Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the Adaptive Edge of Education.
Speaker: My name is Miranda Shorty and today I have with me the marvelous Miss Melissa Multrup, who I have the privilege of working with in my doctoral cohort and who is quite possibly the most efficient, effective, and accurate researcher writer I've ever met in my life.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Absolutely, sweet angel baby.
Speaker: Very glad to have her.
Speaker: And she is also a veteran middle school teacher.
Speaker: She is the building rep for the local chapter of her teachers union in her district.
Speaker: She is a teacher mentor in her district, and she is the mother of two children who are six and nine.
Speaker: So she literally does it all.
Speaker: And today she is going to talk to us about something she views as an adaptive challenge
Speaker: in education.
Speaker: And we're super lucky to have her.
Speaker: So Melissa, whenever you're ready, take it away.
Speaker: Well, thanks for having me.
Speaker: First of all, today we are going to talk about teacher retention.
Speaker: This is an issue that I hold near and dear to my heart for several reasons.
Speaker: Not only does it have everything to do with my research for my dissertation, but I serve in a few roles that are really primarily for supporting teachers.
Speaker: and trying to keep them satisfied with their job, trying to keep them happy so that they can continue in their positions and serve students.
Speaker: So I actually find myself oftentimes feeling like I half of the time work with students and half of the time work to support teachers.
Speaker: And this is an issue that has really hit home for me recently, just because I've been sort of expanding my work a little bit with teachers
Speaker: doing some presentations at conferences and just having a chance to meet administrators and teachers quite literally from from all over the country.
Speaker: And I have found myself because I'm so curious about really what keeps teachers and because my research is really about
Speaker: the way in which teachers view their principals' leadership style and how that impacts their overall morale.
Speaker: I have found myself asking principals, they're probably getting annoyed with me by now, but I find myself asking them, what do you do to make your teachers happy?
Speaker: What do you do for morale?
Speaker: What do you do to keep your teachers?
Speaker: And I am finding that I'm consistently disappointed by the response because the response tends to be,
Speaker: Well, we do, you know, we let them wear jeans on Fridays.
Speaker: We give them food sometimes.
Speaker: We put coffee in the teacher's room.
Speaker: Oh, and don't forget about Teacher Appreciation Week, right?
Speaker: Because we do a lot during then too.
Speaker: And I find myself a little, not a little, genuinely disappointed at those responses because when I really look at the research and I look at my own research,
Speaker: food comes up very rarely coffee comes up very rarely and what's coming up more and more is
Speaker: teachers need and want things like support and respect and really good professional development.
Speaker: And so I'm hoping that through my research and through doing things like this, this podcast, that we can sort of make a change in the way in which administrators view what teachers really want and really need in order to keep them teaching.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: I want to say in regards to the respect issue, when I was doing my research for this particular episode to talk to you in an attempt to try to sound like I knew what I was talking about, I tried to do some research into teacher retention, just trying to think of different areas of this topic that you would want to talk about.
Speaker: And I was shocked to find that while I
Speaker: In most countries that the OECD would find are equivalent in wealth to the US, and there's like 23 countries that they say comparable, most other countries are
Speaker: two-thirds to three-quarters of teachers feel they are valued in their profession or that their profession is valued, while only a third of teachers in the U.S. consider their profession something that's valued.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not, I am and I'm not surprised by that because I do think that
Speaker: When people get the support, when they get the trust and they feel they can trust their administrators, when they feel respected, when there's really solid communication, those things just lead to people feeling valued.
Speaker: It doesn't matter what field you're in.
Speaker: But when I'm completing my research, what I'm finding very interesting is that
Speaker: the anecdotal pieces that I'm collecting for my data collection has a lot, a lot of people are saying that they feel valued, that they feel supported, that they feel respected.
Speaker: And so I'm sort of at this kind of tipping point almost of a lot of the research that I've done and the research that you've just mentioned is
Speaker: kind of points to the idea that teachers are not satisfied with their job and that they don't feel valued.
Speaker: But with the research that I'm conducting just in the state of New Hampshire, I have 80% of my participants who have said that they are satisfied with their job.
Speaker: And a lot of quality data that says that they feel valued and supported and respected.
Speaker: there's this conflicting research that I'm finding in my own work.
Speaker: I'm confused about that because in a, in a country where we like 10 years ago, we saw 50% turnover rate and, you know, 50% teacher attrition.
Speaker: And it's only gotten worse in the last 10 years.
Speaker: I'm trying to figure out how, how,
Speaker: Does that translate to 80% of people feel valued and feel satisfied?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I think, I mean, I guess let me clarify.
Speaker: So I have 80% of the participants who completed my survey on teacher job satisfaction said agreed somewhat or strongly agreed that they were satisfied with their job.
Speaker: Similar percentages of total participants said that they felt as if I'm just going to look real quick just so I make sure I'm sure.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So I have 80% of participants, regardless of demographics, say that they were satisfied with their job.
Speaker: They feel like they have gotten all of the important things that they want out of their job.
Speaker: But there is a significant difference between the percentage of people who feel satisfied and the percentage of people who feel that their working conditions are excellent.
Speaker: So there's a little bit of what I see as an issue there of I'm satisfied with my job.
Speaker: I'm getting the things that I want out of my job, but the conditions in which I'm working are not good.
Speaker: And that may, the factors that contribute to that might be internal within the school community, but also external factors that
Speaker: because we know teachers have really been put through the ringer in the last couple of years with communities and things that are reported on the news and society issues and those pieces.
Speaker: But what I'm also finding interesting is that there are certain pockets or brackets of teachers who are definitely have noted, at least in my study, that they are more satisfied than others.
Speaker: And there's one bracket of teachers, teachers who have been working or have three to five years of experience who are the least satisfied compared to teachers of any other experience levels.
Speaker: So the three to five year.
Speaker: The three to five year.
Speaker: And then another interesting piece that I think is connected to administration is that teachers who have worked with their current principal for over 10 years, 90% of those teachers are saying that they're satisfied with their job and that they're getting the important things that they want out of their career.
Speaker: and that their principal communicates the information they need in order to do their job well.
Speaker: So that's really interesting because a few years ago, USM, the University of Southern Maine, they put out some research regarding teacher retention issues.
Speaker: They have their own certification and graduate education programming.
Speaker: And one of the things that they listed as being a major challenge for teacher retention that falls under job satisfaction category was that teachers expressed that they were frustrated with the turnover in administration.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so this, the data that I have with support that there is some, there may be some kind of connection and there may be some future research opportunities here between principal retention and teacher job satisfaction and teacher retention.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker: I think that's really interesting.
Speaker: And I think
Speaker: So as a teacher myself, I think when I think of job satisfaction or why are teachers leaving, I tend to immediately go to economic thoughts, thoughts about salary and the idea that while in other countries that are equivalent in wealth or economy, I'm
Speaker: Like, for instance, Finland, somebody might make a teacher might make 98 cents on the dollar for another equally educated person in a professional job outside of education.
Speaker: In the U.S., we're only at 65 cents per dollar.
Speaker: I think.
Speaker: When I think of why are teachers mad, my brain always goes directly to we're mad because we are not paid equivalently and therefore we feel devalued.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Diane Ravitch in her, I think her most recent book, Slaying Goliath, actually made the argument that salary is not a factor in job satisfaction or in teacher retention because typically teachers don't get into that, into the field of education for a salary.
Speaker: They're drawn to it because they care about students.
Speaker: They want to educate.
Speaker: They want to
Speaker: serve and protect and all of those pieces.
Speaker: And there is some other research that says that low teacher morale and job satisfaction doesn't have anything to do with salary, but it has more to do with those factors of support and trust and communication and having a voice and the self-efficacy, the empowerment and all of those pieces.
Speaker: But it is interesting because
Speaker: I currently work in a district that has a great con teacher contract.
Speaker: It has a really great salary grid.
Speaker: And a few years ago I thought, well,
Speaker: what if I were to get a job in the district where I live?
Speaker: How great would it be to contribute to the community where my kids go to school and where they play sports and where I have friends?
Speaker: And then I looked at the teacher contract and it literally would have been a $20,000 pay cut for me.
Speaker: And that made the decision right there.
Speaker: I think it is a big part of the, and don't get me wrong.
Speaker: I love Diane Ravitch.
Speaker: I love slaying Goliath.
Speaker: I love the way she tackles the education disruptors and the concept of the privatization of education and the way in which that's potentially harming or disrupting the educational experience in the U S I love her book.
Speaker: I think she,
Speaker: that the money does have a bigger part in it than what she would let on in slaying Goliath.
Speaker: And I think, I think where that translates to is this idea of being valued.
Speaker: And so when we see those rates of dissatisfaction amongst teachers due to a lack of value,
Speaker: I guess, do you think that those rates would be lower if we were compensated more in line with the way that other countries with similar economic wealth compensate their teachers?
Speaker: I don't think I can confidently say that...
Speaker: increases in salaries or compensation would solve or not solve, but help solve the teacher retention issue only because I firmly believe that if you pay us more, but my working conditions are poor, I don't feel supported by administration.
Speaker: I don't feel respected.
Speaker: I'm not sure that the salary matters.
