Two Things Teachers Really Need (Hint: It’s Not Icebreakers) 🤯

If we all agree that Adulting is hard, how much harder is Leading (with a capital L) people who really need our understanding and support?

As a school administrator and former teacher, I know that teachers are some of society’s most hardworking and dedicated individuals, but the past few years they’ve been feeling the strain. The workload keeps piling up while resources dwindle, leaving them exhausted and overwhelmed.

One of the most significant factors in a teacher’s decision to stay is to have a supportive administrator. Support, by simple definition, means working to minimize distractions by providing time, trust, and resources. And while administrators may have their own ideas of what that looks like, many of us haven’t taught post-pandemic.

It’s time to listen to those doing the heavy lifting.

The Secret Sauce for a Great School Year

I’m a sucker for professional development. I always have been, I probably always will be. I love going to it, developing it, and delivering it. Perhaps it’s the new lease on life I received in adulthood once I realized I wasn’t someone who could just listen and learn. I needed to do, and reflect, and read in order to make learning make sense.

Once I learned how to learn, I couldn’t learn fast enough. In fact, I often feel sadness over the amount of learning I missed as a result of not knowing how to learn. I want to know everything about anything that will make me better for my students. I don’t think that is unique to me. I think many educators feel this way.

As the beginning of a recent school year got closer and closer, I let my enthusiasm for PD get in the way of my judgment. I decided that I was going to develop a scavenger hunt for our teachers. I spent days and days making the clues, generating codes, and creating activities. I was so excited to give our staff a sneak peek into everything we would be doing throughout the year. It was going to be a lot; however, it was going to be fun. Because who doesn’t love kicking the year off with all this learning?

I was so excited about this scavenger hunt.

And then, I went to my mailbox. Inside was a cardboard box from the university I attended for my doctoral studies. I opened the box to find my bound dissertation, the research my partner and I had done about what teachers want from a principal. Naturally I started flipping through the pages.

And two things kept echoing. Time and trust. Trust and time. Time and trust. I began thinking about the scavenger hunt, and I wondered to what degree it reflected the work I had poured three years of my life into.

And then there were the social media posts and comments.

Teachers were getting on to talk about how much they dislike ice breakers. They talked about how they disliked being treated like children. They talked about how much they wanted time to work in their rooms and the trust from their administrators that they want to learn and get better for kids – however, they want to do it after they feel ready to welcome their new class.

I was beginning to lose my enthusiasm for the scavenger hunt.

The next day I went to school. Together, with the best partner principal ever, we began sorting the scavenger hunt into two piles: The must-dos and the can-dos. Through this sorting, it became clear that while all of the learning was good learning, it wasn’t all necessary learning.

At least right away, anyway. I looked at the sad pile of things that needed to get done right away, and I knew that I had let myself get carried away by my own personal passion for professional learning. I tossed the scavenger hunt and decided that time and trust were the only things that truly belonged on the must-do list.

That Monday, when teachers came in, we got together for breakfast. We did a little work on our building vision. After about an hour, my partner principal and I let them know that the rest of the time was theirs. I even mentioned the scavenger hunt. And the social media memes. 

At the conclusion of the work week, my inbox and phone were inundated with thank yous. The messages all spoke to the fact that this was the first time they weren’t stressed going into the first week of school. People thanked us for allowing them to get to spend the weekend with their families because of the time they were provided in school.

It felt good to know that our educators were truly happy to be ready and welcome the kids on the first da. These messages made me realize that we had done the right thing.

As for the scavenger hunt, we certainly will revisit the activities and learning. However, we will do it at a time when our staff is ready to engage in it. For now, we are relying on time and trust, and I have a feeling that, because of this, our staff is even better.