My father had a laissez-faire approach to providing instruction, background information, and constructive feedback to help his workers’ development. It was 1996, and my sister wanted to get married on a farm my parents owned. As any doting parents would do when faced with the challenge of converting a rural outdoor space into a ballroom, they were in the process of pouring a large, cement slab for a dance floor in the middle of the yard. I happened upon this scene as I drove home from school the day the concrete was poured, and my dad decided I required real world knowledge of how to operate a power trowel. What followed was 10 seconds of instruction on how applying pressure to the handle of the equipment in different areas was how it steered and a warning that time was of the essence because the cement was at the pivotal point of dryness when the surface could be smoothed. Failure to do it quickly would result in a rough dance floor, and no one wants that. It could mean the difference between a slide just being okay or truly “electric.” You perhaps had to be in a physical education class in the 1980s or a wedding dance in western Kansas in the last 40 years to get that reference.
Anyway, two of the four men that were standing around watching this experiment with interest helped lift the trowel onto the slab, and we were off to the races. That is, literally, as I apparently applied the wrong type of pressure to the wrong area, and the trowel and I whizzed across the span of the slab and into the dirt on the other side. My capris were ripped, my ankle was twisted, and the learning continued. I caught dirt on three sides of that slab in violent fashion and was told that power troweling was the second easiest thing my dad ever learned how to do before I very loudly announced that I was done and going home.
I am assuming you all are desiring a point to this blast from the past. It is that although my father was a fabulous teacher when he put his mind to it, there were times he was more worried about the results or the yield than providing the on-the-job training and feedback his human resources needed to attain them. While sometimes skimming on instruction and provision of information with which his workers could adjust on the fly panned out, there were times that failed miserably, even to the point some would become blog fodder decades later. His ace in the hole was that we all loved him dearly and had a vested interest in the family farm’s success.
The same is, unfortunately, not always true for our public schools. We have a staffing shortage in our schools which is unprecedented in the years that I’ve been working in education. A few weeks ago, Dr. Bret Church and Dr. Luke Simmering released their Kansas Educator Engagement and Retention Study (Kansas Teacher Retention Initiative 2022). Although much quality data came out of this study, there was one key finding that I found particularly troubling. Based on a survey of over 20,000 Kansas K-12 educators, 30 percent are more likely than not or very likely to either retire in the next three years or leave public education professions altogether. Id. at page 9. Sadly, the reports from our post-secondary institutions seem to indicate that our pipelines to backfill this exodus are less than full.
While I hope you all have at least some homegrown heroes in your employ that were raised in your school district and stayed in your community, I would wager many of your staff members had no previous connections to the district and ended up there by happenstance. For those with a vested interest in their hometown and community school’s success, it is likely they can overlook some lackluster experiences and keep trucking for you. But, for those that have no attachments and can take their licensure or on-the-job training and go numerous places throughout Kansas, those days when they felt tossed by trowel may fester to the point that they are seeking employment elsewhere.
Focus on the results of our educational systems is higher than ever. So much depends on graduation rates, test scores, educational attainment, and progress toward individualized education plan goals. Failure to meet these expectations comes with real consequences both for the districts and the students they serve. Public outcry for transparency in what educational materials are used and specifically what is being taught each day has also added an extra layer of busy work that I assume many did not anticipate when they got into education. The result is that those in the education profession are operating at a constant, strenuous pace in a very stressful environment. It is so easy to hand our staff the equipment, the learning management system, or the keys to the classroom or district office without giving them the training, input, and information they need to be successful. But keep in mind it is a worker’s market out there right now. For some people all it takes is one unpleasant experience, or a few close encounters with the dirt, to convince them to see if pastures are greener elsewhere.
I encourage you not to let that happen. Think of your human capital as the asset it is and be prepared to invest the time, attention, and resources necessary to help staff members be up to speed on day one. If they are struggling but have potential to be great, encourage your administrators to provide them with a support system, improvement plans, and tools to help them navigate those hardships. Have they had adequate staff development? Do they know where your policies and handbooks are and what is in them? Do they know how to use the tools of their trade in an effective manner, so that they can spend the bulk of their time on the essential job functions of their position? Do they know what is expected of them? Have they been evaluated and provided with honest and constructive feedback? Finally, are they aware of what your board’s mission and vision for the school district is? Because, if we haven’t shared those basic items with our employees, their mission is going to be much more about the journey than reaching a desired destination. People can only tread water in employment for so long before dissatisfaction takes over, and the current washes them away. We need to create a culture that is less about stress and survival and more about supporting people to do what they love.
Furthermore, we need to think about our district organizational charts more like ecosystems. While the staff shortages in full-time licensed positions are of tremendous concern, since we more readily see their impact on student achievement, the shortages in those areas are not unique. Bus drivers, cooks, janitors, paraeducators, substitute teachers, secretaries, clerks, and administrative staff members are in a very depleted supply, and it does not take long for the deficits in other departments to be felt by the entire school system. When there is only one day janitor in a large school, the principals are going to find themselves bussing tables and taking out the trash instead of tending to other matters more in step with their actual work duties. Similarly, when superintendents are driving the bus routes, there is an opportunity loss for district-level planning and implementation.
We can right this ship, provide support, and be that protective bubble wrap that insulates our staff members as they go out there and feel the squeeze of a results-driven industry. However, we must be intentional about it. This support and direction must trickle down from the top to the bottom of our organizations if we’re going to weather this storm without negatively affecting our students. We need to give each other grace, time, acceptance, and, most importantly, a continuous drip of pivotal, job-related information to be successful. This, too, shall pass, but we need to play the long game.
Just as we’ve seen the agricultural industry shift over recent decades to using farming methods and equipment that allow more to be done with fewer people, I anticipate the same shift will take place in education. However, we need it to be gradual, and we need to plan strategically to absorb the impact. In the meantime, we need to focus on our work family, creating a workplace where people care about each other, where they have bought into your school board’s mission and vision, and where they willingly step out of their regular roles as needed to help in other areas because it is what is best for students.
In case you were wondering, the dance floor was never used thanks to a drought-shattering rain on my sister’s wedding day; I still curb the urge to kick a power trowel each time I see one. I encourage you all to think back on stories from your work life. I wager you do not remember the random Wednesday when nothing exciting happened. My guess is that the stories of the extreme highs and lows of your work experiences jump out at you. This is because our brains are hardwired to hold onto those memories that are flooded with emotions while overwriting the mundane moments only important for short-term purposes. The challenge to you all as employers and supervisors is to create an atmosphere where the highs thrive for your staff, where any act of reflection about job satisfaction and purpose takes them to a collection of happy memories and not the ones where they felt abandoned by their crew, out of control, or helpless. In the end, it is up to you to write their employment stories, so make them good ones.
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