Speaker: No, I think it's definitely like an interplay of like a lot of complicated things.
Speaker: But I think that salary does have a role in it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I think like when I just I changed districts a couple of years ago after working for several years in one district.
Speaker: And I finished my master's in 2020 during like the height of the beginning of COVID.
Speaker: It was a really interesting time.
Speaker: And now I wear my graduation regalia everywhere I go because I didn't get to wear it to my graduation regalia.
Speaker: But I left at that moment, even though COVID was a weird time to be switching districts, because I looked at my pay scale.
Speaker: And even with a master's degree, I was not going to make a master's degree and many years of experience.
Speaker: I still wasn't going to make $50,000 a year.
Speaker: And that was wild to me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And many years experience with this, with a state position teaching.
Speaker: And I just, I couldn't rectify that in my mind.
Speaker: And that's part of the reason that, that's not the only reason, but that's part of the reason that in a major contributor, because when I applied to other districts, I remember the one that picked me up called and said, we'd like to hire you and this is how much we would pay you.
Speaker: And I was like, I can't do it for that.
Speaker: And I said, no.
Speaker: And then I got a call back shortly after that and said, well, upon further look into your overall, your experience, we actually know that you deserve more steps than you have.
Speaker: So we'll pay you this.
Speaker: And if you finish this class in this class by then, then you'll have a master's plus 15, then we could give you this.
Speaker: So they were willing to bargain on that chip.
Speaker: And it was on that return phone call that I was like, all right, I'll head up.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So I, and it was like $12,000 more a year, but that, that was the thing that moved me over.
Speaker: Um, and I didn't know what it was going to be like in that new district.
Speaker: I didn't know if the conditions were going to be better or worse.
Speaker: I will say in the prior district, things were not great in respect to teacher morale.
Speaker: And I know, um,
Speaker: uh, we talked, we talked about this last episode, Rhonda and I, but, um, Melissa also published with us, um, an article regarding the eudaimonia frame, um, a frame or a lens of understanding organizational theory that we proffered up to, uh, Bowman and deal for their, um, theories or their theoretical framework on organizational structures.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: the eudaimonia of that school, the eudaimonia lens was, was really struggling.
Speaker: There was zero synergy, zero tuning to the same, you know, concept.
Speaker: There was no, nothing was congruent about what was happening.
Speaker: So there, it was a complicated issue, but I know that, you know, money played a big role in the decision that I made.
Speaker: And I think that
Speaker: But I do think there's more to it than that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think it is sort of situational.
Speaker: So everybody as an individual, some people can make the sacrifice in regards to lower salary, right?
Speaker: Some people just simply are not able to do that.
Speaker: And I do.
Speaker: It is definitely...
Speaker: a factor without a doubt, but unfortunately I think it's probably one of the most difficult factors to get any movement on.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Especially when I'm thinking about my experience in the state of New Hampshire, everything
Speaker: is state and locally funded, right?
Speaker: And in the state of New Hampshire, the way that teacher contracts work and salaries is that a lot of it comes from the local taxes.
Speaker: So unless you can get communities on board to increase their own taxes in order to pay higher teacher salaries, there's not going to be a big shift in salaries for teachers.
Speaker: I think in Maine right now, we have a legislative draft, 1398, that's in to increase teacher salary.
Speaker: And on May 11th, it was the final disposition was not to pass.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, nice.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And actually, there are many states in our country that do have minimum teacher salaries, at least as a starting point for, you know, the salary, the bottom line or the salary increases.
Speaker: New Hampshire is not one of them.
Speaker: So there is also a bill in Maine right now trying to establish a minimum salary for teachers, ed techs, specialists, interventionists, everybody.
Speaker: It's 1314.
Speaker: That's the legislative draft number.
Speaker: And
Speaker: My guess is it will also probably be an ought not to pass.
Speaker: And I know some states have gotten them to pass, like Vermont, I think, got their minimum teacher salary bill to pass.
Speaker: But my guess is, and what they look at is they want professionals, people with advanced degrees or bachelor's degrees or educational professionals to be at a minimum of 200% of the state minimum hourly wage.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So-
Speaker: It would be a minimum of, in the state of Maine, our minimum hourly wage is, I think, $13 something, $13.50, $13.80, something like that.
Speaker: So it would be like equivalent to like $27 minimum per hour.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And however that works out salary-wise.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And there are other pieces that are tied to the financial factor that several states do really well, like tuition reimbursement, loan forgiveness, also additional compensation for those who work in areas of need or in poor rural communities and those pieces.
Speaker: When I was looking through...
Speaker: what each state does and what their teacher retention programs look like at the state level.
Speaker: There are definitely many states who contribute to the financial aspect, but there are also states who mandate a two-year, sometimes three-year teacher mentoring program.
Speaker: And other, like the minimum, oh, also some states mandate minimum planning time.
Speaker: So it's fantastic.
Speaker: Interesting to see these states that are taking on our understanding that, yes, the salary piece and the compensation piece is definitely part of the overall problem.
Speaker: But we also have to make sure our teachers feel supported.
Speaker: We also have to make sure they have the time in order to be able to do their job well.
Speaker: Unfortunately, well, fortunately and unfortunately, I suppose the state of New Hampshire is
Speaker: doesn't have any of those programs put into place.
Speaker: So New Hampshire has zero teacher retention programs.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: They do currently have a committee that is...
Speaker: collecting data and looking at what other states are doing in order to make a plan moving forward, which I actually, in July or August of this year, will be presenting to that committee and working with that committee a little bit.
Speaker: So how long has that committee been in existence?
Speaker: Oh, I don't know exactly.
Speaker: I want to say since last fall.
Speaker: So I think their goal... Yep.
Speaker: I'm not trying to be critical.
Speaker: It's just that it's not that hard to find the research.
Speaker: And I found it within a couple of weeks in our last class when we were researching educational policy.
Speaker: So I think I had...
Speaker: I feel like we could have jumped on something at this point.
Speaker: But I told because I actually had a phone conversation with the gentleman who is in I can't remember his exact job title at the state, but basically he's sort of head of teacher research.
Speaker: what is it, teacher retention, I'm not going to get it right, but he works with this committee, and I sort of told him in nicer terms of, yeah, I can tell you, I can tell you what other states are doing.
Speaker: I'm right here, and so, but I'm excited about the opportunity to have a help in that.
Speaker: What's that?
Speaker: I was going to say, and it's specific to New Hampshire teachers.
Speaker: Like I didn't really have that exact data.
Speaker: So I think that's, I don't mean to be cynical and jaded.
Speaker: I just always think it's really funny when there's a committee for something that has never done anything.
Speaker: And I'm wondering, is that, are there other states that have absolutely no teacher retention, um,
Speaker: bills or laws or programs or committees or.
Speaker: Oh, New Hampshire.
Speaker: When, when I looked a few months ago, when I was looking at, um, what states do do or what they, what they call that they do for teacher retention, right?
Speaker: Um, New Hampshire is the, the only state who has currently no programs
Speaker: Some states have just one, like maybe just the tuition reimbursement or maybe just the loan forgiveness or just compensation for people working in areas of need.
Speaker: But New Hampshire, in what I saw, is the only state that has zero programs.
Speaker: Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker: I was actually thankful when I did find that there's a committee at least starting to work on it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I because I was I was feeling the same way.
Speaker: I was feeling pretty cynical about the situation of, you know, all right, every state in the United States, you know, need to need to be happy and, you know, need salary increase.
Speaker: But not New Hampshire, you know, not the one state where I am.
Speaker: No, I can see why that would be frustrating.
Speaker: It's frustrating to me.
Speaker: I'll tell you why.
Speaker: this is like a very specific reason.
Speaker: And I haven't shared this on this podcast yet.
Speaker: I have grave concerns about the privatization of education and the use of private schools and charter schools that receive state or federal funding to move education towards privatization.
Speaker: I'm concerned about it because I think that
Speaker: it does not represent the needs of students fairly or accurately.
Speaker: I don't think that these movements towards the privatization of education care about retaining teachers at all.
Speaker: And I don't think that they believe or that the powers that be, the powerful families at play,
Speaker: in this particular dynamic that are funding these nonprofits, funding local state federal campaigns to have people elected that support their agenda.
Speaker: I don't think that they think teaching is a profession.
Speaker: So they don't care whether they retain people because they don't see it as a career.
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It does make sense.
Speaker: And when I think of the Teach for America program, this idea that I think it's what, is it four to six weeks of training?
Speaker: I can't quite remember.
Speaker: It's something wild, like a nine-week certification, which to anybody who went through an 18-month or two-year teacher cert program with an additional year for their master's or whatever, it's just kind of like...
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: So this idea that within such a short amount of time, you can learn everything you need to know to be a teacher.
Speaker: And really, we just want to, we want, or they want the turnaround time to be quick, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So we're going to train these teachers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: and the salary is going to be low and we're only going to have them for a couple of years, but that's okay because we have plenty, plenty more people that will come into this program because I mean, as somebody, so my bachelor's is an elementary education.
Speaker: My master's is in, you know, teacher of reading.
Speaker: I have several certifications.
Speaker: I dedicated now, I've now dedicated eight,
Speaker: years of schooling towards my profession.
