Strong School Culture Needed to Retain Young Educators

This past June, I completed my second year as a Teach for America teacher.  I’d worked in one of the most struggling high schools in Memphis but rather than being scared away, it strengthened my commitment to teaching.  Yet I knew that there was no way I’d return to my placement school.  The culture didn’t promote student achievement, individual teachers operated in isolation and we had little shared vision for where we were going as a school.

Over the next few weeks, I did a comprehensive search of schools across Memphis. While I turned up several schools that I believed embodied the type of culture I desired, none of them were Shelby County Schools (all were charter).  I made the choice to move to a charter school and I’ve been amazed by the difference in culture and its impact on student achievement.  Our leaders are hardworking and dedicated to a common mission.  My colleagues and I are given common planning time in content and grade level teams each and every week. And most importantly, we work together to develop the kind of school culture that drives students to success.  I see its impact each and every day in the quality of my students work and their academic outcomes as so far, 100% of our graduating students have been accepted to 4-year schools.

My dilemma was recently discussed at the policy level in Shelby County during the school board’s decision whether or not to extend Teach for America’s contract with the district.  The board voted to extend the contract, but the two opponents of extending the contract cited poor TFA retention beyond the program’s two year commitment in their opposition to its continuation.  In the same piece, Superintendent Hopson made a statement that perfectly encompasses my dilemma and the dilemma of second year TFA teachers every year.  Hopson said, “I have to say, if effective talent is leaving the district at a 70-something percent rate, we have to look at strategies we can use to retain talent.”

I often find myself thinking that we’ve done so much to improve education both here in Memphis and across Tennessee.  We’ve reformed teacher evaluation to identify our best and brightest.  We’re on the verge of dramatically reforming teacher compensation in Tennessee.   And yet all this means NOTHING if we cannot keep great teachers in high need classrooms once they are placed.  This begs the question; what do educators really want?  What will keep them in district classrooms?  In my experience, young education professionals, TFA or otherwise, aren’t much different from most other young professionals.  We all have highly varied motivations for entering the profession.  But in the end, great teachers gravitate towards environments with great school and district leaders, great office (or in this case school) culture that focuses on achievement and great colleagues that work together to achieve a common vision.

I am a TFA alumni but I also work closely with young educators from both alternative and traditional certification programs.  And I believe strongly that my decision is one that almost every young educator in Shelby County faces at some point in their first two years.  At the end of two years, many young educators, TFA or otherwise, feel a strong sense of commitment to their children and a desire to continue in education.  However, we are often placed in such dysfunctional environments that we have to make a choice which feels like choosing between being a martyr for our kids by staying or abandoning them by quitting or moving schools.  And so often the challenges inherent in district schools make the former untenable, and so we leave, either choosing a different school like I have or leaving the profession all together.

I should add that some schools in Shelby County have found a way to make it work and retain young educators beyond their first few years.  Colleagues of mine at Ridgeway High, Whitehaven and Kingsbury High consistently tell me about the strength of their school leadership and the support they receive from their colleagues.  We should certainly study these schools further, but they represent the exception rather than the norm.

Until district leaders devote attention to improving school cultures to make them attractive and professional work environments that attract young educators, we will continue to see an exodus of young teaching talent to other systems, schools or professions.  And it won’t matter what program those educators come from if conditions are so challenging that teachers can’t fathom working in high need environments.  We can extend or eliminate contracts with organizations like Teach for America, but that won’t fix the underlying fact that many young educators simply don’t feel that the school culture where the work is one where they can be successful.

I don’t want to leave this post without offering some solutions.  I’ve already written a seven part series on a package of strategies that could be used to promote teacher retention in SCS, so I I won’t rehash it here. If you’re interested in some research based strategies for how we could start building the types of school cultures that attract and retain high quality educators by enacting district level policies, I invite you to check the series out here.

By Jon Alfuth

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4 comments for “Strong School Culture Needed to Retain Young Educators

  1. Zack
    December 2, 2013 at 12:16 pm

    I think one of the programs with the goal of retaining more ( or all) of the TFA corps members is that there is a group of people that use TFA as a stepping stone to graduate school, law school, education reform organizations, or the DOE. They could have the best experience, but they are there for the two years to help their career goals, not to make a lasting teaching commitment. The question that needs to be asked is if the price for those teachers is worth it or should the districts be paying less.

  2. December 2, 2013 at 9:44 pm

    That is certainly an accusation that’s frequently leveled at TFA. My purpose, however, is to use the piece to look at why early career teachers from all programs are leaving in such high numbers, not just TFA. Inevitably some educators will always leave the field early on, regardless of what program they come through. Simply switching the pipeline through which our teacher supply comes to us will not in and of itself solve the problem of why early career teachers chose to leave. Based on my conversations with early career teachers across the district, it’s much deeper than a simple recruitment issue. Our goal should be to retain as many as possible, regardless of the career path.

  3. Ron
    December 9, 2013 at 5:02 pm

    TFA members are learning what traditional career teachers have been saying for decades. There are schools that have environments where it is impossible to be successful. Teachers have always moved from school to school looking for even the remote possibility of success. And teachers have been leaving the field in large numbers long before TFA came along. We were being told that if the teacher training and the quality of the candidate improved, teachers in these impossible situations would turn it around! Now we see that the brilliant 20 somethings are discouraged and leaving with the same complaints traditional educators having been voicing all along. The profession of teaching needs to be transformed into an attractive career for young people who can accept the huge challenges but still have success be possible! Piling impossible amounts of bueocratic work and micromanaging teacher every move will not attract talented people. When you treat everyone as if they are incompentent, the competent leave.

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