal Conservation Association’s (CCA) work to boost the fish population. They’re even getting opportunities to volunteer with CCA and learn more about conservation. All of this is helping spark interest in the aquaculture industry. “It’s the coolest class here you can take,” sophomore Jesse says.

( Citrus County Chronicle )

Maple Heights, OH

A sixth grade class at Milkovich Middle School was studying map skills when they noticed that the maps used in their community had incorrect longitudes and latitudes. So, with the help of their district’s business and communications offices, they set out to make corrections. “I feel like I was making a difference,” one sixth grade cartographer reported.

( Fox 8 Cleveland )

Chantilly, VA

Fairfax County Schools has made play a priority— mandating recess for their middle schoolers. It’s just 15 minutes, but it’s making a world of difference for students. Research has found that daily activity can do wonders for students’ mental and physical health, as well as their social development. To accommodate all students, recess areas include not just the blacktop and gym but the library as well. “There’s really high value for students and ... teachers to have that break in the day,” says Amy Goodloe, principal of Rocky Run Middle School.

( The Hechinger Report )

What Teachers Want

In the largest study of its kind, we asked more than 1,000 teachers from ages 20 to 80 what they’re looking for in a job.

Photos by Sarah Od

In Spring 2019, against the backdrop of an accelerating teacher shortage, we published “What Do Millennial Teachers Want?” In the largest study of its kind, we surveyed over 1,000 millennial teachers from across the country to explore questions like, What matters most when millennial teachers are deciding where to work? How do they find out about their jobs? How deeply does an educator explore a school’s online presence when applying?

Just a couple of months later, U.S. Census data confirmed that millennials had officially surpassed baby boomers as the largest living—and working—adult generation. At the time, a growing body of educational stakeholders had reached consensus that the country’s 56 million working millennials were the solution to teacher shortages. After all, the overwhelming majority of educators traditionally entered the classroom before age 40—and in 2019, the oldest millennials were turning 38. But the problem was more complex than a numbers game. By the start of the 2019-20 school year, the Learning Policy Institute reported that the demand for teachers had exceeded supply by more than 100,000 positions—confirming the presence of a significant break in the college-to-classroom pipeline.

Today—only four years later—most of the rules of old no longer apply. Gone are the days when teachers entered the classroom at 22 and stayed until retirement. Now, teachers leave the classroom much earlier. Research from the National Education Association (NEA) suggests that nearly 50% of new educators leave the profession within five years.

Of course, shortages have been compounded by the pandemic. But even if we exclude COVID, a lack of flexibility, expanding workloads, and increasingly hostile perceptions of education are deterring young people from entering the field in the first place. As a result, public schools are getting creative with their recruitment efforts.

That’s why we decided once again to explore the same ideas we researched in 2019—only this time, we’re investigating the perspectives of teachers across five generations, from ages 20 to 80. But while we’ve expanded the parameters of our study, our goals are much the same as they were four years ago. We want to know what teachers of all ages look for in a job, how they learn about open positions, and what you can do to attract—and retain—the best educators.

Who are today’s teachers?

Between October and December 2022, we surveyed over 1,000 teachers from more than 300 randomly selected school districts. Our sample includes educators from all 50 states and all working age groups, and shares demographic consistencies with other nationally representative samples collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the U.S. Census Bureau.

• Gender: Approximately 76% of our respondents were women; 24% were men. Less than half of 1% were nonbinary (Figure 1)

• Race and Ethnicity: Teachers were asked to indicate which ethnic and racial groups they identified with. These options weren’t mutually exclusive— respondents could select as many options as they needed to accurately identify themselves. More than 9% identified with two or more ethnicities.

• 83% identified as white.

• 12% identified as Hispanic or Latino.

• 8% identified as Black.

• 3% identified as American Indian or Alaska Native.

• 3% identified as other.

• 2% identified as Asian.

• 0.5% identified as Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

Figure 1 With which gender(s) do you identify?

Nonbinary 0.3% 7 WINTER 2023 /

Women 76.2%

Age: Consistent with NCES’s measures, the average respondent in our sample was about 43 years old and has been teaching for about 14 years. In addition, half of all teachers in our sample were 43 or younger. This isn’t a surprise considering that millennials and Gen Xers made up approximately 37% and 42% of our sample, respectively. About 14% of our sample consisted of baby boomers, and Gen Z followed at almost 7% (Figure 2)

• Education: About 36% of respondents’ highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree. Over half of our sample (54%) had master’s degrees.

• District Size: 27% of our respondents said they worked in an urban district; 29% in a rural district; and 43% in a suburban district (Figure 3)

2 What is your age?

Which of the following best describes the school district you currently work in?

We also found that age and gender were pretty evenly distributed across districts. In other words, for the time being, there’s no evidence suggesting that certain generations or genders gravitate toward certain districts, or that specific members of either category are motivated to pursue work in rural, suburban, or urban districts for any of the reasons we captured here. This means that in any given district, we could anticipate about 90% of educators to be between ages 20 and 60, that about half of educators would be 43 or younger, and that the majority of teachers would be women.

Are teachers considering new opportunities?

In their 2022 survey report, the NEA concludes that job satisfaction for teachers is at an all-time low. Teachers across

Figure 3

the board are experiencing unprecedented levels of strain in their classrooms, increasing workloads without increasing salaries, and widespread burnout—all compounded by shortages and growing public criticism. Our analysis, however, indicates that the situation may not be quite so dire.

We asked respondents to agree or disagree with the following statement: “I am happy in my current position.” Surprisingly, only about one in five respondents expressed any level of disagreement. In fact, only 5% of our sample strongly disagreed with the statement, as compared to the 19% of respondents who strongly agreed. Overall, nearly 65% said that they were at least somewhat happy in their current jobs (Figure 4)

Figure 5

Have you browsed other job opportunities within the past year?

you browsed other job opportunities within the past year?

Have

But how much does happiness impact teachers’ job hunting behaviors? When we asked teachers to indicate whether they’d browsed for other job opportunities within the past year—even if they had no intention of actually applying— about 65% of our sample indicated that they had (Figure 5) . Unsurprisingly, our analysis revealed that unhappy teachers were more likely to report having browsed other job opportunities than happy teachers.

Figure 6

Have you applied to other jobs since you’ve been in your current position?

Have you applied to other job opportunities within the past year?

Prefer not to answer 1.8%

“I am happy in my current position.”

A teacher’s happiness also appears to impact their likelihood of actually applying to the jobs they’re exploring. When asked, nearly a quarter of our sample—about 23%—said they had applied to at least one other position since starting in their current roles (Figure 6) . However, we didn’t find evidence that happiness—or unhappiness—is the strongest predictor of whether a teacher will explore opportunities elsewhere or not.

In fact, happiness only accounted for a small amount of the variation in responses revolving around job browsing. These findings align with a broader trend appearing in labor markets across a variety of industries that BBC Worklife refers to as “the Great Flirtation”: “a constantly wandering eye to other openings, regardless of how long a worker has been in a role, and how content they are in their current job.”

Are teachers looking to leave education?

We asked respondents to agree or disagree with the following statement: “I would leave the field of education if given the opportunity.” Their responses revealed a nearly even split down the middle. Forty-three percent of educators appeared to disagree with the statement to some level, while 40% agreed (Figure 7)

But are teachers actively trying to leave the classroom?

The answer is mixed. Of respondents who indicated that they had applied elsewhere since starting in their currrent positions, 80% said they’d applied to other jobs in education. It would appear that even those who are trying to leave their current districts aren’t necessarily trying to leave the field— though they aren’t completely opposed to it, either. Our data indicates a relationship between how frequently a teacher hunts for other jobs and their willingness or desire to leave education. In other words, the more frequently an educator explores other career opportunities, the more likely they are to be willing to leave the classroom altogether.

Predictably, we also found a statistically significant relationship between an educator’s happiness in their position and their willingness to leave the classroom. Our analysis suggests that happy teachers are more likely than unhappy teachers to plan on staying in their current positions indefinitely or until retirement. In other words, unhappy educators have significantly more interest in leaving their current positions—and the teaching profession—than their happier counterparts.

For school leaders, the takeaways here are fairly simple: Making sure your teachers are happy might not keep them from looking at other jobs, but it could keep them from actually leaving your district—or even education in general. But how can you keep your teachers happy? What do educators want?

What are teachers looking for in a job?

We asked respondents to rank the following factors in order from most important to least important regarding their decision to apply to a position:

• School Culture

• School Size

• Geographical Location

• Greater Flexibility in Curriculum/Teaching

• Mentorship Programs and Opportunities

• Career Advancement Opportunities

• School Leadership

• Student Performance

“I would leave the fi eld of education if given the opportunity.”

Geographical location ranked highest among these factors, followed by school culture and leadership. At the lower end of rankings, our respondents indicated that when it comes to making career decisions, student performance, career advancement opportunities, and mentorship programs and opportunities were overall less important than other dimensions. This doesn’t mean that student performance and access to mentors aren’t important to educators, though—other characteristics simply take priority (Figure 8)

Interestingly enough, location, culture, and leadership were also the top three considerations identified by respondents in “What Do Millennial Teachers Want?” nearly four years ago. Let’s dig a bit more into each of these dimensions.

Geographical Location

Respondents indicated that the geographical location of an opportunity weighs heavier than any of our other seven dimensions when it comes to making decisions about where to work. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that teachers are itching to move to pursue new opportunities; in fact, the opposite may be true.

Figure 8

Most Least

We a sked respondents to agree or disagree with the following statement: “I am willing to move or considering moving to a new area to pursue another career in either teaching or a non-education related field.” About 30% of teachers indicated that they would be willing to move to a new area to pursue another opportunity, while almost 60% of educators indicated little to no interest in moving. It may be that teachers are emphasizing location in their job searches because they don’t want to move and are therefore mainly considering opportunities in their current areas.

However, if nearly a third of teachers are willing to relocate, you can’t discount the possibility of teachers moving to your district from somewhere else—and weighing the benefits of your location in their decisions. For example, Gen Zers indicated a significantly greater willingness to move for a new career opportunity than Gen Xers and baby boomers. If you want to attract teachers from outside your immediate community, it’s a good idea to market the benefits not just of your school district, but of its surrounding area. (For more about marketing your location, turn to “Local Leverage” on page 24.)

Rank the following in order of most important to least important regarding your decision to apply to a position.

School Culture

Our respondents ranked school culture as the second-most important factor in their career decisions. This priority was also reflected by the answers to the open response portion of our survey. When we asked teachers what advice they’d give to school leaders about marketing a district and its open positions to prospective teachers, “culture” was the fourthmost common word in their responses (after “teacher,” “school,” and “district”).

Looking more closely at these open-ended responses can help us better understand what kind of school culture teachers are looking for. For example, many related the idea of culture to strong relationships between colleagues. “Play up your school culture,” one respondent advised. “If you honestly believe there’s a positive school culture and colleagues have strong relationships, talk about it. It’s a huge pull—teaching is a profession that is extremely dependent on working relationships between adults.”

A few teachers even offered advice for how to build that kind of relational culture. “Highlight what you have to offer teachers in terms of social support [and] opportunities,”

wrote one respondent. “This ... can be anything from having little traditions like having monthly birthday lunches to having a Christmas party to playing a game with prizes before each staff meeting. In my experience, a teacher should feel like they can fit in easily and get to know their colleagues. The better they fit into the school social puzzle, the more likely they are to find common ground and be invested in staying for more than the pay and benefits. We need to have connections with others for the best teamwork and communication.”

Support, respect, and appreciation were also common themes. One respondent recommended building “a positive school culture with supportive administration who value educators as professionals”; another wanted “a supportive, engaging culture that values staff and student input.”

School Leadership

Third—but not far behind location and culture—comes school leadership. But what are teachers looking for in their school leaders? Once again, we turn to our open responses for more context.

Here, the idea of support emerges again as a major theme. “Teachers need support from leaders,” wrote one respondent. “If a teacher knows [they are] supported and backed, that goes a long way in feeling happy in [their] job.” Another emphasized the distinction between genuine support and micromanagement: “Good teachers want to work for districts whose administrators have their backs and aren’t just looking over their shoulders, who can help them grow without cutting them down to size.”

Others stressed the importance of authenticity in leadership. “Give true statements about your leadership and school climate beliefs, and give examples of actions taken by your leadership and staff that support your beliefs,” wrote one respondent. In other words, put your money where your mouth is. Other respondents also said they were impressed by leaders who stick to their principles. “Evidence of ‘backbone’ in the school leadership is one of the big things that I look for,” wrote one teacher.

And although our sample ranked culture as a more important consideration than school leadership, we don’t have to tell you that leadership has a massive impact on culture. Teachers recognize this, too. “If we are giving advice to DISTRICT leaders, like superintendents, I would say that you

and your staff at the upper management level set the tone for the whole district,” one respondent wrote. As another teacher put it, “School leadership can make or break your experience.” It’s critical that you as a school leader recognize your responsibility to cultivate the kind of supportive, relational culture that will attract and retain quality teachers.

Salary also seems to play a part in a teacher’s cultural experience of the district, particularly whether or not they feel appreciated. “Teachers want to work in a district where they feel valued and respected—by the admin, community, and students ... [and] we want to be compensated accordingly,” wrote one educator. “We are tired of doing things ‘out of the goodness of our hearts.’ That doesn’t pay the bills or support our families.” Others, however, claimed that other factors matter just as much as, if not more than, salary. “It’s not the money that makes teachers teach—it’s feeling supported,” wrote one teacher.

Our respondents also indicated a desire for transparency around salary on the front end. “Be upfront about how much a position will pay,” one respondent wrote. “It’s ridiculous to post a job and not include a salary.” Others expressed a desire to see pay scales or to understand how the evaluation process might affect their salaries over time.

What about salary and benefits?

Of course, no conversation about what teachers want would be complete without addressing the elephant in the room— compensation. We asked respondents to agree or disagree with the following statement: “My decision to work in my current district was primarily shaped by salary and benefits.” We were somewhat surprised to find that the answers were split pretty evenly; 42% disagreed at least to some degree, while 39% agreed at some level. About 19% were neutral (Figure 9)

Compensation also emerged as a major theme in our sample’s open responses. General consensus among survey respondents appears to be that while nobody expects to get rich teaching, pay is important. “No one will say that they teach for the money, but if the salary was marketed, it might attract more prospective teachers,” wrote one respondent.

Figure 9

“My decision to work in my current district was primarily shaped by salary and benefi ts.”