Speaker: So you know what, if they can dedicate, what is it, six to nine weeks or whatever it is, and then get those people in one or two years, you know, if you had told me, I don't necessarily want to go work for Teach for America, but if you had told me when I was 18 that there is a program
Speaker: that I could go to for six to nine weeks and then enter the job force as a teacher, I may have done that.
Speaker: Yeah, I may have as well.
Speaker: Shockingly, I think I would have been very attracted to that idea because –
Speaker: my ADHD is such that I can't wait for me to stay on one thing for a very long time, but I would, I think I probably would have wanted to do that as well.
Speaker: But another thing that we joke about in our cohort is how the more I learn about my area of research, my field of research, the more I realize I don't know anything about, about education or about, you know, I, it's just, there's so much research and data that,
Speaker: There are so many questions to be asked that the more I research, the more I know how little I know.
Speaker: And the idea that you could do service to children with these complex needs, kids that are coming from trauma that have different needs in terms of learning disabilities, behavioral disorders, emotional disorders, physical disorders, whatever.
Speaker: that are impacting their learning and that you could differentiate for all of that after nine weeks is like wild to me.
Speaker: But I don't even necessarily, I mean, I kind of blame Teach for America and programs like that, but I also blame this idea that when we don't treat teaching as a career or profession, we allow for
Speaker: there to be wiggle room in what qualifies you to be a teacher, right?
Speaker: And that's gravely concerning for me.
Speaker: When I was looking at the different education bills that are in Maine right now, a lot of them, more than I realized, were about having less restrictions or having like an easier...
Speaker: easier access for people to apply for teaching certifications.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And the hiring of people who are underqualified, right?
Speaker: So that is a, what I would consider to be a nationwide issue is so, so first of all, another contributor to this problem is that enrollment in bachelor's programs for education is down and,
Speaker: And graduation rates from those programs is also down in most states, not all states.
Speaker: Some states are actually doing a good job at increasing enrollments in those programs and graduation rates.
Speaker: So we have fewer people entering the workforce to begin with.
Speaker: And then people leave their jobs, right, for whatever the reason is.
Speaker: And we don't have anybody to fill those positions.
Speaker: So, I mean, we saw it happen with the National Guard.
Speaker: You know, we have National Guard members in classrooms in some states.
Speaker: We have administrators feeling the need to get a warm body in a classroom and
Speaker: And if you can fill those positions with student teachers, people who don't even don't have degrees yet, or people who simply cannot get their certification for whatever reason, maybe they can't pass the test that they need to take in their state.
Speaker: It sends a message to society that, you
Speaker: Anyone can teach.
Speaker: It doesn't matter how much experience you have.
Speaker: It doesn't matter how much knowledge you have.
Speaker: Anybody can teach.
Speaker: We can hire a 20 year old who doesn't have a degree to come in and teach high school math to a diverse group of learners.
Speaker: So I do think there is something to say about this, the idea that due to circumstances that are kind of out of our control, we
Speaker: In the sense of being able to fill positions, we're sort of putting out this message that anyone can do it.
Speaker: So why do we need people who have all these years of education or who have higher salaries to do it when we can pay somebody less to do it?
Speaker: And it's incredible the ways that they're willing to try to deal with certification rather than just encouraging people to apply for teaching certifications and
Speaker: and go through teaching certification programs by either
Speaker: you know, stipending some kind of fiscal or monetary incentive or increasing teacher pay to be equitable to that area of professional, like private industry.
Speaker: They won't do any of that, but they'll do all these crazy, they'll waste time on these other crazy endeavors.
Speaker: Like there's multiple ought not to pass bills in Maine right now, which some of them, thank God, but it's like,
Speaker: Just extend or waive the requirement for teaching certifications or increase the number of acceptance of out-of-state certifications or allow retired people immediate recertification.
Speaker: There's one.
Speaker: Sorry, go ahead.
Speaker: And I just say I find I find that so interesting because so I started my teaching career in Massachusetts and then we moved to New Hampshire in 2011.
Speaker: Yeah, 2011.
Speaker: And when I was trying to get my certification in the state of New Hampshire, somebody at the Department of Education said to me, I can't give you a reading specialist certification because you don't have the right master's degree.
Speaker: And I had to fight for it.
Speaker: And I'd say, listen, the name of my master's degree is teacher of reading.
Speaker: It was a reading specialist program.
Speaker: So, you know, 12 years ago, I couldn't even get my certification.
Speaker: Even though I had a master's.
Speaker: But today...
Speaker: We're just going to push it through.
Speaker: We're just going to push it through.
Speaker: In wildly, like one of the things, one of the bills, it's legislative draft 335 in Maine.
Speaker: Their goal is, the whole bill is to just improve the response time to educator certification.
Speaker: So it's like,
Speaker: I guess my problem is it's such a point solution to a system challenge or the need for system change to say, well, we'll just get faster at approving certifications.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Which doesn't make sense because the idea of getting people in, highly qualified people into these positions is not a structural problem, right?
Speaker: That's a human resource problem.
Speaker: It's a human resource problem.
Speaker: It's a mission vision problem.
Speaker: It's a political problem.
Speaker: It's not just a structural problem.
Speaker: It won't take just saying we're going to respond faster to certification applications or we're going to start approving certification applications that we would have denied previously.
Speaker: We're going to become more liberal with what we're willing to approve.
Speaker: Those things are point solutions for system change and they don't work.
Speaker: Some of them are ought not to pass, but not all of them.
Speaker: And I think even though they're not passing and because generally they're under supported, they lack the research or evidence to support why they would be implemented.
Speaker: Outside of that, it's representative of like a bigger thing that's going on ideologically that I'm concerned about this idea that like,
Speaker: we're in crisis mode, we're always in crisis mode.
Speaker: And so we don't need to worry about quality.
Speaker: We just need to get through it, right?
Speaker: And I think that conceptually in regards to education has been so pervasive.
Speaker: Not, I mean, it was pervasive during COVID for obvious reasons.
Speaker: We really were in crisis mode and we really needed to just get through it, whatever way was most effective.
Speaker: And there was no precedent for us to lean on to say, this is the best researched way, this best practice or whatever.
Speaker: We had no idea.
Speaker: So we really were trying to push through and get through it.
Speaker: But we're not that anymore.
Speaker: And there seems like there could be system solutions for these kind of adaptive challenges of how do we get people to take this profession into consideration for themselves.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: I was just gonna say something that I actually found interesting that some states are doing is they are, or they have recruitment programs for high school students.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So trying to obviously recruit high schoolers into the field and some are, are offering college credit for when, as the kids are still in high school.
Speaker: So if you take
Speaker: these education courses, you know, through this university or college, you can start your college credit ahead of time.
Speaker: And I thought that was an interesting way of approaching this issue.
Speaker: Well, and that makes sense.
Speaker: We do that for other stuff.
Speaker: We do that with AP courses.
Speaker: For tech courses.
Speaker: We start recruiting, if you will, young and giving college credit in high school for tech courses and AP courses and that kind of stuff.
Speaker: So
Speaker: it would make sense to kind of already have a head up in this journey to have already experienced getting credit at that age.
Speaker: So I think that...
Speaker: makes sense to me.
Speaker: And that seems more of a system solution, but I swear every day I see a new article.
Speaker: That's like another crazy way.
Speaker: A district is trying to lure people in without just valuing them.
Speaker: Like the most simple thing.
Speaker: Like, I think I sent you that article a while ago that was like,
Speaker: well, here's what we'll do.
Speaker: We'll build tiny homes.
Speaker: And we'll charge them rent.
Speaker: That was in Arizona.
Speaker: That was their educational recruitment technique to help encourage teacher retention and people applying for jobs.
Speaker: And let's be honest, I don't think they mean career retention.
Speaker: I think they mean
Speaker: three, four, five year retention.
Speaker: Because what does a tiny home do?
Speaker: A tiny home gives you a temporary place to live for low cost because you're being handed low pay.
Speaker: That's not a long term solution.
Speaker: And we're thinking about, I'm just going back to the data that I've collected, you know, what's the, the,
Speaker: bracket of demographic when it comes to years experience that's the least satisfied with their job, those who fall in the three to five years of experience.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because those are the people that are like, all right, I'm starting to get a handle on what I'm doing.
Speaker: I feel valuable.
Speaker: I feel like a professional.
Speaker: I've been introduced, I've been corrupted, I've been introduced to more cynical notions of the bureaucracy of education.
Speaker: And now I'm starting to see where I'm being devalued.
Speaker: I'm disillusioned, right?
Speaker: Like the three to five year mark is the disillusionment mark.
Speaker: It's the Santa isn't real point.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: You may have really hit the nail on the head there.
Speaker: Because when I think about my own career, right?
Speaker: first couple of years, you're just sort of thrown in, right?
Speaker: And you're kind of going through and you're learning all of the things.
Speaker: And, you know, teaching is so awesome in the sense of this is what I wanted to do.
Speaker: And I'm finally doing it.
Speaker: I can't believe it.
Speaker: I have a teaching job.
Speaker: I'm making a difference.
Speaker: Look at these great.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I love these students.
