Episode 113: The 6 Keys To Retaining Your Teachers

Episode 113 Show Notes

 

CLICK HERE for The 7 Secrets To Improving Teacher Morale

 

Big Takeaways:

The 6 Keys To Retaining Your Teachers

  1. Create Psychological Safety
  2. Implement Good Systems
  3. Provide Clear Expectations
  4. Follow Through
  5. Celebrate and Recognize Your Teachers
  6. Create a positive culture that leads to pride

 

Call to Action

  • Assess yourself on how psychologically safe your teachers and staff are feeling by rating yourself on a scale of 1-10 on each

 

The 7 Steps To Psychological Safety

  1. Accept the responsibility for the psychological safety of every person on your campus.
  2. Recognize that psychological safety contributes significantly to the emotional wellbeing of your teachers and makes burnout less likely.
  3. Recognize that, in a psychologically safe school, teachers are less stressed and anxious, which can lead to better mental and physical health and higher job satisfaction.
  4. Encourage teachers to be open, honest and vulnerable by asking for feedback often and creating a feedback loop: gather feedback, analyze feedback, share feedback, act on feedback, follow up/reflect on feedback.
  5. Create and follow guidelines for respectful communication. These guidelines should be in effect in all interactions: teacher to teacher, teacher to parent, admin to teacher, teacher to student, etc.
  6. Create and follow a short set of meeting norms for team meetings and all faculty meetings. For example: use “I” statements/not “you” statements, judge favorably, stay curious, do not interrupt, etc.
  7. Have a predictable mood.

 

Being a private school leader is a VERY difficult job. You have to make hundreds of decisions every day, and you have to keep everyone safe, increase enrollment, keep the parents happy, keep the board happy, motivate the teachers, deal with student discipline, beat last year’s test scores and come in under budget.

Are you feeling tired, discouraged and overwhelmed?

Do you ever feel like the pace that you keep is not sustainable?

Does the school tend to invade your weeknights and your weekends? 

Do you feel like work-life balance is a myth?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, then I want you to check out THRIVE Academy.

 

THRIVE Academy is an online course with 39 lessons, over 9 hours of video content, and  an 86 page workbook with guided notes, reflection questions, calls to action and more AND you get live office hours on Zoom for the first 6 weeks.

CLICK HERE to learn more about THRIVE Academy!

I am excited to share a brand new resource with you. It is a 9 page pdf called: “How To Use Verbal Judo To Have Better Conversations With The Parents At Your School” What is “Verbal Judo”? "Verbal Judo" is a communication strategy that focuses on using words effectively to de-escalate conflict, resolve disputes, and achieve positive outcomes in various interpersonal interactions, particularly in high-pressure situations. 


George Thompson and Jerry Jenkins wrote a book called Verbal Judo: The Gentle Art Of Persuasion. So, I have taken several important strategies from the book and applied them to your life as a private school leader. CLICK HERE to grab your free copy of “How To Use Verbal Judo To Have Better Conversations With The Parents At Your School”.

 

Do you have any difficult teachers at your school? Of course you do. We ALL do!

They take up a lot of our time and emotional energy.

Well, I have created a new resource to help you with your difficult teachers.

It is called 7 Strategies To Effectively Deal With Difficult Teachers.

These strategies will give you a step by step game plan to help improve the performance and attitude of your difficult teachers.

Sound good to you? CLICK HERE to grab this free guide!

 

I want to say thank you for listening to the podcast by giving you a FREE GIFT. It is called The 7 Steps To Having Successful Meetings With Upset Parents. This guide is an 11 page pdf that gives you a step by step plan to have better meetings with the parents at your school. Every good coach has a game plan. Every good teacher has a lesson plan. Too many private school leaders don’t have a plan when they sit down to meet with an upset parent. Well, now you have a PLAN! CLICK HERE to get the guide!!

 

I’ve created a free resource for you called “The 6 Things That Every Private School Teacher Wants From Their Leader”. This guide is a 6 page pdf that will be a game changer for you. I guarantee you that if you do these 6 things, the teachers at your school will be happy to follow you. CLICK HERE to get the guide!

 

I want to give you a gift to say “thank you” for listening to the podcast. I have created a FREE guide for you called “5 Strategies To Help You Work With Difficult Parents”. We know that working with parents is part of the job and most of our parents are great, but some of them can be very demanding and emotional and difficult. This guide will give you the tools that you need to build better relationships and have better meetings with the difficult parents at your school. CLICK HERE to grab the guide. Thank you again for listening every week!

 

I’ve created another FREE RESOURCE for you called “The Top 6 Ways To Protect Your School From a Lawsuit”. This is a 10 page pdf that will help you to keep your staff and students safe and help keep your school out of court. Litigation is expensive, time consuming and extremely stressful. This common sense guide will help you to be more intentional and proactive when it comes to protecting your school. You can CLICK HERE to get “The Top 6 Ways To Protect Your School From a Lawsuit”. Thanks!

 

If you implement any of these strategies at your school, I would love to hear from you! Send me a quick note at [email protected] and tell me about it. I can answer your questions and I’m also good at giving pep talks when you get stuck!

 

If you have gotten value from listening to the podcast, I would love to work with you 1-on-1. I would love to take my experience and help you to feel less overwhelmed and frustrated or help you have success if you are a brand new leader. I also work with private school leaders who are aspiring Heads of School and want to accelerate their leadership growth or experienced leaders that are moving on to a new school and they want to get off to a great start. If I’m describing you, then CLICK HERE to learn more about working with me 1-on-1.

 

CLICK HERE for a bunch of free resources, including Plug & Play PD's (video webinars with guided notes) for you to use with your teachers, Top Lists of Leadership Books, Productivity Books, TED Talks and much more!

 

Please follow, rate and review this podcast. The rating helps this podcast to be heard by more leaders and your review gives me valuable feedback so that I can better serve you in future episodes. If you got value from this episode, please text the link to an aspiring leader at your school. Thanks!

 

Music by Twisterium from Pixabay

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