All told, it seems clear that while salary is important, money alone isn’t enough to significantly move the needle on recruitment. One overarching theme transcends all the narratives we identified in our analysis: the need for balance. Many of our respondents argued for the necessity of competitive pay while also acknowledging that other factors matter just as much. “Money is great and an added benefit,” wrote one respondent, “but I would stay in a building if the culture was amazing and I was appreciated.” In short, raising pay without improving your culture may not do much to help your recruitment—or your retention.

How do teachers learn about open positions?

Great culture, strong leadership, and competitive salaries won’t do much for your recruitment unless prospective hires actually hear about them. So where are today’s teachers learning about jobs—and how can you use those platforms to your advantage?

Does social media matter?

When it comes to social media, about 70% of our respondents indicated that they use Facebook, 55% use YouTube, and 49% use Instagram. Only 21% of teachers in our sample indicated that they use Twitter, while about 27% reported using TikTok. And between generations, the only significant difference in usage was on Instagram. Unsurprisingly, Gen Z educators are more likely to use the platform than Gen X or baby boomer educators.

But even though the majority of our respondents reported using at least one platform, our sample appears largely apathetic toward school social media. For example, almost one-third of our sample strongly disagreed with the statement, “I look at school social media posts on platforms like Facebook and Instagram,” while only 10% of respondents strongly agreed with the statement (Figure 10) . Only a minuscule 1.4% of our sample reported learning about their jobs through social media.

This doesn’t mean that you should completely ignore social media in your recruitment strategies—but these findings do suggest that schools should be focusing the majority of their recruitment efforts elsewhere. As with any kind of marketing, you want to meet your prospective recruits where they are— and for now, that doesn’t seem to be on social media.

What about school websites?

We asked respondents, “Before applying to the district you currently work in, did you look at the school’s or district’s website(s)?” Over 70% indicated that they had done so (Figure 11) . Furthermore, 38% reported first learning about their positions through school or district websites, and 64% indicated looking online for information before accepting a job offer.

But here’s where it gets interesting: When we asked respondents to agree or disagree with the statement, “My school’s online presence attracted me to my current position,” 57% of our sample said they strongly disagreed. Less than 10% agreed in any capacity. In fact, almost 84% of our sample indicated that their school’s online presence did not attract them to the role at all (Figure 12)

These findings present an interesting dilemma. While prospective teachers don’t seem to be engaging with school social media much, an overwhelming majority are visiting school websites—but those websites aren’t necessarily

Figure 10

“I look at school social media posts on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.”

Figure 11

Before applying to the district you currently work in, did you look at the school’s or district’s website(s)?

Figure 12

“My school’s online presence attracted me to my current position.”

Strongly Agree 2.4%

Moderately Agree 1.6%

Somewhat Agree 3.2%

Neither 9.2%

Somewhat Disagree 12.0%

Moderately Disagree 14.5%

Strongly Disagree 57.1%

attracting applicants. So what can school leaders do to make their websites more successful recruiting tools?

• Make sure your website is mobile friendly. When asked, more than three-quarters of our respondents (76%) reported using their phones to research the jobs they apply for. What’s more, your largest talent pool—millennials and Gen Zers—are even more likely to search for jobs on smartphones than other generations. If your website doesn’t work well on mobile devices, you’re creating barriers for a substantial proportion of your potential recruits.

• Keep your site updated. “Make sure your websites are ALWAYS and COMPLETELY up to date,” one teacher advised. “Anything less is a turn off to potential employees. ”

• Make information easy to find. The more relevant information potential applicants can find directly from your homepage, the better. “Make a website that is easy to navigate and looks clean and modern,” one respondent wrote. “Have links to any social media sites on the homepage. Have a tab for open positions.”

• Make it look good. According to research from the journal Behavior & Information Technology, it takes about 50 milliseconds—one-twentieth of a second—for a user to form an opinion about a website. A poorly designed website can ruin a candidate’s first impression of your district before they even get any information. In the words of one

“How

respondent, “have a website that doesn’t look like it came straight out of the ‘90s.”

• Highlight your culture on a careers page. Your careers page should include more than just job descriptions; it should also be selling potential applicants on your district and its culture. “Post information about awards and nominations current staff have won; post testimonial videos from staff and students about how great your district is; post a video showing your upcoming graduates and how much scholarship money they have been offered; show NHS kids doing all their volunteer work,” one respondent suggested. “Potential employees want to see a thriving district with high-caliber students who are well-rounded citizens in their community.”

How important is word-of-mouth?

More than a quarter of our sample (26%) reported learning about their first jobs in their current districts through wordof-mouth (Figure 13) . That’s more than any other avenue besides school or district websites. It’s clear that even in the so-called digital age, word-of-mouth marketing matters. So how do you make it work to your advantage?

The answer is fairly simple: Build a positive culture, and your employees will talk about it. Teachers reflected this idea in their open responses. “Create a supportive working environment that teachers brag about,” said one respondent. Another agreed: “Produce a culture where current employees will recruit friends based on how happy they are.”

Figure 13

did you fi nd out about your first job in your current district?”

Note: Respondents were instructed to select as many options as they needed to completely represent their experience. This fi gure is referencing the number of respondents who selected each item.

That said, word-of-mouth can deter applicants from interacting with your district just as easily as it can attract them. If your culture and leadership are lacking, prospective teachers in your area will hear about it. “Teachers know how well other districts value their teachers, and while we know that no school is perfect, the perception of teacher value is important,” wrote one respondent. “When 20% of a staff is leaving, it’s not because other schools were marketing themselves better—it’s because somewhere along the way there was [or] is a failure of leadership. The best marketing is happy employees. Teachers talk; treat them well.”

If you’re like most school leaders, you’re probably thinking about the education labor crisis around the clock. You wake up to read alarming reports about the drop in enrollment in teacher preparation programs, and you fall asleep after reviewing hiring goals for next year. The challenge that most school leaders are facing is immersive and overwhelming. All of this can contribute to a general feeling of powerlessness, especially against the backdrop of other crises facing K-12 education.

But our findings suggest a more hopeful narrative. Teachers are happier in their jobs than you might expect, and they’re not all set on leaving the profession—or even their current positions. That means that when it comes to teacher recruitment, you actually do have a great deal of power. By understanding what teachers are looking for in a job— namely, strong culture and leadership—you can make sure your district is constantly improving in these areas. And by knowing where and how teachers are finding jobs, you can adjust the tactical strategies of your recruitment process to net as many applicants as possible.

There’s no doubt that much of what makes recruitment difficult is outside your control—but take charge of the areas you can. Every district is operating under the constraints of a difficult labor market, so any advantage you can create will give you a better chance of attracting top talent. By giving teachers what they want, you can move closer to what you want: a district full of happy and dedicated educators.

Building a Strong Employer Brand

If you’re a longtime reader of SchoolCEO, you already know that your district’s brand is a vital part of its success. Since your brand is the way people think and feel about your schools, maintaining it means maintaining a positive image of your district as a whole. But your brand isn’t just how external stakeholders feel about your schools—it also encompasses the conversations that happen among your employees. This is your employer brand —the way current and former employees think and feel about working at your district.

Whether you’ve thought about it or not, your district already has an employer brand. Everything your employees experience impacts that brand—from specific, controllable

factors like salaries and professional development opportunities to more intangible aspects like school culture and your staff’s sense of belonging. The big question is whether the employer brand you currently have is the one you want. Are you shaping the story your employees tell about working for your district, or are you leaving it up to chance? Does the experience you’re promising prospective hires match up with your staff’s day-to-day lives? Are you even marketing your employee experience at all?

The benefit of having a strong employer brand is twofold: Current employees are more likely to experience a

positive work culture, and prospective employees are much more likely to head your way if they hear great stories from friends working in your district. After all, as we found in our 2023 study “What Teachers Want,” a quarter of teachers hear about their jobs via word-of-mouth (see page 6)

In order to build a strong employer brand, you have to assess where that brand stands now and clearly define what you want it to become. Then, you can work to make sure that your employee experience fits that narrative—and that potential recruits are hearing about it.

Discover where your employer brand currently stands.

Before you can begin creating the employer brand you want, you need to understand the one you already have. To do that, you’ll want to systematically collect and analyze perspectives from people throughout your district—no matter what position they hold or how long they’ve been there.

Of course, this is easier said than done—and you can’t do it alone. During this stage, it’s important to involve the right people. In the Harvard Business Review article “Building Your Company’s Vision,” researchers Jim Collins and Dr. Jerry I. Porras recommend that leaders build what they call a “Mars Team.”

“Imagine that you’ve been asked to recreate the very best attributes of your organization on another planet, but you have seats on the rocket ship for only five to seven people,” they write. “Most likely, you’ll choose the people who have a gut level understanding of your core values, the highest level of credibility with their peers, and the highest level of competence.” As you build your own Mars Team, look for folks on your staff who live your values and do their jobs well—but also make sure you’re selecting people who care deeply about the future of your district. People with strong feelings about the success of their schools will help you get an honest understanding of where your employer brand currently stands.

Your Mars Team can pull from the experiences and discussions they’ve had with others in the district. Start with open and honest conversations with your staff, focusing on understanding specific, defined components of your employer brand. While this list is not exhaustive, you should ask your employees how they think and feel about the following topics:

• School culture

• Community support

• Family engagement

• Leadership

• Salary and benefits

• How district resources are allocated

• Whether employees feel supported by administration

• Flexibility and support

• Career advancement opportunities

It’s important that you gain perspective from teachers as well as classified staff. These building-level stakeholders may have a totally different experience of your district’s employer brand than the leaders who are accountable for building that brand. Honest, unbiased answers from those on the ground will give you the most accurate picture of where your brand stands and how far you have to go, making it easier to build the kind of credibility any strong brand needs.

Of course, not everyone will be willing to voice honest—and potentially critical—opinions about their employee experience in person. That’s why you’ll want to provide a safe space for people to give authentic feedback without fear of judgment or retaliation. While they do have their drawbacks, anonymous surveys can be great tools for this purpose.

Define what you want your employer brand to be.

Now that you have a realistic idea of your district’s current employer brand, you’re ready to define the one you want to have. To do this, you’ll need to decide what values and priorities you want your schools to be known for. In the words of Steve Jobs, “Marketing is about values. It’s a complicated and noisy world, and we’re not going to get a chance to get people to remember much about us … So we have to be really clear about what we want them to know.”

While Jobs is referring to selling computers, the idea also applies to selling your district to potential applicants. Schools all over the country are looking to hire, and the number of unemployed teachers is low—meaning more districts are competing for fewer educators. In the complicated, noisy world of teacher recruitment, you want job seekers to remember you.

It would be a huge win to find something truly unique about your employer brand during this stage, but most likely,

you won’t—and that’s okay. It doesn’t matter if your school district isn’t different from any other; most companies and schools share the same attributes and characteristics as their competitors. What’s important is that your district does what it brands itself on, and it does it well.

Take online shoe retailer Zappos, for example. “Great culture leads to employee happiness,” reads the company’s website. “Happy employees means higher engagement, profitability, and low turnover.” Zappos has taken consistent steps to ensure that all of their actions reinforce this value. Toward the start of the pandemic, Zappos launched the Happiness Collective—an initiative that measures employee well-being over time—to support happiness as an integral part of their employer brand. The company takes this value so seriously that it will literally pay unhappy new hires to leave. After a few weeks of training, new recruits are offered $2,000 to quit— making sure every employee wants to be there and keeping the Zappos work environment positive and productive.

Plenty of companies care about the well-being of their staff members, but few make it a core aspect of their employer brands. By taking this fairly common priority and emphasizing it, Zappos stands out from the crowd, developing a reputation for being a great place to work.

If you’re struggling to find something about your employee experience to highlight, try looking over what you do know

For example, when asked about working at your district, maybe teachers and staff talk primarily about their peers. Dig into that. If you keep hearing words like “passionate,” “fun,” or “collaborative,” why not make those qualities cornerstones of your brand? This will take time to get right. But defining your employer brand will empower everything that follows.

Make your employer brand visible.

Once you’ve landed on the central qualities you want to emphasize in your employer brand, you have to make those qualities visible to the outside world. This means intentionally sharing stories about your employees’ experiences that reinforce the tenets of your brand.

Jonah Berger, bestselling author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On , shared his advice on this topic on a recent episode of our podcast, SchoolCEO Conversations. “Don’t start with the story—start with the takeaway,” he says. “You’re not just looking for great stories. You’re looking for a great story that has the exact takeaway you want people to know. Start by figuring out what you want people to learn, then find the stories that do a good job of showing that.”

Keep those words in mind as you take action in the following steps. What do you want prospective employees to know about your district? If you want to emphasize your focus on collaboration, share stories of teachers teaming up on a project across subjects or grade levels. Highlighting your staff’s family atmosphere? Share photos from holiday gettogethers or birthday celebrations. Behind every visual, webpage, flyer, story, and even in-person conversation should be a takeaway that is true to your employer brand. That way, potential candidates will have a clear picture of who you are and what you stand for before they even apply.

Nail your careers page.

For many candidates, your website will be the first touch point with your district. If your site doesn’t include a careers page exploring your recruitment opportunities, culture, and values, that should be your first priority in making your employer brand visible.

A careers page is the place to display your employer brand prominently and share your mission, values, and culture— all important information for a prospective job seeker. This shouldn’t be too heavy a lift; it’s as simple as taking what’s already true of your district and making it easy to see. With that in mind, here are a few crucial elements of a solid careers page.

Culture and core values. Your values should be listed prominently on your page. This could take the form of a mission statement, rallying cry, or a few core values. However you choose to share your values, make them accessible, identifiable, and tangible. In other words, potential applicants should be able to quickly get a feel for what your district stands for—and whether their values align with yours.

• Location. One of the most basic questions candidates will have is about the location of your district. Is it rural, urban, or suburban? What is the commute like? How is the quality of life? These are important considerations for prospective hires— especially those who are thinking of moving to your area from elsewhere. (For more tips on marketing your location to prospective hires, check out “Local Leverage” on page 24.)

• Employment video. An employment video is an excellent way to show what it’s like to work at your district. We most commonly see them on the careers page of an employer’s website, but they can and should be shared on social media, emailed to prospective hires, and shown at job fairs or during interviews.

Ground your interviews in your employer brand.

Interviews are an ideal space to reinforce your employer brand. It’s a best practice across human resources to align your values to the interview questions in order to provide a structured, consistent experience and remove as much bias as possible. Most importantly, this builds authenticity in the candidate’s eyes. Interviewees will see that your marketing is not just talk—it’s part of how you hire.