Speaker: And then
Speaker: things become more complicated, right?
Speaker: So- More complicated really quickly when you go to buy your first house or you want to apply for your first car loan or you want to pay for your wedding or you're thinking about having a child.
Speaker: And then you're like-
Speaker: Oh, man.
Speaker: Or you get given a position of leadership in your district.
Speaker: And that's when someone lifts the curtain and we see the man we were supposed to be ignoring behind the curtain.
Speaker: And he's pulling all the strings and awes and it looks shiny and pretty.
Speaker: But underneath, it's just a mess.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And that's, yeah, I think that's the Santa's not real anymore point.
Speaker: I think that's why your three to five year gap is a mess and the least satisfied.
Speaker: I think that they saw the man behind the curtain.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think that that is obviously a problem that needs to be paid attention to.
Speaker: And we need to do some, someone needs to do some more research into that bracket of experience.
Speaker: And I think, like, I think actually the other issue that I think about when it comes to years of experience that I think
Speaker: actually benefits a lot of schools and districts is that so, you know, right now I'm in year 15 of my career.
Speaker: So if I do want to go to another school, if I do want to go to another district, I'm
Speaker: on the more expensive end of that, the hiring pool.
Speaker: And so I think I know personally of some, some colleagues and people in other districts that have looked for other jobs, but feel as if they were not hired because they're too expensive.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so that might, that's kind of an interesting thing.
Speaker: Is that concerning you?
Speaker: It is concerning.
Speaker: And I think actually I'm very lucky to be in a district where that does not matter.
Speaker: We do really do a good job of hiring the most qualified candidate.
Speaker: We just hired last year, we hired a, I think a 17 year candidate.
Speaker: veteran teacher who is definitely more expensive than the first year teacher that we hired.
Speaker: I'm in a district like that also that values experience in education and experienced teachers and teachers with higher forms of graduate degrees.
Speaker: And my district is like that, but I know there are many that are not like that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it's just it's it's that's just sort of an interesting when you think about sort of both ends of the spectrum when it comes to years of experience, is that I think eventually many people feel sort of stuck.
Speaker: So they may want to go out and do something different.
Speaker: They may want to go to a different position, you know, in another district or even get out of the field.
Speaker: But salary might be a factor.
Speaker: So just kind of thinking about and looping back to, I can't go anywhere else because no one will hire me because I'm too expensive.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's really true.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I want to loop back to about what we can do to change the way that teachers are feeling in terms of their satisfaction and their value.
Speaker: And I want to talk about something.
Speaker: I know we've talked about this before, but this is really important to me.
Speaker: I'm wondering if this is coming up in your research anywhere.
Speaker: I think the expectation of teachers to work
Speaker: outside of their contracted time, the necessity of, I will tell you, I'm only at school from seven o'clock in the morning till generally three 30 or four in the afternoon.
Speaker: So I'm there for eight and a half, nine hours, but I generally work on grading, planning, assessment,
Speaker: sending parent emails home, responding to internal emails, responding to students' emails and questions.
Speaker: I probably work on that at home myself.
Speaker: Another, I'm sorry, my daughter just walked up and she went every five seconds.
Speaker: I probably spend an additional one to three hours a night on those tasks as well.
Speaker: So I'm looking at more like 10 to 12 hours a day.
Speaker: It's just you can't you wouldn't account for that because I do that on my own time.
Speaker: But it's because I do not have enough time in my day.
Speaker: Like I have to.
Speaker: That is the only way that I will survive and be an effective teacher, communicate with everyone that needs to be communicated with, plan accordingly, differentiate in a way that is expected of us now.
Speaker: especially with the insertion of remediation and grading based on standards, which I love and I don't have a problem with, but it is more time consuming.
Speaker: It is a greater task.
Speaker: I probably spend that amount of time working.
Speaker: And when I'm at school, I'm teaching or with students of those hours and
Speaker: Anywhere between five and a half to eight hours, depending on whether or not I got a prep that day, which is not guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker: It also depends on how many students stayed after.
Speaker: And I also run two clubs after school for free.
Speaker: And all of that, I think, is part of a really big part of the equation of the burnout of
Speaker: Does that make sense?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Do you think that is a contractual issue?
Speaker: Because when I think of – I do work outside of contracted hours, but I'm also –
Speaker: guaranteed a planning every single day.
Speaker: I'm also not required other than faculty meetings.
Speaker: I'm not required by any means to do anything outside of the hours of 7am to 2.20pm.
Speaker: There's absolutely no obligation to
Speaker: that I need to fill.
Speaker: Do I think that it's a contractual issue in my district?
Speaker: Yeah, of course.
Speaker: I think we have big issues in that regard.
Speaker: Do I think that it's a contractual issue overall?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And I'll tell you why.
Speaker: I know I've talked to you about this before, but the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, which is a global organization,
Speaker: They have determined that on average teachers work approximately in the U.S. nine and a quarter to nine and a half hours a day.
Speaker: And they teach of that time.
Speaker: They are directly in front of students teaching running class on average five and a half hours a day.
Speaker: And so they work more than nine hours.
Speaker: They work more than the average eight hour work span that people talk about putting in every day.
Speaker: And I know a lot of other professions work outside of that time too.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But they are essentially on the stage, if you will.
Speaker: They're performing and active in that role five and a half hours at least.
Speaker: And in other countries like Japan,
Speaker: where they work 11 and a half hour days on average, they are only in front of students three and a half hours.
Speaker: And I don't think that's a contractual issue in my district.
Speaker: I think that's an ideological issue in my country in terms of exactly what is it you think that I do, you know, like how much time do you really think it takes to put to research and
Speaker: and put together an entire unit with differentiated summative and formative assessments to build curriculum maps, to lesson plan, to grade on a rubric with feedback, especially if you're an ELA teacher and you're doing essay grading and, you know, feedback.
Speaker: revision and editing exactly how much time do you think it takes to do my job?
Speaker: Because I think that ideologically what they're trying to tell us is most of what we do is hang out with the kids in class.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I would argue that's not most of what I do.
Speaker: Most of what I do is respond to emails, input data, build lessons, grade lessons, attend meetings.
Speaker: Like that's most of what I do.
Speaker: When you think about the amount of time that we provide direct instruction or with students in our day, so you can think about it sort of on a daily basis, but then also if I think about it over the course of the entire year, if I take the amount of time that I spend planning and grading and doing the emails and all of sort of kind of like the paperwork side of the job,
Speaker: that has to be, it has to be equivalent to the amount of time, if not more than the amount of time I spend with kids.
Speaker: And yeah, I mean, we've heard this before, right?
Speaker: We've heard the, well, you get whatever, a week and a half, two weeks off at Christmas, you get eight to 10 weeks in the summer, you know, it all sort of reads out in the end, but not really.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Not really.
Speaker: And as I am, I am definitely the type of
Speaker: Because I really do truly enjoy my job.
Speaker: I enjoy doing or trying to do a little bit over the summer, at least every day.
Speaker: And if I'm not able to, then that's fine or whatever.
Speaker: But I'm constantly planning and I'm constantly thinking about how I'm going to do things differently or...
Speaker: new ideas that I want to incorporate.
Speaker: I actually, there's someone who I played on a soccer team with a long time ago, who's a teacher, and she keeps track of the amount of hours throughout an entire year
Speaker: of how much time she spends at home working on stuff for school.
Speaker: And I was like, that is genius.
Speaker: She should do research on it and she should ask other people to do it and she should compile it.
Speaker: Cause that's, I was thinking about, I thought, well, maybe next year I'll keep track.
Speaker: Cause I'm just genuinely curious of how much physical time I actually spend on my job.
Speaker: It would be interesting to look at that number.
Speaker: I would keep track for her.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And send her my data.
Speaker: I'm curious myself.
Speaker: And I'm thinking about how I do the same as you like to prepare over the summer and on breaks for whatever's coming up.
Speaker: But as any solid teacher knows, you can spend an entire summer, entire vacation, entire break preparing and
Speaker: get into a classroom and find out you're not doing any of that.
Speaker: Things are not what you thought they were going to be.
Speaker: And all of a sudden this class has different needs and we're going a different direction.
Speaker: And now we're just, we are tossing this unit and trying this unit or whatever.
Speaker: So it's always responsive teaching, which means you can never just use that time.
Speaker: I can't send
Speaker: emails about student behavior or grade for students or differentiate an assessment for a different reading ability in my classroom over the summer.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: This is not going to work.
Speaker: You're not going to know them, yeah.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: I can't do that over Christmas break.
Speaker: I can't attend an IEP meeting on Christmas Day.
Speaker: That idea is preposterous, even though we are doing things
Speaker: over that time period.
Speaker: And I think a lot of like, what we're doing is curriculum mapping online, getting our information put in online, our courses and stuff so that if parents want to see, because this is another new, that's a new, new, really fun endeavor.
Speaker: And I think we should talk about this a little bit too.
Speaker: But this idea that
Speaker: Diane Ravitch brings this up a lot in Slaying Goliath, but that we've created adversaries out of educators rather than treating them like advocates because so many of the education disruptors were screaming failed education system, failed education system, that we've turned educators into adversaries.
