All over the country, there are new teachers, getting ready for their first moments in the classroom. For many, it will be the start of a long career. Sadly, for many others, it will be a short stint in the classroom. And in an era of teacher shortages, making sure that our new teachers thrive in the profession is more important than ever. So all of us who want to see our schools thrive have a vested interest in making sure that our new teachers have the best chance to succeed within the current context. I added that last clause because, in my perfect world, new teachers would spend their first year, teaching in a team teaching situation where they would have more responsibilities than they did as student teachers, but still have a year where they were working with a veteran teacher every day for at least half of their classes. But that’s not a reality in our current funding situation.

So what can we do for new teachers that will help them thrive?

  • Make sure new teachers have the chance to work with veteran teachers. When we set up our PLCs, we need to make sure that they are done in such a way that they include a mix of new and veteran teachers in them. That ability to sit with veteran teachers and learn alongside them is invaluable for new teachers. We can also make time for teachers to go watch veteran teachers teach. For me, as a young teacher, whenever I found myself feeling lost, I went and watched Tom Covotsos teach. He was a master teacher, and he was well into his career when I knew him, and I learned so much about how to sustain the teaching life by watching him work.
  • Give them a schedule that works. I remember years ago, talking to a veteran principal, who subscribed to the “pay your dues” method of scheduling. This meant giving new teachers, the classes other teachers didn’t want to teach, or not paying a ton of attention to what their schedule actually looks like. And I get it – when you sit down to roster your school, there are dozens of competing interests. Returning teachers have real feelings about what they are teaching, putting people in the classes where they can be most successful is important, and it can be really easy to solve some of those problems by giving new teachers the classes other folks don’t want to teach. And it’s not just what you teach, but where – when I taught in New York City, having your own classroom was a luxury that few were afforded, and new teachers were often “on the cart.” That didn’t make that first year any easier, and we can do a better job of understanding that the work is hard enough – we don’t have to solve old problems on the backs of new teachers.
  • Make time for them. Historically, this hasn’t been something I’ve always been great about. It’s something that, over the last several years as SLA has added an assistant principal, we’ve gotten much better at doing. We now make time every week for our “new to SLA” teachers to meet with either Kelly or me (usually Kelly) to talk about the teaching life. We don’t just do this for purely new teachers, but for every teacher who is new to SLA that year. There are weeks when the meetings are quick check-in, there are weeks when folks really sit down and discuss what’s going on.
  • Encourage them to find an activity they want to help facilitate. As anyone who knows me knows, I love coaching. I’m 30 years into my education career, and I’m still waking up at 5:15 am to coach Boys Ultimate at 6:30 am. At various times in my career, when I was struggling, it was the chance to coach the kids that kept me going. Whether it is drama, mock trial, basketball, debate, or ultimate, young teachers should find that thing where they get to be with the kids in a place the kids have chosen to be. This may fly in the face of conventional wisdom which says not to give first year teachers too much to do. And that’s true. But especially in that first year, when the hard days can feel really really hard, making sure that teachers have a chance to share a passion with the kids, be playful with kids, and see kids in a place where they really wanna be, can make all the difference in the world. And some of the best lessons I have ever learned about how to teach, have come from the lessons I’ve learned on the field.
  • That said, don’t give them too much to do. I think that is especially true right now. Teachers are tired. And I think it is so easy to see that young person coming in with all of that new teacher energy and want to give them a whole bunch of stuff to do that your veterans are tiring of. And a lot of times, new teachers are eager to please, so they will take on all the tasks we give them. But we want them to stay, and that isn’t a recipe for it. So yes, new teacher should join a committee and see how a piece of the school runs. And yes, they should be involved in extracurricular activities because they are pretty wonderful to be involved in. But we have to make sure that they are sustaining themselves in the work, because the teaching life can get overwhelming fast and how we take care of our new teachers will impact how long they stay.
  • Give them space to fail. I made plenty of mistakes as a young teacher. And I’ve seen SLA teachers make plenty of mistakes in their early years on their way to becoming master teachers. If our young teachers are afraid to make mistakes, they aren’t going to grow. And if they are afraid to tell you about the mistakes they’ve made, they are going to develop some bad habits about the work. This means that we, as administrators, have to be approachable. We have to make it clear that perfection is not the goal, goodness is. And we have to be honest about our own fallibility so that way they can be comfortable with their own.
  • Be human with them. This is something that I’ve had to really keep in mind as I’ve gotten older. When I started SLA, I was 35 years old, and looked much younger. It wasn’t as hard then to see me as a person. Yes I was the principal, and yes, I was in charge, but I look at the photos of those early days now and I think to myself, “How did anybody take me seriously?” Now I’m an old head. SLA is a very established school. And a 23-year-old who is coming in as a first year teacher is going to look at me and see someone who “looks like a principal.” That makes it much more likely that they are going to bring whatever experiences and ideas they have about what a principal is choose their interactions with me. And for a lot of people, they went to schools where the principal was scary. That’s not how I want my young teachers to interact with me. But that means the onus is on me to make sure they don’t. So I have to find time to know them, to let them know me, and to laugh with them. If I want teachers to feel comfortable in our school to be fully human with the kids, then I have to make sure they know they can be fully human with me, and that I will do the same with them.
  • Help them develop their teacher-self. One of my forever challenges is trying to figure out who “Mr. Lehmann” is as both separate from and deeply connected to who I am outside of school. We bring our whole selves to the classroom, and for a young teacher, figuring out how to beat that authority figure can be very difficult. Helping new teachers figure out how their teacher persona is deeply integrated with who they actually are while also understanding that notion of being the authority figure in the room is a huge piece of that first year of teaching.

There’s probably more, but this feels like a pretty good start. I think figuring out how we hold onto young teachers is going to become one of the most important challenges that schools face in the coming decade. When the external pressures on schools increase, paradoxically, it means that we have to become so much healthier and kinder internally. As a principal, I worry about my own capacity to shift gears between playing defense to the outside world, and remaining thoughtful and kind when I am looking internally at my school. It’s not easy, and principals are human too. But we’ve spent too long in America degrading teachers, such that we now have fewer and fewer folks going into the profession, which means, like it or not, it is going to fall on those of us who have been in the work– principals and teachers alike – to make sure that new teachers have every reason to see this as a long career.

Two Important Notes:

  • EduCon 2026 is open for registration! EduCon is SLA’s educational innovation conference where hundreds of educators come from all the country to spend three days talking and thinking about how we can make schools more modern and authentic for all who we serve. EduCon 2026 will be January 30th through February 1st at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA. This year’s theme is Intentionality. Proposals to facilitate a session are open through Sept. 15th. Join us!
  • Give a listen to Re:Building School 2.0 — the podcast where Zac Chase and I take apart a different chapter of our book Building School 2.0 every week.