Arizona superintendent Dr. Lupita Hightower has done just that by having leaders in Tolleson Elementary School District ask the following question in interviews: On a scale from one to 10, do you believe that every student can be successful— no exceptions? A candidate’s answer can make or break their chances of being hired. “Our students need 10’s,” Hightower explains. “They don’t need 9’s or 9.5’s.” The result? A district full of teachers who share a common belief and foundation for educating their students—and who reflect the district’s

Close the authenticity gap.

A well-defined employer brand that is highly visible to prospective hires is the start of something great, but it’s only a start. Your ultimate goal is to close the gap between the employer brand you’re promoting and what your employees actually experience every day.

No matter what you’re saying about your schools, your employer brand is going to be made (or broken) by how you treat your current and former employees, as well as the people you interview. Their experiences—and what they say about them—matter more than what you print on a flyer or write on your careers page.

As we point out in our 2022 study “Who Speaks for Your Brand?,” while there are about 13,800 public school superintendents in the U.S., there are about 3.2 million public school teachers. For every superintendent, more than 200 teachers are interacting with students and community members every day. Your voice as a school leader may carry the most weight, but the voices of your employees have the greatest volume.

So how do you use employee voice to your advantage? The answer is simple, but not easy—you “walk the talk.” You make your employer brand a reality. In his book The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace , author Ron Friedman explains this idea. “The more a company’s message is reinforced in a workplace environment, the easier it is for employees to integrate that vision and relay it to the people they meet,” he writes.

If your employee experience doesn’t match up with your employer brand, your staff certainly won’t be singing your praises to their friends and family. They may even publicly criticize you. But if you really do walk the talk, your current teachers and staff are going to talk about it. They’ll continue the marketing for you.

On our SchoolCEO Conversations podcast, Tennessee superintendent Jeff Mayo describes how word-of-mouth marketing is helping Arlington Community Schools recruit new hires. “Current employees are incredibly helpful in our marketing,” he says. “A lot of our employees will share a job opening on Facebook when they see it. Because of that, we’re getting exposure to the 1,200 friends one teacher might have.”

And these employees aren’t just sharing information; they’re talking up the district. Some are even tagging their friends. “They’ll put little messages when they share—like, teach next door to me , or, ACS is the best ,” Mayo says. Best of all, none of this is incentivized—employees are doing this just because they want to. “It speaks to the climate and culture of our district,” he explains.

Of course, nobody’s perfect, and your district might not reflect your purported values as much as you wish it did. One way or another, though, it’s crucial to close that gap. But how?

On the one hand, you can change what you emphasize. You can be less aspirational and focus only on what your employees truly experience right now. This approach fosters credibility, but it will lack inspiration and appeal. On the other hand, you can work to change your district. You can keep the values you aspire to as part of your brand—while still admitting that they’re aspirational. To borrow from “Building Your Company’s Vision,” “Authentic core values that have weakened over time can be considered a legitimate part of [your] core ideology—as long as you acknowledge to the organization that you must work hard to revive them.”

Closing this gap between the brand that you want your employees to experience and the one that you actually have is notoriously difficult in any organization. But by closing that gap, you build authenticity—which will help you attract, recruit, and retain staff.

A strong employer brand can be a powerful tool in the competitive world of recruiting. It can be what sets your district apart. But having an employer brand to be proud of won’t just help you hire new employees; it will also help you retain the ones you have. Having a truly strong employer brand means ensuring that your current employees are having the best experience possible. That kind of dedication and consistent effort will keep teachers and staff in your district for years to come.

Research shows that teachers are looking up prospective employers online before applying to jobs.

Highlight your schools’ strengths, culture, and values. Show prospective hires what it’s like to work in your district. Tell stories of student achievement happening in your classrooms.

Local Leverage

Recruit New Talent With Your Community and Locale

Whether your school district serves the suburbs, sits within a thriving metropolis, or is surrounded by sprawling countryside, location is everything. Where you are not only informs the kind of students and families you serve, but also the kind of talent you attract. In our study “What Teachers Want” (see page 6) , we found that if you take salary and benefits out of the equation, location is the most important factor educators consider in determining where they’ll teach.

When educators join a new school district, they’re often joining a new community. They could be commuting from the next town over or relocating completely. No matter their age, job seekers aren’t just looking for open positions in your district—they’re also looking to get a sense of your community, culture, and environment. They’re looking for their new home.

Unfortunately, in our 2022 research study “The What and Why of School Websites,” we found that only 41% of district homepages “acknowledged, referred to, or provided information about their greater communities.” We also discovered that smaller districts were less likely to feature important characteristics or defining qualities about their communities and locations on their websites. Given the current state of education— with teacher shortages sweeping the country and enrollment in certification programs on a steady decline—now is the perfect time to tout each and every advantage your schools have to offer, including where you are and what makes your area special.

Spotlight your community culture.

When it comes to selling your locale to potential employees, there’s no better place to start than with a focus on community. You want future employees to be enticed by the culture and lifestyle your district can offer, but you should also provide incentives to live in the area that aren’t work-related. A potential hire may love your schools, but not know enough about your neighborhood or town to take the risk of moving somewhere unfamiliar.

That’s why it’s also a good idea to provide as many resources as possible about your area’s features—the proximity of your district to quality healthcare, outdoor recreation areas, or even shopping. Future employees are looking for places they can thrive both at work and in their personal lives, and it’s up to you to show them that your district meets those needs.

For a solid example, we look to the School District of Lee County in Florida. This 94,000-student suburban district has found a uniquely helpful way to make sure their online visitors know exactly what their area offers. When you visit the recruitment page on Lee Schools’ site, three resource links are prominently featured: “Live,” “Work,” and “Play.” Above these three buttons, a slideshow automatically scrolls through pictures of locals enjoying life in the area.

Visitors who click “Live” are taken to a page on the district site titled “Moving to Lee County,” which functions

as a guide to living in the area. This page includes links to school district salaries, details on housing and rental costs in the area, homebuying resources, a map of the county, and even links to utility providers. Also included here is a breakdown of living costs categorized by specific neighborhoods, as well as a link to information on local voter registration.

In many situations, potential employees will be moving with their families—including spouses who may also be looking for work. Naturally, the “Work” button takes visitors to a page linking to job opportunities in Lee Schools. But the district’s recruitment page also includes links to job openings for the city government as well as for Lee Health, the largest healthcare system in the area. Along with these resources, Lee Schools provides a linked list of local colleges and universities for those pursuing or continuing higher education.

Finally, the “Play” button directs users to a page containing links to local attractions and points of interest. From art galleries, restaurants, and entertainment venues to places of worship and volunteer organizations, this page makes sure that anyone interested in working in Lee Schools knows exactly what’s waiting for them in their potential new neighborhood.

Take advantage of where you are.

Location poses a unique issue for rural and small-town schools in particular—they may feel as if their areas have fewer selling points than larger cities. However, pandemic-era trends suggest that more young professionals are moving to small towns for their affordability and comfort.

If you don’t have big-city amenities, there’s no need to worry. Play up your small-town feel and close-knit community. Discuss the low cost of living in your area. Mention your short commute to a major city or the beautiful state park just down the road. There’s always a reason to love where you live, so make sure prospective employees can get a good sense of that from your website. After all, many people leaving large cities are intentionally looking for more space and a variety of available housing options.

Sometimes, your strongest selling point may be as simple as the natural beauty around you. Grants-Cibola County Schools serves more than 3,000 students in rural northwest New Mexico. Just about 80 miles west of Albuquerque, this medium-sized district is proud to showcase the beauty and uniqueness of their surrounding area. On the homepage of

Grants-Cibola’s website, visitors are immediately greeted with a slideshow featuring the many points of interest in and around the district, including its attractive spot on Historic Route 66. Grants-Cibola does a particularly good job of highlighting the many natural and historic wonders of the area—from mountains, canyons, and volcanic craters to sites like Acoma Sky City and El Morro National Monument.

“If you’re a nature lover, this is the place to be,” says Stephen Brown, SIS specialist and PR rep for Grants-Cibola. “To me, it was a no-brainer to include our locale and the surrounding areas on our website. The strategy was to highlight our area to recruit potential employees and even families who might be considering bringing their kids to our schools and making this area their home.”

Fort Davis ISD in West Texas uses a similar approach to show off their sprawling rural locale. The homepage for this 200-student district includes a slideshow showcasing the surrounding mountainous ranching community, along with a beautiful snapshot of the small town itself. However, the district goes one step further to point their visitors to local attractions. If you scroll toward the bottom of their homepage, you’re met with an “Our Community” section, which has clickable photos that link to places like Davis Mountain Park, the Fort Davis National Historic Site, and a local observatory.

“We intentionally wanted to showcase the scenery and other places of interest,” says Fort Davis superintendent Graydon Hicks. “This is a beautiful spot and the weather’s beautiful here, too. We have unique things in our area that are nowhere else in the state—so that’s how we can make people look at us instead of somewhere else.”

life—and they need to know what that life could look like. So show off those rolling hills and country highways. Promote your parks and performing arts centers. Let those who live, work, and learn in your district speak for you. More than anything, make sure you’re telling your future employees what your community already knows—that your district is a great place to call home.

Make the invisible visible.

Since location is such an important decision-making factor for any job candidate, you should be selling your area and its culture along with your schools. Even if your district isn’t in the nation’s most exciting locale, it surely has a few selling points and local attractions—hype those up with photographs, details, and links. The more positive things your prospective new employees know about your area, the better. After all, only 41% of districts are acknowledging their communities and locations on their websites. That means doing so can help you really stand out from the crowd and attract more applicants.

To take things one step further, let your stakeholders share stories of life in your district. This could be anything from teacher and student testimonials to a video detailing what life is like in your area. In one of their YouTube videos, Washington’s Ridgefield School District features a couple who has lived in the area for decades. They talk directly to the camera about life in the district and raising their kids in Ridgefield schools. Providing this personal glimpse into life in your district is a surefire way to garner interest from prospective candidates, or at least help them understand what’s to love about your community.

In the end, you’re not just asking potential employees to work in your district. You’re often asking them to start a new

Stand Out or Strike Out

Job Postings to Kick Off Your Top Talent Strategy

In just a few short months, thousands of superintendents and other school leaders will once again turn their attention to hiring. For many school leaders, though, this year is likely to be particularly challenging. According to a September 2022 study by AASA, 84% of superintendent respondents reported not having enough applicants for currently posted jobs. Additionally, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education reports a consistent and troubling decline in the number of students seeking degrees in education over the past decade.

The persistence of a strong labor market has also contributed to higher expectations among most job seekers. LinkedIn claims that in 2022, applicants viewed twice as many jobs before applying than they did in 2019. And although the number of job openings in the U.S. has grown 22% since January 2022, the number of applicants has actually dropped by 23%. If all this isn’t enough to worry about, a 2022 NEA study found that an alarming 55% of teachers surveyed were considering leaving the profession “earlier than they had planned.”

What does this mean for school leaders and recruiters, beyond the likelihood of a hiring headache between now and next August? It means that you need to take every advantage possible when it comes to recruiting talent for your schools—and that starts with job postings and the application process.

Why job postings?

For the vast majority of school districts, job postings are a pretty cut-and-dried business. You have a form, a list of required qualifications, and maybe a description of your ideal candidate. Chances are, you even have a set of job posting templates that you cycle through depending on vacancies. After all, a 10th grade World Literature teacher will need to have many of the same qualifications as a seventh grade English teacher.

But here’s the thing—because most school districts don’t put a lot of effort into their job postings and applications, a school district that does put in the extra effort automatically stands out. And in a hiring market like this, standing out is more important than ever.

The most strategic place for job postings to exist on a district’s website is on a dedicated careers page. After all, most job seekers find opportunities online these days. However, they’re relying on job posting aggregator sites like Indeed and even education-specific career platforms like SchoolSpring to view a large quantity of opportunities at once. Unfortunately, this means that your job posting may be the only exposure some candidates have to your district. That’s especially true if they’re relocating to your area and aren’t already familiar with your schools.

That’s why building impactful job postings is crucial to putting your best foot forward and netting new talent. While it takes a bit of effort, it’s the first step to a more successful hiring game.

How to Write a Next-Level Job Posting

How do you get this started? Writing a job posting that stands out from the crowd involves a few key ingredients.

Start with culture.

When job seekers are looking over dozens and dozens of job opportunities, they’re not just seeking out positions they’re qualified for. They’re also scanning for workplaces that look enjoyable. Most school districts provide little—if any—information about school culture in their job postings, so illuminating all of the great reasons to work in your district already sets you apart from the crowd.

What does this look like in the context of a job posting? Before you go into the details of a specific position, spend some time talking about what someone could expect of your district’s work culture. For example, if you have rallied your staff around a culture of high expectations and mutual support, including that in your job postings will likely attract professionals looking for those qualities in a workplace. On the other hand, being upfront about your district’s values also weeds out candidates who don’t share those priorities—all before they even apply.

Think creatively about your expectations.

When you’re hiring for a position in your district, you’re looking for more than just technical qualifications. You want someone who will thrive within your culture—someone who will build and further support the values, norms, and habits you want in your district. But how do you identify culture fits when you already have so many technical questions to consider? After all, if you only hire for technical requirements, you run the risk of hiring teachers who have the right background, but don’t contribute to the positive culture your community has worked to pursue.

The answer is to find ways to embed cultural expectations into your technical requirements. Let’s say you have a core value of continuous growth, but also a technical requirement that all teachers must attend a two-week professional development over the summer. In this case, you can combine your

technical requirement into your cultural expectations: “We’re looking for highly motivated teachers who take every opportunity to hone their craft.” After all, what highly motivated teacher wouldn’t be up for attending an advanced professional development, even if it is over the summer?

Be brief about a role’s expectations.

According to research by LinkedIn, shorter job postings (fewer than 300 words) tend to get more applicants than longer ones. Be strategic about what you include in each job posting, and don’t be afraid to save a minor requirement for a later conversation. After all, a job posting is not a contract— it’s okay to leave some of the more rote qualifications for your in-person discussions.

Shorter job postings are also more mobile friendly. Per our own research this issue, more than three-quarters of teachers—76%—said that they use their phones to research the jobs they apply to (see page 6) . Making sure your application is mobile responsive also makes it more shareable, increasing its potential to be read by people who otherwise wouldn’t have seen it.