Speaker: And subsequently, there's a mistrust.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So a lot of what I'm doing, a new work tax that's been placed on me is this additional need to prove that what I'm teaching, how I'm teaching it, why I'm teaching it, how I'm assessing on it works for everyone.
Speaker: I don't just mean like me and the other people that do what I do or my students or my administrators.
Speaker: I mean the community, like I need to have all of that laid out in front of everybody just in case.
Speaker: And yeah,
Speaker: That's new, but there's no, there's not been any additional time.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: No, go ahead.
Speaker: It feels like in our country, when I think about, and of course I, I haven't taught anywhere else, so I don't know the true perspective, but it feels like in general, there's just more pressure.
Speaker: There's more pressure on teachers to do everything that everybody else expects out of them.
Speaker: So I just spent an entire day yesterday, a professional development day, working on kind of like a curriculum map that is for families and community members to look at.
Speaker: So that if they have a question about what any of us is teaching or the books that we're reading,
Speaker: you know, our administration can easily say, please check the website.
Speaker: It's all right there.
Speaker: Which I do think there is something about if, you know, if these community members are going to be paying my salary, right, if they're going to be investing in the schools, they have a right to know what is being taught.
Speaker: But the other push that's come through, at least in the state of New Hampshire, is now the
Speaker: a state law that there are certain topics that teachers cannot talk about because of the pressure.
Speaker: So we cannot talk about white privilege.
Speaker: We have to be very careful, very careful about the way we teach history.
Speaker: Which is so interesting, right?
Speaker: Because why...
Speaker: So first of all, this topic blows my mind and really I think is probably one of the strongest influencers from when I speak to the other high school teachers where I teach.
Speaker: One of the strongest influences on feeling dismissed or devalued as a professional, as an educator, especially as a content area educator where at the high school level,
Speaker: so many of the teachers that teach with me have degrees in that content area.
Speaker: And I think they feel really devalued and they get very frustrated with this notion of, well, we can't teach that because that's a divisive topic or whatever, because it's so counterintuitive to their truth, their ontology about that area of research or study.
Speaker: And so I,
Speaker: It's so frustrating because I totally I'm on board with the idea of transparency.
Speaker: And if people really want to know what are we teaching?
Speaker: What's the content?
Speaker: What does it look like?
Speaker: Being honest and open about that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That extends to I don't like that.
Speaker: And so I don't want you to do that for anyone anymore.
Speaker: That's where I get really uncomfortable.
Speaker: I don't like the idea of white privilege.
Speaker: So I don't want you to teach that to anyone anywhere at any point for any reason.
Speaker: Well, because we're only supposed to teach reading and math, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: As though the perspective that has come out recently is you teach reading, you teach math.
Speaker: Those are the only things that you should be talking about.
Speaker: Well, good luck with that.
Speaker: That's not true.
Speaker: But you might, well, those folks can look at the curriculum map and see, you know, all the standards that are listed there.
Speaker: But that's what I teach.
Speaker: So I think that that's, and in terms of English, yes, that's my, that's some of my standards are reading standards.
Speaker: Some of my standards are writing standards.
Speaker: But I have overarching, enduring understandings and topics to thematically study.
Speaker: And personally, I believe, and I know there's a lot of research about that, that thematic studying is like a very organic way to learn that require me to teach about modern social issues.
Speaker: And that's like in humanities 10 and English 10 and 10th grade.
Speaker: That's like the overarching motif, social issues.
Speaker: And how would you like me to do that?
Speaker: In a way that isn't divisive, I guess, because I don't think that's possible.
Speaker: Our history as a nation, our history as a humanity has been divisive.
Speaker: So that's saying just don't do that and do it the way I want you to do it, even though I did not go to school for what you went to school for, but I still know more than you apparently and should tell you what to do and how to do it.
Speaker: That's devaluing.
Speaker: That's frustrating.
Speaker: Well, and it's like I was saying, it's that added.
Speaker: pressure of I better make sure I don't say or do anything that could get me in trouble.
Speaker: But at the same time, I really need to teach these standards or I need to talk about these themes with students.
Speaker: And so it's that fine line, that walking that fine line of how do I teach students to also learn
Speaker: be humans who will look at these issues and make their own decisions about how they feel about them.
Speaker: And how do I teach these things without ethically or morally compromising myself?
Speaker: Because I know this is a critically important part of understanding this topic, right?
Speaker: I read somewhere recently that there are, I have to find it.
Speaker: Oh, it was a book that we read for Ben's class, I think.
Speaker: that there are countries that are experiencing similar issues in this regard.
Speaker: And I think it was, maybe it's, oh, you know what?
Speaker: I remember reading about Germany.
Speaker: Same same sort of issues are coming up and maybe it was India.
Speaker: I have to double check that.
Speaker: But so, you know, the U.S. is not the only place where this is happening.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But I do feel like it is one of the few places where if we're thinking if we're.
Speaker: comparing to Japan and Norway and Finland and all of these places that are, you know, sort of similar, that it just feels like everything is compounding.
Speaker: And so if we think about the societal pressures of what you what you should be teaching, what you should not be teaching with limited planning time, with
Speaker: lower salaries.
Speaker: But then also, don't forget, you have to teach to that test and then you're going to be evaluated based on how they do on that test.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: By the way, that test might ask ideological, philosophical, political questions.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So don't teach them that because we don't want you to indoctrinate them.
Speaker: But also, we are going to assess you on their ability to pass this test that will ask them about that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And there's a legislative draft in Maine right now that wants to prohibit or adopt rules to prohibit teachers in public schools from engaging in or discussing any kind of political, ideological, religious advocacy in the classroom.
Speaker: And here's,
Speaker: where I really like am blown away by this draft, ideological advocacy.
Speaker: So advocating for the way we think about something.
Speaker: So you want me to teach kids without advocating for the way we think about things.
Speaker: And like, what does that mean?
Speaker: Part of the issue.
Speaker: And this is something that I have, I have talked a lot about recently is that,
Speaker: the policymakers are not educators.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And have no, well, I shouldn't say that about all of them.
Speaker: That's not true.
Speaker: Many of them are not educators or have no experience in education.
Speaker: Some of them do.
Speaker: There's actually quite a few in the state of New Hampshire who do.
Speaker: But the problem is not only that they're not educators, but they're also not consulting educators.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And if, even if they wanted that bill to pass, it's,
Speaker: even if that's what they were pushing, it might actually be more likely to pass if an educator could say, well, we know that you want this.
Speaker: This is probably how it would actually pass or we could make it work.
Speaker: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker: Like there's no matter what the agenda is, no matter what you're pushing for, educators have to be part of the conversation.
Speaker: And I think that is part of the idea of feeling devalued, right?
Speaker: Is that the teachers and the administrators are in the trenches every single day doing all of the things, but no one at the state level values their input or opinion.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And not only generalization, but, and I would say not even, okay, so I'm, I'm going to tell you a story, not even just not valued at the state level, but there are concerns about even being valued at the district level or the school level.
Speaker: I have, uh, I know someone who works in a district.
Speaker: Um, she was recently invited to a meeting where the school, um,
Speaker: where a representative from the school who is not a teacher and is not an administrator does another supportive job was invited to speak in front of a council of people in regards to a legislative draft in Maine.
Speaker: And that person
Speaker: the particular legislative draft that they were discussing was a bill attempting its legislative draft 618 that wanted to eliminate critical race theory, socio-emotional learning, diversity, equity, and inclusion from all school curricula.
Speaker: So she went to talk about that and she promptly informed the panel that their school doesn't teach about critical theory at all.
Speaker: We only teach critical theory at the college level.
Speaker: And I was like, did they ask if that was true at your school?
Speaker: And the person that was telling me the story was like, no, no one ever asked me, but I teach that.
Speaker: And they just like went and spoke for me as though it wasn't like, we don't need to actually talk to teachers about whether or not this is true or we're representing their curriculum fairly.
Speaker: I can just say this.
Speaker: And then to a bunch of people who also don't know anything about what teachers do.
Speaker: And there was nary a teacher in the room to like combat the entire conversation about what people were teaching, which is like also mind blowing to me.
Speaker: And another part of that idea of, okay, does anyone care at all?
Speaker: Like how we feel?
Speaker: Or is anyone interested in voice from teachers at all?
Speaker: And I know this is where your research and my research overlap, that critical importance of voice and representation, agency and autonomy.
Speaker: In school is, you know, what students are screaming for and have been screaming for for a long time, arguably since the end of the industrial era.
Speaker: And also what teachers are screaming for, educators and staff are screaming for.
Speaker: And it's just time and time again, there are these people, the powers that be that are like, well, we're just going to ignore that entirely and just do our own thing about it.
Speaker: And it's so frustrating.
Speaker: It's so incredibly frustrating.
Speaker: It is.
Speaker: And it just circles back to that idea, right, of I – in my professional experience, very rarely has it happened when I really think about it where an administrator has said to me, what do you need?
Speaker: Well, that's not right.
Speaker: More of like what can I do, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: to help you have higher morale, to help you have greater job satisfaction.
Speaker: Like no one has asked.
Speaker: And are there issues that come up?
Speaker: And are my administrators...
