Read on Twitter
School Leaders: how are you navigating/balancing showing care for staff but also requesting the work required of them? I want this thread to be strategies ONLY. Thanks!
Sharing a message sent to me privately by a leader:
I think individual conferences w/ Ts avoid the dreaded “group spanking” & allow you to personalize feedback, show individualized appreciation, & think together in a meaningful way about how to get the work done... 1/2
I think individual conferences w/ Ts avoid the dreaded “group spanking” & allow you to personalize feedback, show individualized appreciation, & think together in a meaningful way about how to get the work done... 1/2
...and how you might support. Yes, it is time consuming...and so worth it. 2/2
In this climate it’s a delicate balance. Everything takes longer and is hard. The work has to continue. Those individual conferences give you a way to stretch a teacher, to hear what they are doing (or not) & use that as an entry point to push them closer to where they should be.
And volunteer to co teach with them. Or to do a little piece of the lesson for them. That takes the “our kids can’t do that” excuse off of the table.
And I think principals can think about what they can take off of teachers’ plates so they can focus on instruction. Why have them pull and compile data or complete spreadsheets if you can pull that data yourself.
I do think we need to show teachers that we are willing to work WITH them, not just tell them what to do. Nothing gets my blood going more than when someone tells me I “need” to do something. Nope! Words are important. How might WE get more student engagement? How might I help?
And it can’t just be principals. It should be APs, department chairs, specialists. If we share the load, it builds “street cred” with the staff and would be manageable...not easy...but nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
Might be hard to get buy in initially...and I do think it would go a long way to building a culture that says we value you, kids, and good instruction. And it requires building leaders to be leaders and not just managers.
I will be the first to acknowledge that it’s really hard. I struggle with work life balance. That’s why I think it is so important to build a team where we all support teachers. I had to learn to delegate and to build capacity in others. That has been a hard, ongoing lesson.
The following part of this thread is from a different school leader:
A) Refraining from asking for things the day of without notice unless they are essential
B) Limiting meetings
/C-E
A) Refraining from asking for things the day of without notice unless they are essential
B) Limiting meetings
/C-E
C) Providing lead time to complete mandated tasks. For example we had our slos scored a week in advance so anyone who needed to revise had ample time to do so.
D) Extending deadlines when they can be stretched
/E
D) Extending deadlines when they can be stretched
/E