Systematizing your work

Revamping your job postings may seem like a lot of effort, but the good news is that this work doesn’t have to happen all at once or be completely redone for each position that opens up. The majority of the work—such as exploring your district’s culture and determining which values make prospective candidates desirable—could be written in a one-hour meeting with hiring decision-makers.

Your end product could be a template that stands out, but is also flexible enough to switch up for various positions. (For an example, see page 31.) Different roles should attract different skill sets, so while cultural messaging should be consistent across your postings, the application itself should cater to the specific needs of the role. The language that might recruit a stellar athletic director should be changed if you’re hiring a pre-K paraeducator.

As you can see, our example job posting concludes with the expectations of the position. Today’s job seekers want specifics on what to expect from a position long before they walk through your doors. By including information about what candidates can anticipate—or even what they should accomplish within their first year in your district—you are letting an applicant know how to excel in their position.

What happens after your job posting goes live also matters. Imagine a job seeker who’s aiming to submit at least a dozen applications. They find your position, and while they’re interested, the application is a long, multistep process that requires entering the same information over and over and over. That candidate could easily choose to skip out on your district—simply because of application fatigue. Keeping things as efficient as possible doesn’t just mean less work for your candidate—it also means that you have the potential to attract applicants who might otherwise have overlooked your role because of a labor-intensive application process.

Following up is also a great way to stand out to applicants. Many job seekers have low expectations for the organizations they apply to, so this is an easy way to shine. Even if you decide not to hire a candidate, you should update them frequently and honestly. After all, the teacher market in your area is a finite resource, and a candidate who is not a good fit for one position may be perfect for another in a few years. Write up a few email templates you can use to keep candidates in the loop. This simple strategy will make sure all your applicants feel valued—and help build your employer brand.

What about applicant management systems?

If you use an applicant management system, this all may seem like a tall ask. After all, most systems have rigid formats that—while they make it easier to track applicants—can limit the type of information you include in each job posting. The use of applicant management systems is pretty widespread, even among smaller districts, and you may have limited control over which system your district uses. Regardless of whether or not you have the ability to choose your own system, you will likely feel inhibited by its limitations sooner or later.

How does this impact your ability to create innovative, effective job applications—and how can you work most effectively within those limitations?

1. Spend time exploring your product’s customization options.

Even the most basic, old-fashioned software will have features worth exploring. If your district is resistant to updating systems, explore whatever product updates or features you can. If you’re looking at your product with an eye toward innovation, chances are, you will find ways to make it happen.

2. Be creative about how you use your product if you need a feature it doesn’t have.

In our conversations with hiring managers, some have ad mitted that while their applicant tracking systems have frustrating limitations, they can frequently find ways to work around them. For example, one HR manager said that her team used a pipeline within their system that was designed for cold calls to track LinkedIn applicants instead. Just be cause your applicant management system has limitations doesn’t mean that you can’t be creative and make it work.

3. Be vocal with your decision-makers—and your vendor—about what you need to take your recruitment game to the next level.

Products change over time, often because of feedback from customers. Providing your vendor with information about what you want is one path for molding a product’s future so that it can better suit your needs.

How do you get this started in your own district?

Overhauling your job postings and applications means serious work—and usually intensive collaboration between comms and HR. But given the nature of hiring this next school year, that teamwork will be what carries you through this particularly difficult labor market. However, if your district already understands that prospective candidates will only get harder to find, you probably won’t need to convince your staff that this teamwork is necessary.

Despite efforts across many states to improve teacher recruitment and retention, the job market is likely to be difficult for years, if not decades. If your district isn’t already changing up your hiring strategies, you are risking being left behind in a quickly changing hiring market.

That’s where taking a close look at your job postings can put you ahead of the game. And remember: When applicants scan job postings, they are doing just that—scanning. Their goal is not to look at every posting slowly and thoroughly, but rather to quickly identify a variety of opportunities that seem intriguing at first glance. The most vital question you can take to your hiring committee is this: What can we do to stand out from the crowd?

About Centerville School District:

We believe that every student who enters our school buildings has a story we can learn from. We support our students to build the skills and confidence they need to succeed. Our teachers challenge students intellectually and nurture their JOY of learning.

At CSD, we believe in the power of crafting an environment in which all students can thrive. Our staff members prioritize educating the whole child by providing resources for students to grow both academically and emotionally. We want our students to live with joy and be well equipped to seize whatever opportunities they are able.

We do more than aspire to build a community—we actively work to create one. As a CSD teacher, you will be part of an inclusive team that works together inside and outside of the classroom, whether that is during lunch duty or a Friday potluck.

You will enjoy teaching at CSD if: You want to be part of a productive, supportive teaching community. You love to get into the craft of teaching and value the human connection that is unique to the teaching profession.

As a Middle School Math Teacher: You will play a critical role in student success. We want you to build an exciting classroom environment while maintaining a rigorous STEAMfocused curriculum. Your classroom will be a place where students learn and grow in the field of mathematics and feel prepared for life beyond the walls of our schools.

Expectations:

Nurture a Culture of Curiosity : We know that students go far when they are intensely curious about the challenges at hand.

Build Community: People thrive when they know they are valued. Our employees prioritize building communities —from classrooms to PLCs — and do whatever they can to make everyone feel seen and valued.

Focus on Long-Term Growth: We want you to receive the mentorship, professional development, coaching, and support you need to become the best math teacher you can be.

Interviewing Like a Boss Building a Process for Innovative Interviews

According to school leaders, there was a time when just about any open position would pull a good number of candidates. Now, many of those same school leaders say they’re lucky to get two or three applicants per vacancy; sometimes, they get none at all. It’s clear that we’re living in a teacher’s market—and that makes your interview process more important than ever.

While you as the superintendent may not be in the room for every interview, it’s critical that you and your staff work together to create a cohesive and effective interview process for your district. The last thing you want is to hire a candidate who’s a great educator but a poor fit for your schools.

So, as an employer, how can you ensure your district’s interviewing process is finding candidates who will be effective educators and who will thrive—and stay—in your schools? We think it has to do with digging deeper and thinking differently.

Digging Deeper

Have you ever interviewed a candidate and thought they were amazing, only to realize a few weeks into their employment that they weren’t a great fit at all? The truth is, interviewing is a skill that can be honed with practice. But you aren’t just looking for someone who’s good at being interviewed; you’re looking for someone who’s good for your schools. So how do you find those perfect candidates?

Think differently about your questions.

Nowadays, online forums are full of questions that prospective teachers should expect during interviews— and the “best” answers to give in response. In fact, some articles offer word-for-word answers that interviewees can memorize. It’s natural for job seekers to use every resource available to them—and, of course, thorough preparation is a good sign from a prospective hire. But it’s important to remember that if you’re using canned questions, you’re likely to get canned responses.

If you want honest answers from your prospective candidates, try asking unexpected questions. We’re not saying you should intentionally throw your interviewee off or make them uncomfortable. Rather, try spinning archetypal interview questions into something that will encourage applicants to take their answers deeper. For example, instead of asking a candidate to tell you about themselves, ask them what they wish more people understood about them. Instead of asking them to describe their greatest weakness, try, If you could wake up tomorrow having gained a new ability, what would it be and why?

Another great way to think differently about your interview questions is to move beyond the basic question-andanswer model. Dr. Courtney Van Cleve, the state director of educator talent acquisition and effectiveness at the

Mississippi Department of Education (MDE), says one way to do this is with performance tasks—anything that requires candidates to complete an in-person activity or solve a realworld problem.

For example, let’s say your district is focusing on learning environment issues. Why not ask your candidates to conduct a mock lesson to demonstrate how they’d establish behavior norms in their classrooms? If you don’t have the time or space for a demo lesson, consider taking a different approach. Let’s say 70% of your office referrals this year have been coded as “off-task behavior.” Why not show that data to your interviewees and ask them to brainstorm causes and solutions? Remind your candidates that there are no wrong answers; this is simply an opportunity for them to show off their collaborative problem-solving skills.

Interestingly, a recent survey conducted by the MDE showed that only 3% of teacher respondents reported conducting a demo lesson during their interviews. Only 2% reported doing an activity with student data. For Van Cleve, that’s an obvious opportunity for growth. After all, performance tasks are a great way to gain insight into how candidates will manage the specific challenges your schools face.

According to Van Cleve, role-playing can also give you authentic insight into a candidate’s personality and approach to problem-solving. For example, maybe your district has been fielding phone calls from parents with concerns about curriculum. Pretend to be one of those parents and ask the candidate to role-play as the teacher handling that conversation. “But then, give them feedback on their response and have them do it again,” Van Cleve suggests. Not only will this clue you into how a candidate will manage engaging with families, but it will also show you how they handle and respond to feedback. “Coachability is huge,” she says. “It’s your ability to respond to a given situation. We all have to be able to learn.”

Think differently about work culture.

Study after study shows that organizations with healthy, positive cultures enjoy heightened levels of productivity and retention. However, using cultural fit as a hiring requirement can be a bit sticky.

Patty McCord was the chief talent officer at Netflix for 14 years. In an opinion piece for Harvard Business Review, she writes: “What most people really mean when they say

someone is a good fit culturally is that he or she is someone they’d like to have a beer with.” According to McCord, that’s a real problem. After all, personality isn’t always a good indicator of how successful someone will be in your organization. “This misguided hiring strategy can also contribute to a company’s lack of diversity,” McCord writes, “since very often the people we enjoy hanging out with have backgrounds much like our own.”

To be clear, we aren’t saying that it doesn’t matter if an employee buys into your work culture. We’re saying you have to be careful about how you screen for cultural fit during interviews. So how do you do that? It starts with being very clear about your district’s values. “Culture is the surface-level piece,” Van Cleve tells us. “Values are how you break culture down into discrete components and aligned actions.”

But identifying your core values is only the first step; you also have to determine how you will identify candidates who align with your values. In an interview with Forbes, Emily Tetto, vice president of talent and culture at marketing agency Acceleration Partners, says making decisions based on a gut feeling can derail your hiring process. She believes that in order to prevent your hiring process from being skewed by implicit biases, there must be a careful focus on facts throughout every interview. “We have to dig in and ask why. What are the facts? What did you see? What did you hear?” Tetto explains. “Your gut is biased, hire on facts.”

In other words, once you’ve identified your core values, define explicitly what those values look like in a potential hire. Van Cleve says one great way to screen for values during interviews is by asking candidates to “Describe a time...” For example, if relationships are one of your core values, ask candidates to describe a time when they saw their relationship with a student improve or to describe how they plan to prioritize relationships in their future classrooms.

The ultimate goal is to prevent work culture from turning into an emphasis on likability. You have all kinds of students in your buildings; a staff that is diverse in every sense of the word provides more opportunities for your students to connect. At the end of the day, you want to hire candidates who will promote your fundamental vision and help you become the district you want to be.

Think differently about what it means to thrive.

Most educators are already bought into the mission of education—they’re there for the kids. That means they’ll probably buy into your district’s mission, too. It’s easy to get behind things like student success and excellence. What’s not so easy is finding educators who will thrive in the day-today life of your district.

It’s important to remember that hiring the right candidate doesn’t necessarily mean hiring the candidate with the most prestigious degree. Say you have a few prospective teachers applying for the same position. Maybe one candidate is a first-year teacher with less experience, but she’s spent her whole life living in a rural town much like your own. That’s worth considering.

Another way to think about this is to ask yourself who thrives in your district and what attributes they share. Netflix once found that all their best data science employees shared an avid interest in music. They realized this was an indicator of people’s ability to switch between their left and right brains, so their recruiters started looking for a love of music on the resumes of prospective hires. Now, we aren’t saying you should hire folks who love Dr. Pepper because all your best teachers love Dr. Pepper. But maybe you notice that your best teachers are able to find humor in the more challenging moments of their jobs. Keep that in mind during interviews.

Van Cleve says there’s another easy way to identify which prospective candidates will thrive in the day-to-day life of your district. “Whenever humanly possible, make sure you’ve got teachers on your interview panel,” she tells us. No one knows better than your current teachers what it takes to be successful in your district.

Selling the Job

In every interview your district conducts, you’re trying to determine whether or not a candidate is right for your schools. At the same time, that candidate is trying to decide whether or not your district is right for them. That’s why it’s so important to recognize the interview as a marketing touch point.

McCord says that for Netflix recruiters, the goal “was to have every person who came for an interview walk away wanting the job.” But even as you sell the job, be honest about the work and the struggles prospective hires might face. The right people will see the most difficult parts of the job as exciting challenges.

Plus, even if the person you’re interviewing isn’t a good fit for your current vacancy, you still want them to be impressed by your district. Maybe they’ll be a good fit for another position down the road. Or maybe they’ll tell their teacher friends what a great experience they had with you, and one of those friends will apply in the future.

More often than not, though, the job and the district are only part of what you’re selling to prospective hires. Candidates will also be asking whether or not they could see themselves working with the people interviewing them. In fact, Van Cleve says that of the teachers surveyed by the MDE, 28% said the greatest influence on their decision to apply to their current district was a conversation they had with a school leader. Candidates aren’t just looking for good schools; they’re looking for good bosses and coworkers.

Just like most things in your district, your interviewing process comes down to building relationships. Every candidate is a person with a story to tell about who they are, where they come from, and where they hope to go—just as you have a story to tell about yourself and your district. So don’t be afraid to dig a little deeper. There’s no telling what— or who—you might find.

Knocking Down Walls

A PROFILE OF DR. ANDI FOURLIS

When she was five years old, Dr. Andi Fourlis could not have been more excited about her first day of kindergarten. After all, she had been playing school since she was a toddler. Everywhere she looked, Fourlis saw exciting lessons to teach and potential pupils to teach to. “The world was my classroom,” she tells us. “I used to teach the alphabet to the produce in the shopping cart while my mother pushed me through the supermarket.”

So no one could have been more surprised when Fourlis came home from her first day of school crying and promising never to go back. Her mother was so concerned: “But Andi, you love playing school! How could you not love school?” Through tears, the future lifelong educator replied, “You didn’t tell me that I wasn’t going to be the teacher!”

Decades later—including many years in which she was the teacher—Dr. Andi Fourlis of Mesa Public Schools in Arizona still loves school. “I knew from the beginning

that I would be an educator,” she shares. “I knew that my purpose was to organize people and build experiences.” Now in her third year as the superintendent of the state’s largest school district, Fourlis is a leader in the charge to change the way we view the teaching profession. Her goal is to ensure that all students and teachers are able to love school—and all that it encompasses—just as much as she always has.