Speaker: wonderful.
Speaker: They are wonderful at helping to solve problems.
Speaker: They are wonderful at giving me, I have full autonomy over my curriculum.
Speaker: Like wonderful in that regard.
Speaker: And those are the things that teachers really do want.
Speaker: They want the support.
Speaker: They want to feel trusted in all of those pieces.
Speaker: But in general, the way that it's shown to us is, is through food or through,
Speaker: you know, all of these sort of trivial pieces.
Speaker: That no one really cares, like honestly, no one cares about.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And out of, so I had just thinking about my data, I had about 200 people respond to the open-ended questions at the end of my survey.
Speaker: And one of which was in what identify up to three ways your administrator contributes to your job satisfaction.
Speaker: Out of 200 responses, only eight people mentioned
Speaker: food or coffee or playing games or holiday celebrations or those types of pieces.
Speaker: And it's because we don't get asked what we want and what we need.
Speaker: And then so when we don't get it or when there's a new initiative and we know from the get-go it's not going to work and you didn't ask us for our opinion ahead of time and then all of a sudden it doesn't work.
Speaker: It's just, it just goes back to that idea of the lack of voice.
Speaker: It's a huge lack of voice.
Speaker: I'm wondering how many people in your research voiced things like, I need my administrator to honor my planning time.
Speaker: I need, like, it's helpful when my administrator responds to communication I send them that's important to me.
Speaker: It's helpful to me or I feel valued when my administrator asks me what would be the most helpful for me in that moment.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: No, go ahead.
Speaker: There were few, not very many participants mentioned pieces like
Speaker: not having enough planning time, but it was sort of flipped of my workload is, is unbearable.
Speaker: So there wasn't, there wasn't a lot of specifics about that, that the specifics came, or it was, there was sort of more of generalizations, I suppose, about
Speaker: I don't have any control over things.
Speaker: I'm not part of decisions.
Speaker: Or, and then on the flip side, quite a few people saying, I feel valued because I'm part of decisions, because I'm trusted.
Speaker: My principal is really good at communicating.
Speaker: So it's interesting because I think
Speaker: so part of the workload would to alleviate that problem would probably be having more planning time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But there were, it was definitely more general, I suppose, than those specific pieces.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, if that makes sense to me, I just am wondering if,
Speaker: If you were able to get into like a qualitative style interviewer focus group and you broke down some of those responses, how many people could you get to really clarify when you say my workload is unbearable, what is it you're missing or what do you need?
Speaker: Or when you say I feel supported when I'm listening to, what does that actually look like for you?
Speaker: I wonder how people would break that down.
Speaker: Yeah, that would be interesting, which is obviously a limitation to the study, right?
Speaker: Is that I don't have the opportunity to go back and talk to individuals about their responses.
Speaker: One thing that came up a lot too was the concept of time.
Speaker: So the idea of using all the time that teachers have available in quality ways.
Speaker: So meaningful professional development, meetings that actually have to take place.
Speaker: Lots of people wrote about this idea of just having meetings for no reason.
Speaker: This could have been email.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So if we're thinking about the workload piece, right, the actual quality use of time came up again and again.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm not surprised because I think that teachers really strongly feel a time crunch.
Speaker: Yeah, it's the pressure, right?
Speaker: There are not enough hours in the day for what the expectation is.
Speaker: And I remember when I was really little, my mom, no, I wasn't really little.
Speaker: I'd already started a job.
Speaker: So I wasn't that little.
Speaker: Child labor?
Speaker: I wasn't that little.
Speaker: I was younger.
Speaker: It feels little because I'm just so old now.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: I was younger and I'd like started one of my first jobs.
Speaker: And I think I was talking about my frustration and being like, I have so much to do.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I'm gonna have to work all night.
Speaker: I don't know how I'm ever going to get this done.
Speaker: And my mother said to me, listen, in every job you'll ever have for the rest of your life, your employer's goal will be to give you more things to do than you have time to do because they do not want you to have downtime.
Speaker: They want to exploit every single minute you are on the clock so that you are never being paid to do nothing.
Speaker: So understand you will never get it all done.
Speaker: That's not the point.
Speaker: The point is never to finish your work or to feel satisfied or to leave at the end of the day being like, oh, it was great.
Speaker: I was very productive and I'll come in tomorrow and start over anew.
Speaker: That is never how you're going to feel.
Speaker: That's not the point.
Speaker: And I remember thinking, that's stupid.
Speaker: That's so frustrating.
Speaker: You're telling me that I'm going to spend every single day for the rest of my life feeling like I will not possibly get anything done.
Speaker: She was right.
Speaker: And she was so right.
Speaker: And she was so right.
Speaker: I've never had a single job where I've been like, well, my work here is done for the day.
Speaker: And I've gone home and went about my life.
Speaker: But teaching is a different beast.
Speaker: And I'll tell you why I feel that way.
Speaker: When you're a teacher, you do not have autonomy over your day.
Speaker: You do not walk in saying, okay, here's my list of objectives and things I need to do.
Speaker: I have a meeting.
Speaker: I need to finish this independent work.
Speaker: I need to finish this communication work.
Speaker: And here's how I'm going to structure my hours today.
Speaker: I'm going to accomplish these priority things first and then these and then these.
Speaker: Because you are performing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You're on stage.
Speaker: You're performing.
Speaker: You are in front of kids.
Speaker: And those kids always take precedent over whatever else is on fire on your paper.
Speaker: There's no peace.
Speaker: There's no downtime.
Speaker: There's no like, I'm going to check out for a few minutes and get this really critical thing that's on fire taken care of before I move on to this next thing.
Speaker: If the next thing is the kid standing in front of you who's in crisis or the kid who's standing next to you who's on their fifth attempt at a summative assessment because they really just want to pass, but they're struggling, that kid's going to come first.
Speaker: Or if you know that you really need to get done with this unit this week and so you're going to have to power through an incredible amount of direct instruction and then one-on-one time with some targeted groups or pullouts to get kids that are struggling through it,
Speaker: that's going to take precedent every single time.
Speaker: And if you're doing that for 90% of your day, you really only have autonomy over 10% of your day.
Speaker: And even then, not really, because you've just been on stage all day, which means the people that really have pressing questions to ask you need help with something your peers or even your administrators need.
Speaker: that's when they come find you.
Speaker: Suddenly you lose that part of your day.
Speaker: And so teaching it because they haven't been able to talk to you for the rest of the day.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You were performing.
Speaker: So they, they didn't have access to you.
Speaker: So yeah,
Speaker: I think teaching is unique in that way.
Speaker: There are very few professions where the predominant portion of your day is spent engaged in performance and you're trying to shove all of the logistical, reflective, paperwork style work into the extra 10%.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and it's funny because, you know, as teachers, we talk about this all the time is that nobody really understands our day unless they're a teacher.
Speaker: And it's really, really hard to explain.
Speaker: And, you know, I've been.
Speaker: married for a long time now and my husband is not in the education field and I still can't explain to him what the day is like.
Speaker: So if he, you know, if he says to me, you know, can you make this phone call by this time or can you take care of this tomorrow?
Speaker: Can you go do this tomorrow?
Speaker: The answer is always no.
Speaker: And it's because he has so much flexibility in his schedule.
Speaker: He basically, a lot of times makes his schedule for the day and it's not, you know, nothing that's his fault or anything like that, but there's just, unless you're there and unless you've done it, you just don't know.
Speaker: Just like, I don't know his schedule.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it's sort of like, uh, it,
Speaker: It's always, you're always on.
Speaker: And that's something a colleague said to me recently.
Speaker: We had finished parent-teacher conferences.
Speaker: And I said, I don't know why I feel so drained.
Speaker: And she said, because you were just on.
Speaker: from seven in the morning till 6 p.m.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, you're right.
Speaker: Cause it is, when you are there, you have to be, you have to be on because if you're not, you're doing a disservice.
Speaker: And not on in a way that you've, that you may have a gigantic familiarity with and you can kind of do an autopilot.
Speaker: Cause I tell people, I'm like, okay, when they say, well, what is it like teaching?
Speaker: Especially people that are just, you know, starting out or new to just taking teaching classes or whatever.
Speaker: I'll say, listen, imagine you have to put on three, four, five plays today.
Speaker: And you're going to prepare.
Speaker: You're going to prepare the night before for your plays.
Speaker: And you've been preparing for months, maybe even years for your plays.
Speaker: And you have to perform at least three, four, five of them tomorrow.
Speaker: And you're going to walk in and you're going to do those performances.
Speaker: But they're interactive.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Your audience is a part of your show.
Speaker: It's not going to go the way you want it to.
Speaker: Your audience is not silent and they don't always clap at the end.
Speaker: Sometimes they're mean.
Speaker: Sometimes you find all of a sudden you're actually doing stand-up comedy.
Speaker: It's not a play at all.
Speaker: And the hecklers...
Speaker: do not want to be there.
Speaker: They did not pay to show up.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: They didn't buy these tickets.
Speaker: There's no bar.
Speaker: There's no two drink coupons.
Speaker: These people don't want to be there, but they're there anyway.
Speaker: And they're listening to your comedy and they're not impressed.
