Last year a senior member of the UJA asked me, “If you had a magic wand, what would you change to help day schools?”. I said that it wouldn’t be money (though that would be a big plus, and the one that comes up most frequently). Rather, it would be that the community truly valued educators and gave them the status they deserve as the people we’ve entrusted with raising and growing the future, our children. This, I said, would not only reflect what I think our core values should be (validation), but would also solve our teacher crisis, i.e. not enough people willing to enter or stay in education. I think the opposite occurs, which is what we see now, when teaching is not given the respect it deserves. How do we do this? That was not the question he asked, though it did sit with me.
I saw a presentation of this argument that struck me quite strongly, in the book Seven Secrets of a Savvy School Leader by Robert Evans. Here is the quote in full.
The lack of praise and validation among educators is so deeply embedded in the culture of schools that it is simply taken for granted; it draws little attention. But having educators live by a norm they would never impose on students is not just a conceptual irony, it is a real-world calamity. It violated the most basic principles of learning and a large body of evidence about how to create and sustain high performance in the workplace.
Indeed, how is it that we not only tolerate, but normalize towards teachers a complete lack of validation and praise for their work, and yet would never tolerate those same teachers doing that with our students? And why, in doing so, would we expect a positive outcome? So powerful. Evans continues.
But dramatically increasing the levels of meaningful recognition for – and among – educators is inexpensive and uncomplicated. It is, I’m convinced, the single best low-cost-high-leverage way to improve morale, performance, the climate for change. In one way or another, virtually every successful school leader I’ve ever known has been a good ‘recognizer’.
It would seem we, and I, have our work cut out for us.