A Collaborator from the Start

When Fourlis began her career as a seventh grade language arts teacher in central Phoenix, she never imagined she’d eventually leave the classroom. But as Fourlis began growing into the teacher she would become, she quickly found herself looking outside the confines of her own classroom to better understand how to integrate what was working in other classrooms on her hall.

“One of my first experiences was noticing how isolated my own classroom felt from the rest of what my students were learning—and from the rest of their lives,” Fourlis remembers. “This really prodded me to consider how we could rethink the learning experiences of our students. Looking back, though, I realize now that I was already thinking about how to make the experience of teaching more effective and satisfying, even as a first-year teacher.”

This would be the first of many moments in which Fourlis would push for collaboration over isolation. Only months into her teaching career, she sought to de-silo her instruction by sharing classes with the social studies teacher across the hall. “It was perfect. She had amazing content about history that really resonated with my students, and I had the ability to focus on the literacy skills my students needed to understand the texts,” Fourlis explains. This natural inclination toward collaboration would become a hallmark of both Fourlis’ teaching and leadership styles.

Fourlis found that working on a team allowed for more opportunities to have eyes on students—and to get real-time feedback from other professionals. It was the kind of highgrowth environment that she—and her students—needed the most. “In my second year of teaching, my teammate and I convinced my principal to knock down the wall between my classroom and the math classroom next door,” Fourlis says. “We really had to convince him that what we were trying worked—and he was impressed!”

Like many future school leaders, Fourlis was completely focused on her own craft and didn’t imagine ever moving into

administration. She loved her classroom, which she now describes as having a family environment. “I realized early on that many of my students needed more from me than an education—they needed a sense of love and safety,” Fourlis says. With this in mind, she built her teaching philosophy on the belief that between her two core values of love and collaboration, her students could thrive no matter what was happening outside of the classroom.

Fourlis’ pedagogical success did not go unnoticed. During a typical round of administrative classroom evaluations, the teacher leader evaluating her asked if she had ever considered mentoring other teachers. Fourlis was initially hesitant, expressing that she was deeply invested in the work of her classroom. But after repeated nudges from various leaders in her district, she decided to accept a formalized mentorship role.

Shifting to Lead

While Fourlis’ experiences in the classroom will always be her deepest roots, she found a new world of impact in her work as a mentor to teachers. “I never had a vision of becoming an administrator or leaving the classroom,” she explains. “Rather, I was concerned with the question, How can I help other teachers? That was my motivation and my problem to solve.” Working with other educators—and sharing the teaching methods that had worked so well for her—became her new calling. She would continue to travel this continuum of teacher support and leadership all the way to the superintendency.

Fourlis would spend the next decade working in curriculum development, constantly rethinking what it means to optimally equip teachers to do their jobs. She then became the chief learning officer at the Arizona Science Center—a position that allowed her to scale her impact in a new environment. In this role, she worked hard to master industry best practices and invest in innovation.

In reflecting on her many roles, Fourlis is eager to talk about all the lessons she learned along the way. “The most important thing I learned was that the skills that carried me to success in one position were not guaranteed to serve me in the next one,” she says. “I had to be continually listening, learning, and pushing myself in new directions. You never truly leave your foundation, but you must be continually open to searching and understanding the new environments you’re working in.”

Photos courtesy of Mesa Public Schools

Fourlis believes that retaining a beginner’s mindset is critical, especially as the field of education changes so rapidly. “I can’t go into a classroom with the same skills that made me successful decades ago,” she says. “This is now, and I have to have empathy —whether it’s for a student, teacher, or administrator—and really observe what their challenges are. If we aren’t empathetic, if we don’t try to understand the struggle, we’re never going to design what needs to come next.”

While she has continued to develop new skills during her transition into leadership, Fourlis remains strikingly true to her original philosophy of love and collaboration. She began her career with the intention of organizing people and creating experiences, and learned early on that collaboration was key. As she works to find what should come next in the field of K-12 education, these core values are resurfacing in surprising—and exciting—ways.

A Team Approach

Like many administrators, Fourlis has viewed recent turbulence in the world of education with a sense of trepidation, but also opportunity. The roles that schools play in daily life, and the roles of the educators working within them, are changing at a fast pace—sometimes more dramatically than they have in decades. For her, the pandemic and its ensuing cultural shifts have illuminated

problems and structural inadequacies that generally already existed, sometimes even for years. Fourlis believes that districts can’t wait for sunnier skies; they have to build structures that will weather any storm.

If you’ve heard anything about Mesa Public Schools in the past few years, you have likely learned that the district is in the midst of broad and sweeping change. They’ve made national news more than once—especially for their innovative teacher recruitment programs and unique team teaching approach. Fourlis is happy to share that she’s not the sole initiator of Mesa’s impressive new endeavors. She is, however, dedicated to creating the best experiences for teachers and their students—even if that means drastically changing the way instruction is delivered.

In November 2022, Mesa received national attention for its unique team teaching approach, in which groups of educators work in tandem to teach multisubject classes—some of which have over 100 students. Articles in education journals such as the Hechinger Report and Education Week speculate that this strategy could help address national concerns like teacher shortages and student behavior issues.

But even considering Fourlis’ success with team teaching, this approach can seem mind-boggling. After all, don’t

most educators want smaller class sizes? Upon further investigation, though, it’s clear that this highly collaborative method could become the future of the classroom experience. In fact, a recent study from Johns Hopkins University found that teachers who team teach have higher job satisfaction than those who don’t. The team teaching environment appears to have a positive impact on educational outcomes for students, too.

While Mesa incorporates a variety of team teaching methods, this particular model was first piloted at Westwood High School. In this iteration of team teaching, groups of four teachers voluntarily collaborate on a shared roster. While any classroom possesses some degree of controlled chaos, these team-taught classrooms can be particularly robust, with many moving parts all at once. In fact, while some teams focus on a single grade level, others can teach groups that span multiple grades. Within these groups, teachers use their creativity—and shared sense of ownership over the class— to decide how to structure their daily lessons and how to group students for focus and intervention throughout the day.

When Fourlis talks about this model, she describes how intentionality is woven into designing each of Mesa’s teacher teams. Her administrators consider more than subject areas when deciding which teachers should work together—they also consider each teacher’s individual strengths. Who is really strong at integrating technology into their lessons? Which teacher always knocks it out of the park with primary sources?

These questions and more allow Mesa to build teams of teachers who can complement—and learn from—one another’s strengths. Administrators also work with the educators involved to determine their non-negotiables and what each team needs to be successful. This has included shared planning time, a consistent shared roster, and opportunities for professional development related to co-teaching.

Fourlis admits that, at first, some parents were a little skeptical. However, since classes have been underway, both families and students have responded with enthusiasm. Although joining a teaching team in Mesa is completely voluntary, it has become more popular the longer the programs have existed. “Over the past few years, I’ve encouraged teachers who were initially reluctant to consider team teaching to go and observe team classes to see what their colleagues are so excited about,” Fourlis explains. “More often than not, those same teachers become the strongest advocates for our model.”

And it seems there are many positive things to share about this highly collaborative approach. Team teaching allows teachers a degree of flexibility that is impossible within the traditional classroom structure. Because teachers share responsibility for the room, there’s no trouble in stepping outside for a restroom break or phone call—a luxury that many classroom teachers don’t have. Substitute teachers are also generally more comfortable if there are other educators in the room.

But perhaps most important is each team’s shared sense of responsibility for the students on their roster. “When you’re teaching students who are all yours, it can feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders,” Fourlis tells us. “There’s a constant fear that you’re going to miss something and let a kid down. With a team teaching model, that weight isn’t exclusively yours to bear.”

Teachers aren’t the only fans of this new approach, either. Student growth in the district has also quickly become apparent. Within this model, students are able to work on projects that encompass a variety of subject areas. For example, an essay that involves primary historical sources could count for grades in both language arts and social studies. This way, students can consistently connect the skills they’re learning in one subject area with the rest of their academic work.

While this model has many benefits, one stands out. Team teaching has allowed the district to think more strategically about how they develop their teachers, including preparing them to be social-emotional learning coaches. “One of my favorite outcomes of this program was that it coincided with a push to increase the number of therapy dogs in our

classrooms,” Fourlis says. “This is just another strength that a team teacher can bring to their team—if you have a therapy dog certification, then a therapy dog gets to be on your team, too.”

No Plateaus at Mesa

When asked what sets Mesa apart, Fourlis says it’s the kindness and community that are both cornerstones of her staff and school cultures. She tells us about entire families who work at Mesa and the many employees who have worked at the district for their entire careers. Even though Mesa is one of the largest school districts in the entire Southwest, Fourlis believes her schools share a unique heartbeat that permeates the entire district.

Being such a large district also comes with its challenges, though, especially with Fourlis’ signature collaborative design. Smaller districts can hold administrators’ meetings in a conference room. But to gather Mesa’s 300-plus building-level administrators in one place, Fourlis has to rent a ballroom. Navigating the scope of this vastness can be challenging, especially as someone who believes in the power of human connection and collaboration.

“I would love to get to more schools more often,” Fourlis shares. “It takes me an entire year to get around to all of the schools in my district, and to do that, I have to work hard.” One side effect of her collaborative style of leadership is that sometimes change can take longer than people might expect. Fourlis believes in the value of listening carefully to stakeholders when making major decisions, and she admits that this can simply take time.

In reflecting on her work as a superintendent, Fourlis is proud of her reputation in the district. “I am proud that I am seen as the kind of person who will listen and empathize, who will work hard to come up with creative solutions,” she explains. “In my heart of hearts, I really do believe that anything is possible if we work together. We have the talent and we have the motivation. I know we can do it.”

Fourlis credits listening and empathy—and always coming from a place of support—with helping her find success at Mesa. “I have found that how you make people feel is one of the most important ingredients to making change,” she says. “If you make people feel good, if you make people feel heard and safe, then when you roll out a new initiative they will be so much more willing to create the change you need.”

Designing Instruction for a New Generation

While much of Fourlis’ work has centered around optimizing the student experience, she is—at her heart—always an educator. This means that she is deeply committed to exploring how to make teaching a highly sought-after employment option. Fourlis believes that team teaching alone won’t fundamentally change the teaching profession. Rather, it has to be part of a concerted effort to radically rethink how schools function, from the bell schedule to the grading policies.

“Teachers don’t leave the work,” Fourlis explains. “They leave the working conditions. Today’s generation is looking for collaboration and flexibility. If we don’t redesign the teaching profession to do that, we’re going to continue to be in a crisis for teachers.”

When it comes to initiating this necessary change, Fourlis leans heavily into research, both on how this change should take shape and how to get new people on board. “Change happens by invitation first, and after that, with plenty of support,” Fourlis tells us. “You have to recruit and be mindful of

how you manage your talent. If you start small with the right people, you get success, and then success breeds success.”

In the end, Fourlis believes that any step toward improving models of teaching must be taken with one core belief in mind: Education has the immense power to create happy, healthy people living in happy, healthy communities. This, Fourlis says, is her deepest motivation. “I’ve been reading a lot about the science of hope,” she says. “I’ve been told a lot of times that hope is not a strategy. But here’s what hope really is: a set of goals with pathways connected to them. And when you create a goal and create a pathway to get there— that’s the work of a superintendent.”

From Turbulence to Clear Skies

What airlines can teach us about teacher recruitment

Recently, one of our SchoolCEO writers attended a conference in Napa, California. Instead of making the 29-hour drive from Little Rock, she opted to fly. Her flight to the conference was relatively uneventful—a success story for traveling these days—but there was a hiccup on her way home. The flight was delayed, not for extreme weather conditions or mechanical issues, but because the plane lacked a pilot.

Her experience got us thinking about the similarities in labor shortages between airlines and schools. At a glance, airlines and public education couldn’t seem more different. But beneath the surface, these industries share a variety of conditions that have had similar effects on their customers and employees.

To start, the most sought-after employees in both industries require specific certifications and licenses that take years— and in most cases, tens of thousands of dollars—to earn. The result? Highly constrained labor pools. Aviation and education are also highly visible customer service industries, frequently subject to public inquiry and inspection. Even the tiniest indiscretion has the potential to generate a disastrous public response.

In addition, schools and airlines both had to pivot wildly during the pandemic, causing unprecedented criticism, mistrust, and confusion. And as the COVID situation evolved, employees in both industries were forced to publicly combat misinformation and defend ever-changing protocols, all while navigating the personal effects of a global crisis.

Of course, Delta and American have very different bottom lines than your schools do. It makes sense that they have very different solutions to the challenges you share. That’s why we’re exploring some approaches that airlines have taken recently to address this enduring labor shortage, and how your schools might apply these strategies.

Why Airlines?

District leaders have been feeling the heat of staffing shortages for quite a while longer than airline execs. Ask any seasoned educator—the labor crisis schools are facing today has roots in the Great Recession of the late 2000s. The pandemic may have exacerbated pre-existing hiring challenges for schools, but it didn’t cause them.

But while the education labor shortage slow-burned its way across the country over the past decade, the airline

staffing shortage materialized almost overnight. As travel bans and social distancing protocols rolled out during the early days of the pandemic, “airlines urged many senior pilots, flight attendants and other employees to take buyouts or early retirements,” says Joann Muller from Axios. Airlines for America reports that between February 2020 and November 2020, the U.S. aviation industry lost more than 20% of its workforce—almost 94,000 employees.

Originally, experts anticipated travel to rebound gradually in the years following the pandemic. Instead, just as students—for the most part—returned to classrooms, stircrazy passengers returned to the skies, sparking concern, confusion, and even outrage over mass vacancies.

Despite the differences in how they emerged, shortages are now wreaking havoc across both industries. If you ask us, the education labor shortage is arguably more nuanced than the airlines’. To start, schools have less discretion over salaries, qualifications, and “product” than airlines do. But as previously mentioned, experts in these fields are working to overcome similar challenges in a familiar climate. How can their solutions apply to your district?

Barriers to Entry

Both airline carriers and schools are struggling to fill vacancies, in part because the barriers to entering these fields are extraordinarily high. Each state requires educators to acquire a range of certifications, including a bachelor’s degree, before entering the classroom. And according to survey data collected by U.S. News, the average cost of in-state tuition is currently at an all-time high.

This is particularly troubling for the future health of public education, considering that nearly half of today’s teachers already owe over $58,000 in student loans, with one in seven owing at least $105,000. Even more, in 2021, the wage gap between teachers and comparable college graduates grew to an all-time high of 23.5%. In other words, teachers only make 76.5 cents for each dollar that college graduates in other industries earn.