Speaker: And some of them don't even get it.
Speaker: And so the things they're asking you, it's not even related to what you're doing.
Speaker: It doesn't matter.
Speaker: You have to answer anyway.
Speaker: And you can't comment back to them the way you want to.
Speaker: So this is an interactive show.
Speaker: But the things you want to say, the things that first come to mind, you can't say those.
Speaker: You got to move on to the next thing.
Speaker: You got to reprocess that.
Speaker: And you have to do that in a matter of a split second.
Speaker: And then you're going to find out halfway through some of your performances that you were doing the wrong play.
Speaker: And you're now you'll switch.
Speaker: You got to pull a play out of your catalog, an old play out of your repertoire that maybe you haven't done for a little while.
Speaker: And you got to just toss that up on stage and just go, just wing it, do it.
Speaker: And then after you do your play, you're going to spend time watching them attempt to do the play you did.
Speaker: And you have to walk around and critique them on how they're doing.
Speaker: And by the way, I just want to remind you again, they don't want to be there.
Speaker: So they don't want to do the play.
Speaker: They're not interested in it.
Speaker: And they also are going to be on their phones.
Speaker: So you're going to need to compete with Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, games.
Speaker: Like this is an interactive show that's bring your own device.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: So imagine all of that's happening.
Speaker: And then...
Speaker: If you work super, super hard at those three, four, five plays that you put on today and you nail them, your reward is that you get to go sit in a space and just do more hours and hours upon work, writing about, reflecting on, communicating with others and planning for more plays.
Speaker: That's it.
Speaker: That's all you're going to do.
Speaker: I was just thinking the hardest, the hardest parts of the job for me are also the beauty in the job.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: The ability to make an adjustment on the fly, the, the ability to take that child who's come into your classroom crying for whatever reason and, and,
Speaker: push the lesson to the side for a few minutes so you can help somebody who's struggling, you know, the, the job.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Ooh, fire drill.
Speaker: Well, there goes that lesson.
Speaker: Words for being a really good actor.
Speaker: in your play is that your audience will love you so much that they will come in and interrupt other plays just to talk to you.
Speaker: And when they come in, they're going to want to talk to you about really deep things that make you challenge or question exactly how you should respond to them.
Speaker: And then the reward for all of that is that you're going to, that's going to be the thing that makes you feel fulfilled.
Speaker: Like you're actually like that part.
Speaker: So it's, it's a wild, right?
Speaker: It's like not something that can easily be,
Speaker: understood unless unless you experience it and I don't think anybody's asking yeah and it's that interesting I was just this just popped into my head of we well I shouldn't say we I maybe other people feel more valued by their students oh yes than by others who are involved in the school community hands down
Speaker: Hands down.
Speaker: I really, they're the goal, right?
Speaker: The kids are always the focus.
Speaker: They're always the goal.
Speaker: They're the topic of every single conversation, every single meeting.
Speaker: Students are the focus.
Speaker: And so when they, because kids have the innocence factor, right?
Speaker: So when they show us respect and support and trust and communication,
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: They make us feel valued.
Speaker: For sure.
Speaker: And I feel valued by students more than by teachers or administrators or teachers.
Speaker: parents any day, which is why probably my allegiance will always be with students.
Speaker: But I feel like, like, I just went to the graduation from the former district that I've been out of for a couple of years because the alternative education program that we started there, I did one alternative education program there and then we started a whole different one.
Speaker: And the freshmen that came in that year for the program we started,
Speaker: were graduating this year.
Speaker: So I went back and went to the graduation to see them graduate.
Speaker: I saw multiple administrators, a bunch of people I worked with, very few adults said anything to me, but at least a dozen kids ran up to me with like pure excitement in their eyes and thanked me just for being present.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I was like, these are the people that care.
Speaker: These are the people that actually care that I show up every day.
Speaker: Truthfully, honestly, it's not so much the administrators.
Speaker: They would replace me if they had to.
Speaker: I mean, I have some people that I work with that I am close with that I think I would continue to have a relationship with outside of work if I left or whatever.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But the majority of them probably not.
Speaker: And they don't care if I'm in my English room or someone else's.
Speaker: But the students, they care.
Speaker: It's important to them.
Speaker: They value the individual that is sitting in that room.
Speaker: Not just that someone is sitting in that room.
Speaker: Not just the warm body.
Speaker: And I think that's why my allegiance will always be with them and also why I stay in education.
Speaker: Mm hmm.
Speaker: That's always it's always about the kids and it's always about I know in recent years, my perspective has always been what would I want for my own children?
Speaker: Yeah, I would want I would quite honestly, I would want a teacher like me.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And I know I've told you this before.
Speaker: that part of the reason I switched careers and I got into education was because of how my son was treated.
Speaker: And I couldn't stand the thought of another student being treated the way that he was treated.
Speaker: Um, and that was part of the reason that I decided because I, I didn't have a great experience in education growing up.
Speaker: Um, I did not have teachers that I connected with.
Speaker: Um, I had multiple traumas at school.
Speaker: Um, and I just, I don't, I didn't really have like a lot of teachers.
Speaker: I could think back and be like, I really glad I got to know that person.
Speaker: Or I think that person really cared about me.
Speaker: Um, and I, I've heard people say in, um, you know, classes or in doing work while I've always, you know, I've gone back and I've emailed this teacher and said, just so you know, I became a teacher because of you or whatever.
Speaker: And when I've thought about it, I'm like, I don't really know if I have anybody that I would be able to say that to, um, but
Speaker: I have my son's teacher who I became a teacher in spite of.
Speaker: So, but I don't know if that exists for me, but I do know that I want to make sure it exists for other kids.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So that's, that's who cares that I show up every day.
Speaker: That's why I show up every day and continue to show up even when I have negative feelings.
Speaker: 20 minutes of planning time and I'm exhausted and I only slept four hours the night before and I'm putting on my fifth play of the day.
Speaker: And quite honestly, I've forgotten my lines.
Speaker: You know, I wonder if there, cause I was just thinking about the whole idea, you know, sort of circling back to the retention piece is what research is out there in regard to
Speaker: you know, the idea that it's the students that keep the teachers.
Speaker: And then also just the principal retention.
Speaker: So, you know, as part of the reason why teachers who have been working with their current principal for over 10 years feel satisfied with their job because the kids have built solid relationships with administrators as well.
Speaker: And you know, members of the school community.
Speaker: That actually made me think of something.
Speaker: It's so frequent that I see districts honoring teachers who have been there 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, 30 years.
Speaker: And showing them like, we value you.
Speaker: Although sometimes I feel like it's in a really token way and it's, it's pretty disingenuous.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: you never really see them stand up and say, here's a new teacher to our school and we are so happy that they made it through this year with us and they've, you know, here's an award for making it through your first year, congratulations.
Speaker: Here's an award for making it through your second or third year or your fifth year or whatever.
Speaker: Here's an award for, you know, taking on a new role as a leader in our community.
Speaker: I think too, there's also very little recognition for administrators.
Speaker: And if there is a connection between principal retention and teacher retention, why are we not focusing on that and empowering administrators, making them feel valued, making sure they are clearly communicated with and they feel supported and they feel respected.
Speaker: I think there's
Speaker: this sort of pressure for administrators to make sure teachers feel happy, but there needs to be sort of an equal amount of pressure for teachers to make sure their principals feel happy.
Speaker: And while it's not necessarily, I don't think it's necessarily a teacher's job to make sure that an administrator is satisfied with their work, but there are higher administrators in the district, right?
Speaker: Who maybe need to...
Speaker: not my district in particular, but who need to look at that issue.
Speaker: I do think that's an area of future research that I would be interested in.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that's a great place or direction to take your research or, you know, a
Speaker: a spinoff, something you could do, maybe your, your one and a half book or your second book.
Speaker: I think that that's really important.
Speaker: And if we look at those links, we might find more success overall, you know?
Speaker: I want to talk about really quickly, um,
Speaker: how we can apply this to Bowman and deal's frames for, um, or their theoretical framework for organizational structuring or their idea of the lenses, um, of an organization.
Speaker: So, uh, quickly, I just want to reiterate Bowman and deal, um, proffer that there are four lenses, uh, for every organization.
Speaker: The first is structural, which we've talked about.
Speaker: We've talked about, I think all of these today, but, um, the first is structural, which is,
Speaker: This idea of the factory of an organization, it's the how they're producing and the what they're producing.
Speaker: And then there's the human resources frame, which is really this idea of the organization being a family, the interpersonal relationships between the people that are the constituents of an organization.
Speaker: And then there's the political frame or lens, which is all about influence and power.
Speaker: It's the jungle of the organization.
Speaker: Who's on top?
Speaker: Who's the leader?
Speaker: What's the hierarchy?
Speaker: And who gets to make the decisions?
Speaker: Who has power and influence?
Speaker: And sometimes it's not who you think it is.
Speaker: And then there's a symbolic frame or lens, which is the mission or vision of the organization.
Speaker: It's the temple, the why to the question, why do we do this?
Speaker: Why are we here?
Speaker: Why are we showing up every day?
Speaker: So I think, and then there's our eunomonia frame, which is the synergy frame.
