I know that sounds like a strange title for a blog entry, but go with me for a minute here.
I worry a little bit about how many educational organizations are preaching that educators have to engage in self-care, and the reason that I worry about that is because it feels to me that there is some organizational abdication of the need to take care of our educators when that is the message.
To wit – as a principal, I can’t stand in front of my teachers and preach self-care, while rolling out half a dozen new initiatives that will add more work to a teacher’s already full plate. I can’t tell teachers about the need for self-care, and then not listen to them when they need support to be the kind of teachers our students need them to be.
I have said for years that schools need to be places of great care, and Nel Noddings’ work around the ethic of care is fundamental to everything I believe about what schools should be. And at the root of that is this:
We must take care of each other.
And that’s the thing, right? If all teachers ever hear from their schools about care is how teachers have to take care of themselves, then what they aren’t hearing is that the schools – and the administrators who run them – are interested in caring for their teachers. And that is simply toxic for so many reasons, and I think teachers know when schools aren’t interested in taking care of them.
In all workplaces, people should feel cared for. It simply makes you want to come to work every day, but in schools, it is even more important, and sadly, probably no more common than in a typical office place. All you have to do these days is look on social media for the many accounts that parody school and position teachers as martyrs. Nothing good comes of that for our students. It contributes greatly to why teachers leave the profession, and I have to think that it contributes to the disengagement that students feel. If the first reason why teachers should feel cared for by their schools is because it is simply the right thing to do, the second most important reason is simply this:
When teachers feel cared for, it is so much easier for them to have the mental energy to care for the kids they teach.
There is no way that teachers can fully take care of the kids if they are not taking care of themselves. Whatever the values we want teachers to display in their classroom, it is incumbent upon principals to create those conditions for their teachers. When we say that teachers are solely responsible for their own self-care, we abdicate our role in creating a caring school for students.
And more than that, when teachers don’t feel cared for, then self-care will come at the expense of the well-being of everyone. We ask a lot of teachers, even in the best of circumstances. The job is hard, and in places like Philadelphia, there simply is not enough money to go around, and as a result, the teaching load means there aren’t enough hours in the day. We know this. Right now in America, the public system is working against caring for teachers. And this only serves to heighten the need for schools to be caring. It means that principals and administrators have to always ask the question of whether or not their actions will cause teachers to feel more or less cared for in their schools, because the larger context in which we are all living certainly is not helping.
So what can caring for teachers look like? There are some things we can do – some really concrete, some more abstract – that can create a more caring school for our teachers.
- Buy the coffee and not the cheapest stuff. I bought SLA a great grind and brew coffee maker years ago, and we try to make sure there’s a fresh pot every day – often multiple times a day. There’s always tea, usually hot chocolate, and in general we just try to make it easy for teachers to have a comfort beverage (and caffeine) when they need it. The nice thing is that when teachers see admin buying the coffee, lots of folks will contribute a pound of coffee here and there as needed, because folks like to take care of the administrators too.
- Be the last to leave. This isn’t always possible, but whenever we can, we should walk the building before we leave and make sure teachers aren’t pulling ridiculous hours in the building. Reminding folks to go home is never a bad thing. Sports games and afterschool activities mean that there are days when this just isn’t possible, but reminding folks that the work will be there tomorrow, and we don’t expect people to pull long hours in the building every day is important.
- Be powerfully aware of “One More Thing.” I can’t emphasize this one enough. Teachers get asked to do a ton. There’s a lot that teachers do that is essential, but that means that everything that isn’t should be closely examined, especially when it comes to compliance-oriented tasks. Do we need, as administrators, to collect daily lesson plans or is it enough to have everyone’s unit plans on file? Do we make it easy for teachers to make budget requests to get the supplies and books that they need? Being keenly aware of the cognitive load we are asking of teachers over and above what happens in their classroom and the grading that it requires, means being aware that we understand what the most important thing that teachers do is. In today’s litigious world, some of the compliance tasks are unavoidable, but to the degree that we can control for that, we must. And given all of the extra demands, what we ask for as leaders of our buildings has to make sense.
- Value time. Sometimes the greatest thing that we can do for our teachers is give them time to work. Sometimes the greatest use of staff development time is time to collaborate on the tasks that we do have to get done. Giving your teachers an hour for (for example) special education progress monitoring? Never a bad use of time.
- Be as responsive as we can. There are lots of questions and problems we are faced with in schools that cannot be solved immediately. But there are a lot that can. When teachers come to us with questions or issues that we can quickly move forward on, we should do so. That just makes life better for teachers when they can get answers quickly, so they have one less thing on their plate to worry about.
- Be a collaborator. Let’s never forget what it’s like to play with a new idea for our classrooms, and let’s be a sounding board for our teachers when they have a new project or new unit they want to teach. When we get excited about a teacher’s new ideas, that excitement is contagious. And if we can use what we have learned to help our teachers have success, all the better. But being a collaborator doesn’t just mean on the pedagogy. It means offering to be in the room when a teacher has to make a hard phone call. It means being willing to drag tables around when a teacher wants to play with a new set-up for their classroom. It may seem small, but when teachers see principals dragging chairs around to help, it matters.
- Know when teachers just need you to listen. Twenty years later, and this one is still hard for me. There are times when teachers really don’t want us to solve their problem; they just need us to share the load. Knowing how to listen and be empathetic and not make half a dozen suggestions is really hard. But it is essential. Because I know that I can jump to problem-solving mode, I will often ask teachers, “What do you need in this moment? Do you need me to help you solve this problem, or do you just need me to hear you?” Caring for teachers means listening to them and not assuming you know what they need, but rather being willing to have the humility to ask.
In short, the caring school has servant leadership. And yes, sometimes that does mean reminding teachers to take care of themselves, but caring for one another is a shared act. When we place self-care solely on the individual, we abdicate our role in being caring leaders. I never want the folks who work at SLA to feel like they have to guard their self-care, because they think that I will not do so with them.
The difference between feeling like you have to take care of yourself and knowing that you work somewhere where we take care of one another makes all the difference in the world.