Excluding the wage gap, airlines are in a similar predicament. In the past, most major airlines required a bachelor’s degree for pilots in addition to other certifications and licenses. And even in the case that an airline carrier drops its degree requirement, the combined cost of a private pilot license and commercial certification starts at $89,000.

In other words, the average employee enters either of these workforces saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Sure, these qualifications are important to ensuring that schools and airlines function safely and efficiently—but they’re also cost-prohibitive and can discourage potential candidates from even considering careers in either field.

In lieu of raising salaries or lowering requirements to fly, airlines are taking a different approach. Many major airline carriers—like American and Southwest—have launched their own pilot academies. In addition to aviation training, these academies are designed to completely prepare students for navigating the bureaucracies of their respective airline carriers efficiently.

Kelby Tansey, manager of recruitment marketing for Southwest Airlines, told us more about the company’s pilot training program. “Destination 225° offers four pathways that cater directly to the experiences and needs of each student,” she tells us. “Under each pathway, students are provided with the training, mentorship, and opportunities needed to fly for Southwest, regardless of previous flight experience, education, or career.” And even more, “because Southwest supports students through scholarships, financing, and paid flight opportunities before graduation from the program, Destination 225° is also producing a more diverse workforce,” she says.

Destination 225° isn’t passive in recruitment efforts, either. “Data suggests that students begin thinking about a pathway for their future career around fifth grade,” says Tansey. “That’s why Southwest has invested in various K-12 initiatives, which provide young students with exposure to aviation through STEM-centered activities. We already know that exposure strikes interest, so we’re playing the long game.”

Launching your own teacher academy may not be a realistic or feasible solution for your district, but establishing a career pipeline between nearby education programs and your district just might be.

Take, for example, Educators Rising, a community-based career and technical organization that matches middle and high school students with mentors in their schools, exposing them to the daily life of a teacher. By working with a local chapter, participating schools can even connect their recent graduates to financial and social resources for educationbased programs on nearby college campuses. And just

like Destination 225°, Educators Rising aims to serve underrepresented and disadvantaged students.

Hiring Creatively

Throughout 2020, droves of senior pilots, flight attendants, and teachers retired earlier than planned or shifted careers altogether. This is problematic for two reasons:

1. Many of these positions are desperately needed but still remain vacant.

2. The combined experience of employees in the workforce has declined significantly, indicating a loss of knowledge, expertise, and mentorship that new hires otherwise would have benefited from.

Even without the mass exodus of 2020, workforces for both industries are failing to replenish quickly enough to accommodate vacancies. In recent years, fewer and fewer young adults have been enrolling in aviation- or educationrelated programs. So, instead of relying on new talent, airlines are working creatively to recruit and rehire from the pool of retirees who took early retirement packages at the start of the pandemic.

Recruiters for airline carriers aren’t alone in this approach; school districts have also reported a range of challenges in rehiring or recruiting experienced talent. Because negotiating salaries and hours—like airlines do—is largely out of your control, you’ll have to think creatively about hiring. But thankfully, there are plenty of other strategies you can implement to attract seasoned employees to your district.

One strategy for attracting experienced employees is to implement an individualized onboarding process based on experience—especially if you have teachers returning to your district. As you already know, onboarding sets the tone for a new faculty member’s experience with your schools, but not every employee shares the same circumstances. For example, a recent college graduate may need more help navigating your district than a former employee who has already been there, done that, and probably still has the T-shirt. This doesn’t mean that former employees shouldn’t go through onboarding when they return to your schools, but the process should appropriately and respectfully reflect their previous experience.

In the case of recruiting former employees, some airlines are considering returning individuals closer to their previous level of seniority in terms of treatment, benefits, and salary. Currently, “[airline employees] who took a buyout or early retirement during the pandemic would have to start at the bottom of the seniority list if they wanted to come back,” says Kathleen Bangs, a spokesperson for flight tracking platform FlightAware.

Similarly, in most states, when retired teachers return to the classroom, they’re facing “pull-push” incentives on their pensions. This means that in states like Arkansas, each additional year of service beyond a certain threshold actually reduces pension wealth, discouraging educators from staying at—or returning to—their districts.

Obviously, it’s beyond your discretion to negotiate pension policies, but advocating for change can make a positive impression on potential employees and can even have tangible outcomes beyond your schools. In fact, because

of the attention this approach has gained, some states are already making changes. In January 2022, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a law allowing retirees of at least six months to return to the classroom to fill positions of “critical need.” The best part? Returning retirees can continue drawing their retirement benefits along with their new salaries.

Managing Expectations and Setting Boundaries

Due to the nature of their work, employees of both airlines and schools fill highly visible, public-facing positions, in which employees take on high levels of risk. Security and safety in both workplaces are taken seriously. But even with current measures in place, airline employees and school faculty are still more likely to experience physical, emotional, and mental distress on the clock than their similarly educated counterparts.

According to the American Psychological Association, 29% of teachers said that they were verbally threatened or harassed by parents during the first full pandemic school year. Unfortunately, flight attendants, pilots, and airport ground personnel are in the same position; staffing shortages in airports in recent years are associated with an increase in workspace hazards. In 2021 alone, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recorded more incidents of assault against flight attendants than they did in the previous 26 years combined. And due to heavier demand on their already short-staffed systems, airport ground staff are also finding their jobs increasingly hazardous. Overall, while their work environments couldn’t be any more different, labor forces in both schools and airlines have one big item in common: Their workplaces need to be safer.

We don’t need to tell you that this is easier said than done. But airlines have taken a new—and relatively cost-effective—approach to remedying this issue that might be within your means. In January 2021, the FAA launched their “Zero Tolerance Campaign”—not to be confused with zero tolerance discipline policies in schools—to protect employees from violent or abusive behaviors perpetrated by customers.

Before accepting this initiative, many carriers adhered to the reactive “customer is always right” model, in which the burden of resolution falls to the employee, rather than the customer, after something goes wrong. Of course, treating customers with respect and gratitude traditionally builds

positive connotations with your brand. Unfortunately, this approach also permits customers to take advantage of unclear policies—or vulnerable staff—while simultaneously sending employees mixed signals on which solutions are appropriate or not.

Under this new proactive campaign, airlines are prompting flyers to take ownership of their experiences by managing their own expectations. And although the campaign isn’t inherently about punishment, consequences for unwanted behavior—such as yelling, pushing, or using threatening language against employees or other patrons—are clearly communicated to consumers. Customer experience is important, but employee security takes priority.

Fortunately, the campaign has worked. Now, about two years after the implementation of their Zero Tolerance Campaign, the FAA says the number of violations against airport ground and air staff has decreased by 80%.

Elements of this campaign may be a little too strong for your purposes, but establishing new boundaries between your schools, the families you serve, and your greater community could initiate a more empathetic understanding of your staff’s obligations and limits. Throughout the pandemic, staffing shortages exacerbated issues in schools; chaos, confusion, and disinformation were—and still are—par for the course.

Our solution? Proactive communication. If your families aren’t aware of your staff’s boundaries and the consequences of overstepping them, how can they manage their own expectations, behaviors, and interactions? Parents and families need to know what is and isn’t realistic to expect of their interactions with a district—and who better to lead the cause than you?

Establishing boundaries for communication with and expectations of your teachers may sound like an invitation for conflict—and honestly, you can almost certainly anticipate pushback of some sort. Your community may need some reassurance that consequences will be reasonable and proportionate. But during this process, you can instill trust in your educators, systems, and leadership.

Most importantly, incorporating an employee-first approach into your district’s employer brand has two potential benefits for your schools. First, this approach makes your district stand out as a great place to work for potential candidates; and second, establishing boundaries in general is great for all relationships. This conversation could even facilitate engagement with your district’s challenges and further humanize you and your staff. Allowing your faculty to establish boundaries around communication and expectations with parents—and helping enforce those boundaries—is a long-term investment in the greater wellbeing of your school culture and livelihood.

Despite the challenges they’re facing today, experts anticipate that airlines will flourish in the years to come as they incorporate these creative solutions into their practices—and your schools can do the same. Making your careers more accessible to the right candidates, establishing a pipeline to careers within your schools, and cultivating an appropriate sense of involvement between your district and families may help ease tensions over vacancies. Labor shortages can be a turbulent ride for everyone, but with some new strategies and perspectives under your belt, you don’t have to wing it on your own.

Turning Tides

Researcher Kim Lear tells us how generational differences impact recruitment and retention.

With baby boomers retiring and Gen Z launching their careers, the landscape of employment is shifting. How will Gen X managers differ from the baby boomers who preceded them? How will a prospective Gen Z hire make a decision about their first employment offer? Because each generation brings specific life experiences and perspectives to the workplace, generational trends can be useful to your recruitment efforts—if approached correctly.

Kim Lear

Kim Lear is a researcher and expert in generational theory. She’s written about generational wealth transfer and retirement trends, and she was the head researcher for the book Gen Z @ Work . As the founder of Inlay Insights—a generational research and public speaking firm—Lear has spent her career unpacking and demystifying what happens when people across different generations work together.

At the October 2022 SchoolCEO Conference, we invited Lear to speak on how each generation has impacted—or is impacting—the workplace. Afterward, we sat down with her to further discuss what her research might mean for school leaders like you.

Q: What do school leaders need to understand about generational theory?

A:To begin, generational theory is rooted in sociology, not psychology. But both schools of thought are equally important, especially for leaders. Psychology is looking at who you are as an individual—your unique brain, your relationship to your parents, the way you practice religion. On the other hand, sociology contextualizes the individual’s experience by exploring broader macro trends.

Essentially, generational theory deals with demographic shifts and evolving cultural norms. We aren’t trying to capture the story of one person; we’re trying to capture the story of a shared society. We’re trying to understand why something that would’ve been wildly taboo 20 years ago is totally acceptable today. We’re also trying to see the world through the eyes of a different generation. We’re asking: If I were born into a different time, would I see this differently?

And because of the unique events and experiences of each generation, we see different behavioral trends in each population. And I want to make this clear: These are trends, not traits. That’s why I’m so upfront about the difference between psychology and sociology. Generational theory is not a psychological tool—and if people try to apply it that way, the whole conversation goes off the rails.

Just like any other form of diversity, it can be genuinely beneficial to understand the differences between generations—but it can also become really counterproductive. For example, you can’t sit in front of someone and say: Oh, you’re 27. Okay. I’m going to bring out a different script. Leaders have to understand individuals, know their motivations, and know what type of feedback inspires them. But when we aren’t focused on the individual—when we’re looking instead to make recommendations based on broader trends—that’s where generational framing is the most beneficial.

A:Baby boomers, the largest generation in American history, came of age with the bull market of the ‘60s behind them. As they grew up, the world was looking at baby boomers, saying: If anyone’s going to challenge the status quo, it’s you and it’s now. There was this momentum of optimism and idealism that really shaped the youth culture of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Gen X was heavily impacted by the emergence of 24-hour media, which started when CNN came on the air in 1980. Suddenly, institutions that were built by traditionalists and improved upon by baby boomers were all being called into question by 12-year-olds watching TV in their living rooms. It was with Gen X that we started to see a real rise in skepticism.

Next, there’s millennials. I still have clients who think millennials are 12—but some of us are 40 now. We drive minivans and live in the suburbs. Millennials were there at the dawn of social media, when it was ad-free and adult-free. We were the first ones to question what the megaphone of social media was for and how to use our collective voice.

Then, these questions were inherited by Gen Z, born roughly between 1996 to 2010. When I’m in Gen Z focus groups, I tell them that 50 years from now, a historian will write about the events and conditions shaping their generation. When I ask them what they think those historians will write about, they mention Trump’s presidency, the Women’s March, TikTok, school shootings, climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement, the pandemic. Our current moment is the backdrop for their formative years.

A:As Gen Z has grown up, our culture has been abandoning an obsession with convenience and replacing it with a focus on optimization. Just to be clear about the difference between those terms, convenience is about involving little trouble or effort. To optimize something is to make it as effective, perfect, or useful as possible.

When we think about the future of workplaces—and the future of education—a lot is going to change as Gen Z comes in with different expectations for how to make their work environments more effective, perfect, and useful. How do we review our processes, procedures, and norms in order to really consider how something can be more optimal?

We should also expect to provide this new workforce with the training and refinement they’ll need in order to get stakeholders on their side and bring their ideas to fruition. So many good ideas fall through the cracks because they’re not in the right wrapping paper, but we shouldn’t write off Gen Z’s ideas just because they have a different style of communicating with authority. One of the roles of great leaders over these next five to 10 years will be to help young people figure out how to package their ideas so that innovation can actually happen.

Another takeaway for leaders trying to recruit young teachers is that Gen Zers tend to be very close with their Gen X parents. They’re highly influential over one another’s decision making. When you make an offer to a Gen Z teacher, they’re taking that offer and showing it to their number-one influencers: Mom and Dad. So it’s important to recognize that those parents may have different questions. Young candidates may want to know about learning and development, PTO policies, and community. But their parents may be wondering: What’s the dental plan?

Q: What are the most important things to know about each generation?

Q: What should we expect to see from Gen Z as they continue to enter the workforce?

Q: Baby boomers are retiring in droves. What effect do you expect Gen X to have on leadership positions?

A:Again, one of the hallmark characteristics of Gen X is skepticism. That skepticism lends itself to a fairly specific style of communication: honest, direct, and unfiltered. So as Gen Xers move into management roles, especially executive positions, we’re starting to see a real focus on transparency and radical candor.

I remember coming head-to-head with this style of communication very early on in my career during a meeting with David Stillman, my then-boss and now mentor. He could be the poster child for Gen X. But I didn’t really know that going into the meeting.

I went into David’s office, and I’m not two seconds into my first idea before he stops me and says, What kind of research do we need in order to get this done? Can we run this inhouse? Do we have to meet up with an outside market research firm? What void is this filling in the marketplace?

In that very brief interaction with David, I learned something critical about communicating with him. I would need to be able to anticipate and prepare for his skepticism. Eventually, this would become my most productive working relationship. No one vets my material with a more precise eye than David— but I have to be open to that type of feedback.

And because the Gen X ethos is one of skepticism—since they’re slower to accept and quicker to question the traditional ways of doing things—they tend to be more adaptable. Education, on the other hand, is an industry rooted in tradition. But now, we have a generation stepping into leadership positions that respects tradition, but isn’t going to sacrifice innovation for the sake of it.

Q: What can a generational lens illuminate for educators specifically?