Speaker: It's the tuning fork of the organization.
Speaker: Are we all working in tandem or congruently?
Speaker: in a way that helps make every aspect of the organization effective.
Speaker: And when I think about teacher retention, well, you know what?
Speaker: I'll just ask you, what frames do you think teacher retention falls under?
Speaker: So I see a few.
Speaker: I definitely think
Speaker: It's the human resource frame, right, of the interrelationships, people getting what they want and what they need from each other and out of their job.
Speaker: As you were reviewing the frames, I really tuned into the political frame, right, that jungle piece of who has power.
Speaker: And it made me remember that as part of the data that I collected for my research, my participants did a subsection of the servant leadership survey where they evaluated their perspectives on the way their administrator makes them feel empowered.
Speaker: So there was a high percentage of
Speaker: About 80% of all participants said that their principal shares decision making with them and lets them solve problems that they know they're capable of.
Speaker: So there's that sense of power, right?
Speaker: Yeah, the collaborative, the
Speaker: The pedagogical partnership, the collaboration.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I've got control over some of these aspects of my job or what's going to happen in my classroom.
Speaker: And then the part where they felt like they didn't have power overall was with professional development.
Speaker: So just the idea, like when I think about teacher retention, teachers really want meaningful resources.
Speaker: professional development and they want to have some control over that.
Speaker: And I think it goes back to the time-wasting piece, right?
Speaker: The don't put me in a meeting just because we have to have an hour meeting today without an objective, without it being meaningful.
Speaker: Or even in that case that I told you about where they were collecting all of this fantastic data, or I think actually I told
Speaker: Rhonda Campbell about it on a different episode, but I'll, I'll, I'll say it really quickly.
Speaker: We took all this incredible data, this district took amazing data from teachers, students, parents about what is going well, what is not going well, what do we need to work on?
Speaker: What are your major issues or concerns?
Speaker: All of that.
Speaker: We spent multiple hours
Speaker: sessions of PD, like half-day PDs, working on coding and theming that data.
Speaker: And then placed little stickers next to the things that, like, every person was given a red sticker to place next to, oh, after it was coded and themed, it had to be organized into what should we stop doing, what should we keep doing, what should we start doing.
Speaker: And
Speaker: After all of that, we did precisely nothing.
Speaker: Even after we voted on what we wanted to do or what we wanted to keep with our little stickers, no one talked about it again after that.
Speaker: That was it.
Speaker: So at the time it was meaningful, right?
Speaker: You were probably getting something or someone was probably getting something out of it.
Speaker: But then because nothing was done with it, it became a colossal waste of time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And it was both the political frame as well as I think kind of the human resources frame that came into play because it was like –
Speaker: all right, here's how I feel.
Speaker: Here's my voice on this issue.
Speaker: Oh, everyone's going to ignore that and put their little sticky by their own agenda anyway.
Speaker: And then no one actually cared what we responded and no one was going to actually take it and do anything to create change based off of what happened.
Speaker: Because really there is no level of autonomy or collaboration.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so that was just, you know, wasted 12 hours of work.
Speaker: So then that I feel like factors into that other frame, the, the pneumonia, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: where this idea of everything we do is, is collective and it's meaningful and it's collaborative and what you feel matters just as much as what I feel.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Are we all tuned to that same frequency?
Speaker: Are we all, are we all part of that same cord?
Speaker: Because I don't think so, you know?
Speaker: And I think that,
Speaker: That's where the eudaimonia frame comes into as well with teacher retention.
Speaker: I think teacher retention is so much a part of what frequency are we all tuned to here?
Speaker: And you know that because you hear people say, oh, I worked for a terrible district.
Speaker: And then when they talk about what they mean by that, they'll often talk about, well, this thing and that thing and this thing and that thing, but everything overall was so negative.
Speaker: Everything overall was unsupportive.
Speaker: Everything overall was unresearched or it felt underhanded or seedy.
Speaker: Like we were not all on the same page.
Speaker: And I think that's really what they're talking about.
Speaker: There's no synergy.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: No, I would agree.
Speaker: And when I think about it,
Speaker: the idea of really tuning into what teachers want and need in order to stay in their positions or even just in their schools, that yes, that's human resource.
Speaker: Yes, that's political.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But even if you were to try to solve the problem through a human resource or political frame, if not everyone is on the same page and doing things
Speaker: the same thing.
Speaker: Maybe it even goes back to the symbolic piece of having that mission, having that vision, right?
Speaker: If you're not working in synergy, you can try to solve the problem in other ways, but it's not going to work.
Speaker: It's probably not going to happen because it won't be substantiated for long.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And I think in the same way, this is a symbolic issue.
Speaker: And I know I've told you, like, I have concerns ideologically about the mission and vision of maintaining teachers as career professionals.
Speaker: I think there's a lot of issues with that.
Speaker: I really am not so sure that people in our country or even districts or education as a bureaucracy value teachers as a profession or a lifelong career.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And if that is not a part of the mission or vision, if that's not valued, that's not there.
Speaker: We might as well forget even try.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Like, what's the point if no one cares about it or thinks that it's real or important?
Speaker: And then structurally, I think.
Speaker: If we don't if we don't do logistical, structural things to support what we're saying, which is that teachers are crunched for time.
Speaker: They feel strapped financially.
Speaker: They feel strapped logistically in terms of their time management and the amount of tasks that they have versus the amount of day time they have to do them.
Speaker: They feel, you know, overworked or whatever, or that the policies, the protocols, the SOPs that are in place at their school do not support the notion of them being valued and wanting them to stay.
Speaker: that's important too.
Speaker: I mean, I really think the issue hits every single frame.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think I hadn't thought about it structurally in that way because I, I like my professional experience I think is different because I've been blessed with really great, a really great teacher contract for so many years now.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's
Speaker: a very, very strong union presence in my district, but also a very strong relationship between the union and administration.
Speaker: That's very, that actually has a lot of synergy that is not necessarily political in the way that you would think.
Speaker: So it's kind of, that's kind of an interesting piece as well, but I hadn't really considered the need for structures to be put in place because I just have a very different experience.
Speaker: Yeah, I just, I wish that I could say that that's the experience for, you know, for a lot of teachers, but it's just my experience and the experience of, I think a lot of people even currently in our cohort or whatever, is that we don't feel, even though
Speaker: The theory is there.
Speaker: The sentiment is there.
Speaker: We want to keep teachers and we want to do whatever will help you to, you know, sustain your, your time here.
Speaker: logistically it ends up being, but we want you to do this for the kids.
Speaker: We want you to do this extra task without pay for the kids.
Speaker: We want you to stay later for the kids.
Speaker: We want you to, it's always, but just do this for the kids, which is, is such an exploitation of the fact that the kids are like, I sometimes feel like education is entirely bought and paid for with the phrase, just do it for the kids.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because that does exploit the fact that if you are a teacher that's willing to stay in education, you're probably here for them.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It makes you feel fulfilled.
Speaker: You value your relationships with them.
Speaker: Students make you feel valued.
Speaker: You are probably here for them.
Speaker: You're probably not here for the great health insurance.
Speaker: You're probably not here, you know, for the incredible pay or for the opportunities to travel abroad or whatever.
Speaker: whatever.
Speaker: Like that's probably not why you're here.
Speaker: And so it's just such an exploitation that feels like, all right, you said it, you said it like you meant it, but you did not set me up to feel that way logistically in terms of the way you've structured your policies or your, your protocols or the resources you've given me or whatever.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: Hey, I really appreciate you for being here with me and talking to me about this today and coming on and sharing your incredible wisdom on this particular topic.
Speaker: And I've had this has been like a really fantastic conversation.
Speaker: So I appreciate that.
Speaker: Well, thank you.
Speaker: I enjoyed it.
Speaker: And I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker: I always love talking about this topic.
Speaker: And I know people get sick of hearing me say, that's not what teachers want or need.
Speaker: When somebody is willing to listen.
Speaker: I sincerely hope and would encourage that new committee in New Hampshire for teacher retention is
Speaker: to listen to what you are saying, to hear what you are saying, and to make adjustments accordingly.
Speaker: And I would encourage them not to sit on the topic for another two years, but rather start taking action as swiftly as possible before we just run out of people to fill classrooms.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm excited about that opportunity to be able to
Speaker: just sit and talk with them, if nothing else, from an educator's, a teacher's perspective.
Speaker: I think that is actually a really good, important first step for them to make as well, is to talk to actual teachers.
Speaker: So I'm excited about that and looking forward to what comes out of it.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Well, please keep me posted and let me know how that goes.
Speaker: Although I'm sure I'll see you and talk to you a thousand times before them.
Speaker: But yeah, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
Speaker: I just realized I am probably going to have to put like some kind of trigger warning on this episode because when I mentioned the disillusionment moment of Santa not being real, my daughter, um,
Speaker: She came out of the bathroom.
Speaker: She's very upset.
Speaker: So I have to put a trigger warning on it because I think I might have just broken some hearts.
Speaker: So I hope you know your children are currently at camp.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Not with an earshot whatsoever.
Speaker: Oh man, I can't believe I said that.
Speaker: Well, you know, maybe it's time.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, thank you so much.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Bye.
