Teaching and learning are challenging. Each year, teachers are met with directives and new initiatives folded into training after training. Teachers are expected to constantly transform their classrooms, improving instruction and assessment practices while balancing the demands of the curriculum. They’re expected to meet the needs of all students who enter their classrooms, no matter the range in prerequisite knowledge or their individual learning needs.
As leaders, one of our jobs is to give teachers the resources and support they need to continue to improve their current work. We do so by providing teachers with learning opportunities and the professional space they need to hone their skills. This has become incredibly challenging to do over the course of the past few years. In fact, for these past few pandemic-riddled years, leaders have had to shift from fostering professional growth to providing just-in-time learning for teachers in crisis.
Pushing new initiatives is not the right call right now, but that doesn’t mean that the work of fostering professional growth is on pause. Leaders need to think about how to support teachers this school year without being heavy handed or intense about new learning. After all, we all still have a job to do.
Here are a few things that leaders can do to support teacher growth while not being excessively pushy.
Visit classrooms and offer informal feedback
Being visible in classrooms is always a good move. We want to create a culture in our buildings where classroom drop-ins are a welcomed opportunity to share in the joy of teaching and learning. Leaders should think about scheduling time in their day for walkthroughs, visiting each and every teacher they can. Giving teachers non-evaluative, informal feedback can be part of this process without becoming overwhelming for the teacher or daunting for the administrator. Carry a notepad or your phone with you so you can send quick feedback. Start with positive feedback. What was great to see students experiencing in class that day? Offer a conversation to talk about what went well in the lesson or offer a resource that you’re able to chat about with your teacher when they have time. Keep it optional, informal, and teacher-centered. When we make our feedback teacher-centered as opposed to being centered on the evaluation rubric, we start conversations and we build relationships.
Leaders should think about scheduling time in their day for walkthroughs, visiting each and every teacher they can.
Stephanie Burroughs
Use PLC time to talk about instructional practices
Sharing is caring, and that’s the purpose of professional learning communities. Teachers may want to use PLC time as they see fit; however, the true purpose of PLCs is to learn and grow together through collaboration. Leaders should support teachers in sharing best practices at PLC meetings while also letting teacher voice drive the bus on what is discussed in PLCs. When teachers share that they’re struggling with teaching a particular concept, leaders can provide resources to help them—and also ask the teachers in the room to share different ways that they’ve approached teaching that concept. We are all in this together, and our PLC meetings help reinforce a culture of collaboration as we all strive to perfect the imperfect.
Send resources for teachers to look through asynchronously
During remote learning, I often created quick training videos (with Screencastify, a free Google Chrome extension) to share with teachers. This was helpful in so many ways. It gave teachers the flexibility to learn a skill or tool when they had the bandwidth to do so, and it provided teachers with a reference to go back to when they needed a quick refresher on how a tool worked. I also made individual, personalized videos for teachers who ask for help with something specific to their practice.
Do this for your teachers—send a newsletter or build a quick Google site that they can access and refer to when they’re ready. When we model giving teachers choice in their learning, we open the door to student choice in the classroom.
Build in instructional coaching
I say this often, but providing content-specific instructional coaching that is non-evaluative is key to creating and sustaining a culture of professional growth. Content-specific instructional coaches can take research and best practices and translate them into the classroom using their depth of content knowledge. They make new initiatives transferable and they sustain professional learning by being a consistent resource for content-area teachers. The job of the coach is to listen first, then develop resources and provide support to help their teachers feel successful in the classroom. Coaches are precisely what our teachers need right now; a colleague cheering them on and offering in-the-moment support with curriculum and instruction. Everyone needs a coach.
Remember that teaching is hard
Great teaching looks like magic. We name it sometimes as a quality, identifying certain teachers as being “born to teach.” Unfortunately, that’s simply not true. Great teaching is hard work. It takes hours of planning, hours of reflecting, and hours of taking in new professional learning and finding ways to weave it into practice. These past few years have made that work more challenging. Standing still is not an option and leaders need to help teachers focus on improving student outcomes despite these challenges, by meeting them where they are and supporting them.
Great teaching will always require an incredible amount of work. Our job as leaders is to honor that work and build in supports for teachers through multiple mediums to help them continue to feel successful. Leaders should read the room in this current challenge and focus on folding in opportunities for professional growth that are welcomed and low risk. Ultimately, this is our work; our job is to help teachers help kids.
More on PLCs and Teacher Efficacy
Check out Douglas Fisher and Nacy Frey's video column on rebuilding teacher efficacy from the November issue of Educational Leadership.