A:One thing I think educators should be aware of is how each generation does or does not take risks. I’ve heard folks say that schools need to innovate and empower their people to take necessary risks in order to keep up with where society is headed. But how do you do that?

I was at an event recently, and the speaker before me was talking about young people and their risk aversion. They were saying we should tell emerging young leaders: If you take a risk, what’s the worst that can happen? You fall down, you dust yourself off, you pick yourself up. And I actually really disagreed with that take. There is something that genuinely feels out of touch with that response—especially for younger millennials and Gen Z, who have grown up in a highly documented environment. When you tell young people that it’s no big deal to fail, you have to remember they grew up in an environment where small mistakes can have lasting impacts.

Instead, I think it’s better to recognize where we are now and say, I know that taking risks can be scary. It should be scary. How can I help you properly vet this idea? That way we can go through the fact-finding stage together to figure out what is most likely to work. That pertains to small things, too, like figuring out how to help a student or structure a lesson.

The other thing to remember is that there would obviously be more risk aversion in education. It’s not because people are scared—it’s because people really, really care. They understand that the price of failure in education is very high.

A:There has been lots of research done around mortality salience, which has to do with how large groups of people behave after they’ve been faced with the prospect of death or illness. We’ve found that when large groups of people have a collective moment of introspection, they begin to ask questions like: What do I really want to do? How do I want to spend my time? What legacies do I want to leave?

The last big moment of mortality salience was after 9/11, right when the oldest millennials were first entering the workforce. That’s when we started having this conversation about meaning at work. Millennials wanted to understand why their jobs mattered. Now, we’re in a very similar time with COVID, but I think the top-line question for this new generation of teachers is different. Now, the question is: What am I willing to sacrifice for my job? Is it my wellbeing? Is it my family? Is it my balance?

Leaders in education should be asking themselves: What support systems can we put in place? When it comes to recruiting teachers, leaders will have to think through how to balance work differently and how to support their people. I’m not talking about giving them access to a meditation app—it has to be a systemic thing.

As you work to reenvision what supports are available, you might find yourself thinking: Why the heck am I doing this? When I came in, no one did this for me. This is very natural—we often think that someone else can’t have what we have unless they went through what we went through.

To leaders with that mindset, I would ask: Do you lead exactly how you were led? For most people, the answer is probably no. Good leaders adapt to what is needed today, and they adapt to the circumstances of the moment. Generational hazing doesn’t have to always be a part of our cultural narrative. Progress happens when there are enough leaders who genuinely want to create something better for the next generation.

Want to know how workforce trends like these could impact your multigenerational teams? Lear will discuss this and so much more at our Spring 2023 SchoolCEO Conference.

Register at schoolceo.com/conference

Q: You’ve said before that this new generation of teachers is asking different questions than those who came before them. What did you mean by that?

Photo by Thiphavanh “Bri” Vongvilay

TAKING THE LEAP

RECRUITING AND SUPPORTING SECOND-CAREER TEACHERS

Tavon Mason’s career path has been anything but typical. Two decades ago, he was playing his first pre-season games as a wide receiver for the New York Jets. A few years later, in 2004, he tried his hand at acting, appearing in an episode of the acclaimed drama series “The Wire.” In 2009, he even performed as a stunt double for Academy Award winner Cuba Gooding, Jr. But today, Mason is pursuing his true calling: teaching.

Listening to him recount his journey to the classroom, it’s clear that Mason’s passion for helping students has been a throughline in his life. Between an array of other jobs, he’s worked as a substitute teacher, a paraeducator, and a behavioral specialist. In 2011, he even started a nonprofit foundation to promote youth fitness, health, and literacy. “I never totally wavered away from the school arena,” he tells SchoolCEO. “My career branched out everywhere, but it always came back to education.” Now in his first year at Georgia’s Bibb County Schools, teaching special education and math and coaching football, Mason feels he’s finally right where he’s supposed to be.

Stories like Mason’s may seem incredible—but in reality, they’re pretty common. Though most teachers haven’t played in the NFL or appeared on HBO, a 2017 Harris poll indicates that more than a third of K-12 teachers had previous careers outside the classroom.

That’s good news for school leaders—especially since traditional teacher pipelines are running dry. As noted in Education Next, “there are 20 to 30% fewer people going into teaching each year than there were a decade ago”— and those numbers show no signs of bouncing back soon. This decline is also apparent when we look at what majors university students are choosing. In 2001, 8% of new college graduates received degrees in education; in 2020, the total number of new graduates dramatically increased, but just 4% majored in education. If our typical pathways to the classroom aren’t bringing in enough teachers to meet demand, we’ll have to look elsewhere—and career changers might just be the answer.

Who’s changing careers—and why?

It’s nearly impossible to discuss career shake-ups today without alluding to the effects of the pandemic. Of course, people were switching industries long before COVID-19 hit—but it seems that right now, people may be more primed to change careers than ever before.

According to a survey from financial solutions company Prudential, 20% of workers have changed careers since the start of the pandemic. What’s more, data from Microsoft suggests that 46% of all workers are considering such a change. But what’s causing these career shifts? Finding the answer may help school leaders use this moment to their advantage.

Research from numerous outlets reveals a variety of reasons people switch careers, from better work-life balance and higher pay to more opportunities for advancement and healthier workplace cultures. If we’re being honest, teaching can’t fulfill all those priorities, but it does have one determining factor in spades: purpose. In a survey conducted by research and consulting firm Gartner, respondents were asked how the pandemic has affected their attitudes about aspects of life pertaining to work. Of those surveyed, 52% said “the pandemic made [them] question the purpose of [their] day-to-day job”; 56% said it “made [them] want to contribute more to society.”

But there’s one more important fact to note. In a survey from investment guidance company The Motley Fool, nearly 40% of respondents said they had switched industries during the pandemic because they had always wanted to explore their new careers. It seems that many workers, after losing their jobs or leaving untenable work environments in the wake of the pandemic, have taken the opportunity to make career changes that had previously felt unreasonable or impossible.

This means that as you work to recruit career changers, you don’t necessarily need to target people who have never considered teaching. Instead, look for those who already have some interest in the profession. Maybe they wanted to major in education, but their families discouraged it. Maybe they always loved working with kids, but felt pressure to enter a more lucrative field. Whatever the case may be, people with a heart for teaching are already out there. Recruiting them is about making this monumental career change feel like a realistic option.

How can your district attract second-career teachers?

Imagine, for just a second, that you’re standing at the bottom of a steep cliffside, looking up. You want to get to the top, but you’ve got nothing but your bare hands to help you climb. What do you think? Is the reward worth the risk? Unless you’re the guy from Free Solo , the answer is probably no. But what if the climb were safer? With the right equipment—a

harness, ropes, anchor points, maybe even a buddy to belay you—you might be more willing to take the chance.

In many ways, people considering a second career in education are looking up at that same cliff, debating whether to start the climb. Recruiting these potential teachers isn’t about convincing them that the view at the top is beautiful. They already know they’re interested in teaching. Instead, it’s about giving them enough support to make the whole endeavor safe and attainable. Here are a few realistic ways to remove obstacles, provide support, and help your potential teachers start the ascent.

Provide as much information as possible.

According to research from policy think tank Third Way, there are currently over 600 teacher licensure tests in use across the country, and requirements for teacher certification vary from state to state. So it’s no surprise that prospective teachers—especially those who haven’t gone through a comprehensive education program—are a little confused about how to enter the classroom. In a survey from the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, more than one-third (38%) of potential teachers—those who would consider teaching in the next five years—say they know “very little” about teacher certification programs. How many second-career teachers are staying out of the profession simply because they don’t know where to start?

Luckily, you as a school leader can remove this obstacle pretty easily. All you have to do is give potential career changers as much information as possible about their pathways to the classroom. The more these prospective candidates know about the process, the less daunting it will be—and the more likely they’ll be to follow through.

This info should have a dedicated space on your district website. Take, for example, Dallas ISD in Texas. Easily visible beneath “Careers” on their homepage is a link to information on the district’s own alternative certification program. Everything candidates could possibly need to know about the program is here: admission requirements, certifications offered, necessary paperwork, dates for the upcoming program cycle, and even an easy checklist reviewing the application process. Through a form linked on the page, you can sign up for a live virtual information session—conducted once a week before a new cycle starts.

Even if you don’t have your own program, providing info about local or state alternative certification programs on your careers page can help you attract potential career changers. List your state’s specific certification requirements, your district’s areas of critical need, and any other relevant application information.

Ease financial burdens if you can.

Becoming a teacher isn’t cheap. Alternative certification programs can cost thousands of dollars, and that’s not even accounting for expenses like exam fees, textbooks, or study tools. There’s also a decent chance that secondcareer teachers—like 58% of career changers since March 2020—are taking pay cuts to make the switch. What’s more, since they’re older than recent college graduates, second-career teachers are more likely to have greater existing financial commitments like mortgages, childcare, or eldercare.

In order to make the jump to teaching, prospective career changers need to feel confident that it’s a financially viable option. Of course, competitive starting salaries never hurt— but they may not offset the cost of the certification process itself. Any financial burdens you can alleviate will make that transition a little more manageable and maybe even encourage more potential teachers to take the leap.

The extent to which you can do this is, of course, dependent on the resources available to you. As part of their alternative certification program, Dallas ISD waives more than $5,000 in tuition fees for those pursuing their certifications in critical need areas. But even if you can’t provide that level of financial relief, don’t underestimate the small things you can do to help second-career teachers. Mason told us that at Bibb County, one of the most helpful supports offered to teachers pursuing certification was a paid subscription to Study.com’s assessment prep resources—which would have otherwise cost him $59.99 a month. “For some people, that isn’t a lot,” he says. “But if you think about everything else you’ve got to pay for in your daily life, that’s a good chunk to help you out.”

Provide a strong support network.

Under a strategic waiver agreement with the Georgia Department of Education, hundreds of districts in the state— including Bibb County Schools—can hire teachers while they work toward their certifications. Coordinator of Talent Management and Acquisitions Holly Huynh is doing all she can to make sure these “waiver teachers” feel supported.

Why hire career changers?

Second-career teachers offer far more to the districts who employ them than simple classroom coverage. Here are just a few of the research-backed benefits career changers bring to the table:

Intrinsic motivation. Research shows second-career teachers are primarily intrinsically motivated to teach; in other words, they find teaching itself more rewarding than the external benefits (salary, etc.) that may come with it.

Self-efficacy. Second-career teachers have been proven to have high self-efficacy— meaning that they have a greater belief in their own capacity to solve problems.

Real-world application. Because they have typically worked in the specific fields they’re teaching, second-career teachers often have experience applying the abstract knowledge of their disciplines to real-world problems, making for richer and more engaging instruction.

Strong interpersonal skills. Teachers who have previously worked outside the classroom usually have professional experience working on teams, giving them a high capacity for empathy, an ability to communicate effectively, and other skills associated with teamwork.

While all first-timers benefit from this in-depth coaching, Huynh s a ys it especially helps second-career teachers. “A lot of times, our career changers don’t even think about something like classroom management,” she tells us. “They think they can come into a classroom and tell the kids what to do, and they’ll do it—but that’s not reality.” With help from a Get Better Faster mentor, new teachers can be prepared for those challenges, not blindsided by them. “Having that support really puts them ahead of the curve,” Huynh says.

Bibb County also provides monthly professional development sessions for waiver teachers, as well as study tools and other support toward passing Georgia’s state certification assessment. But as Huynh points out, even the smallest supports go a long way. “It’s important to provide encouragement,” she says. “Sometimes as adults we think a paycheck should be enough. But these teachers have taken that leap into a profession where they can impact lives, and they have learned so much to be able to do it effectively. We need to be cognizant of that and be encouraging.”

Highlight the good.

Huynh herself is a former high school teacher. She knows how hard the profession can be—but she also knows what’s beautiful about it. “Making a difference in a kid’s life, being that steady adult that they see Monday through Friday— that’s a powerful and wonderful thing,” she says.

Let’s go back to the bottom of that cliff. You’re strapped into your harness and ropes, you’re ready to start your climb— but even with all those safety measures, you might still be scared. Is it worth pushing through your uncertainty?

Among the most valuable resources the district provides for these teachers is robust mentorship. At Bibb County, each new teacher is paired with a “Get Better Faster” mentor, who provides real-time coaching and critique. The system is modeled on techniques from Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion . “The core principle is that you go really granular,” Huynh explains. New teachers practice the most minute details, from starting a lesson with an attention-grabbing “hook” to using a strong voice. “You plan, you practice, you follow up, you repeat,” Huynh says, “and all the while your Get Better Faster mentor provides frequent, meaningful, actionable feedback.”

As you work to recruit second-career teachers, to help them make their own climbs, you’ll need to provide all the supports we’ve discussed. But don’t forget: You also need to remind them why they want to begin this ascent in the first place. They need to believe that the view from the top—or from the front of the classroom—is as beautiful as they’d hoped.

So when you’re recruiting career changers, highlight all the beauty and wonder of teaching. It’s a tough profession, no doubt, but it’s perhaps the most impactful career a person could choose. Remind them that bright futures sit in your classrooms, waiting to be inspired by teachers from all walks of life. Soon enough, your potential career changers will see that it’s possible—and worth it—to take the leap.

Comfortable Tension

STRUCTURING EFFECTIVE AND FOCUSED SCHOOL BOARDS THAT SERVE

Dr. Matthew Montgomery knows more than a thing or two about school board relations. In fact, as the superintendent of two districts on the North Shore of Chicago, he currently reports to two boards—one for Lake Forest Community High School District 115 and another for Lake Forest Elementary School District 67. Managing and partnering with two separate boards has given him a unique look into one of the most important—and potentially volatile— relationships school leaders are tasked with maintaining. Read on to see what Montgomery has to say about his strategies for working with board members to positively impact the students they serve.

A s chool board can make or break a district—or a superintendency. Tension between boards and their superintendents has caused too many highly adept leaders to exit the industry. The effects of the pandemic only amplified this reality. And unfortunately, educators who have what it takes to lead are actively choosing not to pursue superintendencies simply due to the pressure of working directly with—and for—a board.

But school boards aren’t always the problem. Sometimes, it’s the superintendent. A leader’s fear of failure or discomfort can widen divides in a community, preventing all parties from doing what they came to do: educate students and impact the next generation of world shapers.

We as school leaders can take initiative to make our boards healthier by establishing a baseline of boundaries and understanding around the roles we each play. Healthy boards serve by setting the direction for a school district, providing educational oversight, and exercising fiscal responsibility on behalf of our taxpayers. As a superintendent with two separate boards, each made up of seven members, I can confidently say that effective school boards can be the conduit to better serving students and staff.

