Addressing the People-First Priority Gap in Education
It's Time to Shift the Focus from Initiatives to Staff and Students
As the backbone of the education system, teachers and students hold immense value. However, the latest data from the School Plus Panel reveals a growing sense of overwhelm among teachers and students, leading to a rise in mental health issues. This has caused a concerning increase in burnout and early retirement among educators and a decline in motivation, engagement, and academic performance among students, as well as an increase in stress, anxiety, depression and behavioral incidents. These trends highlight the urgent need for a shift in priorities at the administrative level, one that emphasizes the well-being of teachers and students and focuses on creating supportive environments that foster growth and development in the classroom and beyond.
Despite these growing concerns, the education system continues to place a heavy emphasis on data collection and analysis, regularly administering assessments and utilizing the results to create personalized interventions. This relentless cycle of testing, planning, intervening, repeat, known as Progress Monitoring, combined with the already rigorous demands of meeting Common Core Standards, places significant strain on both educators and students. Therefore, it is critical that the system takes a step back to not only examine the impact of this approach on the well-being of all stakeholders, but also to assess its efficacy in actually driving meaningful progress and improvement.
The emphasis on instructional coaches, professional development mandates, and evidence-based approaches, while commendable in their efforts to improve student outcomes, may be just "one more thing," without also addressing the emotional and mental struggles of the teachers and students in need. Despite the allocation of resources towards these initiatives, the well-being of our most valuable assets - teachers and students - remains largely unacknowledged. This highlights the need for a shift in priorities in the education system that recognizes and addresses the emotional factors behind the challenges facing education, from behavior problems to stress and anxiety. To achieve this, it is essential to prioritize people first, with the creation of supportive learning environments for teachers and students that includes addressing the elephant in the room, emotions.
Don’t get me wrong, data-driven decision-making is an indispensable tool that should continue to play a central role in the work of schools and educators. However, school leaders and policymakers must consider new ways to streamline the process and shift the full responsibility of this task away from educators, allowing them more time to focus on creating engaging instruction and safe learning environments for their students.
It's not just the job of administrators and school leaders to analyze student data and demand more from teachers, but also to review the data related to their own "students," the teachers.
The well-being of teachers must be considered in order to foster a positive learning environment for both teachers and students.
Personalized Support-and-Development
Personalized support-and-development is crucial. Any time something becomes personal our motivation and our investment in success changes. When addressing the needs of teachers, from a personal point of view, motivation shifts from, “why do I have to be here, this is a waste of time” to “Ok, let’s do this.” School administrators and policymakers can gain valuable insights into the individualized needs of their teachers by analyzing a variety of metrics beyond their students’ outcome, their attendance and their office referrals data.
What if we began to capture and analyze instructional strategy information, and classroom culture information, alongside gathering teacher proclivities knowledge? What if we helped teachers cultivate a pedagogy that was tailored to their individual strengths, yet embodied all the essential qualities of a highly effective teacher? By taking a tailored approach to teacher support and development, we foster a school culture that addresses both the well-being and professional growth of teachers. This approach not only benefits the individuals but also helps drive improved educational outcomes and a lasting impact on each other's lives.
When people are intrinsically motivated, they are more likely to be innovative, persistent, and engaged in their work. Personalizing professional development for employees can tap into this intrinsic motivation, creating a more motivated, engaged, and effective workforce.
It's important for leaders to understand that knowledge gathered on teachers' instructional strategies, classroom culture, and personal preferences is meant to be used as a tool to support their professional growth and development, not as a weapon against them. Teachers may be cautious about having their information collected, so it's crucial for principals to demonstrate it will be used solely for the purpose of creating a personalized learning journey, and not to judge or evaluate their performance in a negative way.
One way for leaders to reassure teachers of this commitment and to foster a positive and supportive environment is by empowering them with control over their own information. By allowing teachers to be the only ones with access to this knowledge, leaders can demonstrate their trust and confidence in them. This can help build a sense of ownership and investment in their own professional growth, as well as alleviate any concerns about the information being used against them. Of course, teachers are free to share their information with leaders or other stakeholders if they so choose, but the choice to do so should be entirely up to them. The goal is growth and development and there are alternative options for teachers to demonstrate this that do not compromise their privacy or autonomy.
No two teachers are alike, and this uniqueness is part of what makes the teaching profession an art. In today's education landscape, a one-size-fits-all approach to training and support simply doesn't work, if it ever did. Instead, by recognizing and addressing individual needs and strengths of each teacher, we can equip them with the tools they need to provide an engaging and supportive learning experience for their students. When teachers are given personalized support and opportunities to grow, they are better equipped to adapt to the changing needs of their students and their classrooms. This will lead to better outcomes for students and a more fulfilling experience for everyone.
Additional Benefits
There are numerous benefits to teachers identifying their instructional style and classroom culture, beyond the advantages previously discussed. This includes helping them develop greater self-awareness. Examining your practice objectively provides an unbiased view of the classroom, avoiding the challenge of relying solely on memory and subjective thinking. By making these elements more concrete, teachers can see their classroom through an impartial lens and develop insights to their own teaching methods. This process instills intrinsic motivation to make necessary changes, enabling teachers to move towards their ideal teaching self.
Teachers are more engaged when they use data from their own context and experience. Walsh & Mann
Additionally, this data becomes evidence-based strategies with meaning. It will lead to identifying what works in your school and in individual classrooms.
Evidence-based strategies have a number of potential drawbacks, one of which is their limited applicability to all classrooms. Real-life classrooms are often far richer and more complex than the controlled environments where evidence is gathered, making it difficult to generalize findings to all teaching situations. For example, evidence may be gathered from a classroom with a highly effective teacher, while the controlled group used a classroom with a teacher who is known to be ineffective. Alternatively, one group may have had multiple disruptive students in it, while the other group had none. While evidence-based approaches can certainly provide valuable insights and guidance, it's important to recognize that there is no single solution when it comes to teaching. Instead, teachers must use their professional judgment and expertise to tailor their practice and unique to the needs of their students and context.
Even if politics were removed from the decision-making equation, there would still remain the major limitation of most educational research, because few studies answer the question: under what conditions and with which students does a treatment work? Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post