So what about us? As school leaders, our role is to expertly structure a system whereby individual board members can serve in a complete and future-focused way. Tension is part of that work, and disagreement is inevitable—but it’s our job to build and maintain relationships strong enough to withstand any conflict. Before we can lead with resolve, we must first get comfortable with discomfort.

Invest in personal and professional relationships.

In my experience, the primary non-negotiable for fostering an effective and focused board is investing in relationships with each board member. As a superintendent with 14 of these relationships to maintain, I understand the time commitment this requires—but the return on investment is immeasurable.

The more time we invest in these relationships, the easier it will be to overcome the barriers we face in our work together. These barriers can range from disagreements on how to meet student needs, to debates over polarizing curriculum, to discussions about our hiring practices. No matter where those pain points lie, the closer our relationships are, the more likely we are to assume mutual goodwill and trust. The relationship between a superintendent and their board needs to be symbiotic, whether that means agreeing to disagree or, more ideally, finding mutually beneficial solutions.

When it comes to building healthy board relationships, authenticity is paramount. You should connect with board members and genuinely seek to understand who they are, why they are driven to serve their community in this capacity, and what they want to achieve. Discovering each board member’s niche area of expertise (finance, construction, law, etc.) and exploring connections to their work with schools can strengthen both the board and the district. Honing in on board members’ biggest strengths will only elevate their value in your school system.

Dr. Matthew Montgomery

Montgomery with LFCHSD 115 school board (Photo courtesy of LFCHSD 115)

In working with a school board, it’s safe to assume that disagreements will happen. And in today’s climate, we can be quick to lean away from contentious relationships, especially if there are political differences. But bowing out of these relationships is not an option—that will only widen the gap between you and a board member. Remember: Your understanding of each member is critical. It will help you foresee and mitigate issues both preemptively and in the moment. But both the superintendent and their board members will have to invest time and patience into these relationships— phone calls, standing meetings, and any other opportunities for further connection.

Communicate with consistency and respect.

As with any productive professional relationship, there should also be a high level of trust between you and your board members. Openness can certainly cultivate trust, but so can consistency. Be sure your board members know when you will regularly connect. I meet quarterly with each of my members, for example, but you’ll have to find the rhythm that works best for you and your board. And when the rubber meets the road, this investment in trust can expedite solutions even where there’s tension. This foundation of mutual respect and understanding will allow for more authentic and fruitful conversations.

Practically speaking, the frequency and general flow of regular meetings, retreats, and other connections between board and leadership should be built on mutual respect for everyone’s time, energy, and input. More is not always better. Systems and structures are necessary to ensure that your time with your board is strategic and purposeful.

Being consistent with your school board members will help you build an even stronger culture of productivity and respect. It goes without saying that transparency matters— leaders and their boards must always remain respectful of their communities by conducting business in the sunshine. Legally speaking, most states require school board meetings to be public. You can, however, help prepare your board members for these meetings by consistently informing them of any relevant issues.

Consider sending weekly updates on the district, individual school buildings, and even department-level information that is pertinent to the board. Providing these updates also demonstrates respect for your board members’ time and

efforts by requiring less heavy lifting of them on the front end. And when your board is better prepared, they are able to ask more productive questions and engage in more impactful decision making.

Another reason to systematize your board communications is member turnover. School boards are designed to shift regularly in order to best serve our communities. Change isn’t a flaw of school boards—it’s a feature. In my two districts, for example, the community has an unofficial rule that most members only serve two terms. And as a way to make sure that these positions are being filled by the best candidates, we have a caucus system that identifies, vets, and endorses new members.

But if you have systems in place and you consistently communicate your expectations and norms, turnover on your board won’t derail important work. In my districts, we provide board members with a list of “Board Commitments,” ranging from “Demonstrate mutual trust and respect for each other while accepting outcomes,” to “Assume positive intent,” to “Be solution-oriented.” These mutually agreed-upon norms help keep our board members on the same page and ensure our work together stays efficient and productive, even as members come and go.

Orientation sessions, regular board meetings, and communication provide new board members with the tools they need for progress, while also offering consistency for remaining members in the midst of change. Your board’s culture may shift slightly when old members leave and new ones start, but implementing strong systems of communication allows you to focus on fostering those important relationships.

Establish a shared vision.

Disagreements with and within your board will arise from time to time. That’s a given. But having a shared vision for

LFESD 67 school board with elementary students (Photo courtesy of LFESD 67)

your schools establishes common ground, giving you the ability to cut through tension, refocus conversations, and lead forward with an end goal in mind.

It’s not just about sharing a vision with your board, either. Along with an additional elementary district in the area, the two districts I lead brought together over 150 stakeholders— staff, administrators, community leaders, parents, and students—to create one unifying Portrait of a Learner. This work, completed over the course of half a school year, determined our community’s collective vision for what we want to provide our kids beyond academic excellence. Now, the Portrait serves as our North Star, guiding the work we do and the decisions we make. We align both the work of our school boards and our strategic plans to the Portrait’s six major competencies.

The Portrait we’ve created together not only leads our work internally with our boards, but also guides conversations with our wider community. This keeps students at the center of our work. While academic excellence is the foundation of everything we do, this shared vision allows us to interweave life skills, ensuring our students will be successful outside the classroom and achieve overall well-being regardless of their pathway.

Oftentimes, disagreements distract us from why we’re here in the first place and what we want to accomplish together. It’s my duty as superintendent to re-center those conversations around this shared vision when necessary.

Lean on your team.

Leading and supporting school board members takes a significant amount of your time, energy, and resources as a superintendent. That’s why learning to lean on an internal team of experts is essential to your district’s success. Working with internal teams—from your administrative cabinet to your principals and teachers—ensures that the work you and your board envision is actually carried out in your district’s buildings and classrooms.

It goes without saying that supporting your staff at all levels will multiply your impact in your district. This also works to strengthen the trust you’ve established with your board— they can be assured that you’re translating their work and vision into real-time results. If, for example, your board establishes a new districtwide attendance policy, they need to have faith in your principals and their staffs to implement the policy accordingly.

Having strong internal teams starts with generating a culture of respect and productivity. Just as you do with your school board, you can support this culture by investing in personal and professional relationships, communicating with your teams consistently, and establishing a shared vision to inspire and center your work. This will build the trust necessary to support your board and your entire staff. Without every team’s trust, I’m not going to meet the needs of my board. If my priority is to remove barriers so the board can do their best work, I need to be able to trust that my internal teams are also invested and engaged in this work. Without all our district staff being in sync, the whole system collapses.

You’ll also want to quickly lean into any tension that arises on your internal teams. Engaging with conflict is difficult, but it can also reveal blindspots and areas for growth that need to be addressed. Much like your board relations, the energy and time you’ve put into building relationships and trust with staff members will allow you to navigate sensitive issues and withstand internal conflicts. Your return on this investment is an increased ability to reach and actualize the mission and vision of your schools.

Get comfortable with tension.

At the end of the day, superintendents must find a way to get comfortable with the tension of board relations. Aversion to and fear of inevitable conflicts and disagreements will only hinder effective communication and derail your work together. By maintaining a respectful, inquisitive approach to disagreements, you can turn conflict into professional curiosity, which leads to progress instead of frustration and inaction. Tension, after all, is a necessary ingredient for transformation. Without it, a system cannot significantly change for the better.

Living in the tension all starts with respect—not just for your board members’ work and expertise, but for who they are as people. Fostering these connections can translate into our most important work as school leaders: serving our communities and preparing our students to be our next generation of leaders.

Speaking the Same Language

Recruiting bilingual teachers to serve a growing population of non-native English speakers

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the number of students classified as English learners (EL) grew from 4.5 million in 2010 to 5.1 million in 2019. Unfortunately, while these student populations have grown, there hasn’t been a comparable increase in the number of bilingual teachers or paraprofessionals to support them. The pandemic has only exacerbated this issue.

In fact, during the 2020-21 school year, Texas identified shortages of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers in all grades pre-K-12. A lack of trained staff can have a negative impact on this subset of students—but that is the current, frustrating state of affairs around ESL instruction nationally.

As school leaders brainstorm and find new approaches to problems laid bare or worsened by the current teacher crisis, now is a perfect time to rethink the traditional ESL paradigm. Teachers, districts, and especially students all stand to benefit from a new approach to hiring for these positions.

De-silo ESL instruction —and instructors.

For a long time, a common strategy for educating EL students has been to isolate them for the sake of providing focused English instruction. Increasingly, though, research suggests that it may be more effective to integrate English language instruction into a student’s existing course load.

Take, for example, dual-language immersion programs. These programs encourage students to take classes in both English and their native languages. In addition, English learners are able to take classes right alongside their English-speaking peers in an environment that provides instruction in both languages.

Indiana’s Noblesville Schools gives us another example. On staff, they have both EL instructional assistants and EL collaborative teachers. Instructional assistants help with language acquisition and collaborative teachers work in concert with content area teachers to support learning in the classroom. With this model, Noblesville is supporting each EL student with a team that’s dedicated to their individual success in the classroom.

Develop your existing staff.

Alongside reexamining instruction, now is the perfect time to investigate the role your current staff might play in educating your EL students. Our guess is you may already have some bilingual employees in your buildings. Are they interested in joining your force of ESL instructors? If so, how can you support them in their development? Too often, bilingual teachers are expected to function informally as a resource to students and families who don’t speak English—without additional training or compensation. Not only does this do a disservice to your EL students, but it further burdens your already overladen teachers. So what can you do?

In many states, ESL staff members are required to hold a special certification in addition to a standard teaching license. If you have bilingual staff members who are interested in becoming official ESL instructors, try identifying reasonable pathways to certification. Some districts have done just that by connecting interested staff with local higher education institutions.

In Oregon, Portland Public Schools has developed an alternative pathway by teaming up with Portland State University and Oregon State University. These partnerships have resulted in the Dual Language Teacher Residency Program, which helps interested staff members gain their master’s degrees in either elementary or secondary education with an ESL/World Language endorsement. The best part? Participants in this program are able to continue working as teachers, substitutes, or paraprofessionals while earning their credentials.

And it’s paying off. When the program first started, the district was struggling to fill several open positions. Now, Portland Public Schools is expanding upon their current academic offerings to serve more students. Current fellows speak Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Russian.

Build systems and partnerships.

Dr. Jeff Horton, superintendent of Minnesota’s GFW School District, says 20% of their student body is Latino. “We are exploring a possible immersion program to support our English learners,” Horton tells us. “Nobody in our area has that yet.” And, for Horton, the first step of establishing that kind of program is to think critically and carefully about system building. He believes all districts can implement programs like these successfully so long as they prioritize their processes.

“I’ve been in very large school systems,” Horton says, “but I’ve been in rural districts, too. We have a lot of rural schools out there, and they can do really amazing things if they think creatively and develop the necessary systems, structures, and processes.” But what would an example look like? It starts with systematizing a plan to keep ESL instructors in your district.

Take, for example, Kansas’ Dodge City Public Schools. Thanks to grant funding, the district has structured a pipeline within their own high school to help prepare bilingual students for teaching careers down the line. As a result, 20 of their high school students will receive support while they work toward their bachelor’s degrees in elementary education.

The hope is that these students will receive hands-on experience in the classroom while maximizing their opportunity to earn dual credits as high school students. Then, they’ll transition to Dodge Community College while completing their degrees online with Kansas State University.

“We are excited about this fantastic opportunity to develop our pipeline of diverse and talented educators,” says Martha Mendoza, principal of Dodge City High School. “This grant will allow us to invest in our current teachers and grow our own future teachers by supporting our high school students interested in becoming educators in Dodge City. As an English-language learner, I know firsthand the impact teachers had on me when they valued my assets and knew how to support my needs.”

Work is still underway to make this goal a reality, but it hints at an exciting possible future for the Dodge City community— and everywhere. Your current students may turn out to be tomorrow’s ESL teachers.

Strengthen community connections.

Serving your EL students is an opportunity to deepen existing community bonds or foster new ones. This is playing out in exciting ways around Grand Rapids, Michigan. There, in collaboration with local school districts, Grand Valley State University has developed a program for teachers to earn the English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) certificate.

In addition, as Program Director Dr. Rui Niu-Cooper tells us, another significant aspect of the program is community involvement. The program collaborates with nonprofits like Oakdale Neighbors Learning Cafe (a community tutoring

center) and the Literacy Center of West Michigan—not only to ensure language and literacy development among non-native English speakers, but also to help them better integrate into their local communities.

Grand Rapids has a large refugee population, and an ESOL certificate empowers the people who want to work with this population outside the walls of a school building. Niu-Cooper sees both groups—teachers and community members—as key to the larger puzzle of family engagement and support: “We help the community understand the schools, and the schools to understand the community.” Aside from the linguistic and instructional components, participants in the ESOL certificate program gain socioemotional skills and develop cultural competencies. In this sense, the program bridges higher education, schools and communities.

At the end of the day, the skills educators need to work successfully with EL students translate, literally. ESLcertified teachers benefit all students, regardless of their language background. “ESL strategies are good for all students, including students in the mainstream classrooms,” Niu-Cooper says. “We help our grad certificate participants understand their learners and how to work with them. Then they can differentiate their instructions and services to meet students where they are.”

Since most every school is facing a teacher hiring crunch of some kind, staffing for ESL positions can be especially daunting. However, supporting your EL students is a challenge worth undertaking. You’re not just filling positions; you’re meeting a critical need. After all, love and support mean the same to students and their families in any language.

SchoolCEO Conversations takes a deep dive into the minds and hearts of the country’s most innovative school leaders, along with experts in brand, culture, and marketing.

Julie Lythcott-Haims | On How to Raise An Adult

Dr. Jeffrey Collier | Collective Authorship

Jonah Berger | Increasing Our Influence

Dr. Jeff Horton | Courageous Conversations

Dr. Robert Hunt | Crisis, Growth & Leadership

Sherese Nix | Crafting Experiences for Staff & Teachers

Jeff Mayo | Marketing Your Schools’ Employer Brand

Neel Doshi | Culture & Motivation in Education

Join SchoolCEO and Apptegy for a master class on brand, culture, and influence. Join a conversation with researchers authors, and other school leaders who are taking control of how their communities think and feel about their districts.

Dates: Monday, March 6 to Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Location: Memphis, Tennessee

For more information, please email conference@apptegy.com