Building a Strong Teacher Support System: The Role of Leadership

Welcome to your Morning Boost, your daily shot of educational leadership wisdom from AWB Education. We'll explore the latest trends, share practical strategies, and inspire you to reach new heights. Stay to the end of the show for more information on our services. Now Here is your Morning Boost. Welcome back to your Morning Boost. I'm your host, Adam Bush. Thank you for joining us today. We are spending this week talking about this. You know that we have teachers that are struggling this time of year and how we can help support some of those staff members. And today we're going to focus on some relationship pieces. We know that building strong teacher relationships is key for leadership in general, but this time of year especially, those relationships really come due. I know I've mentioned in a previous podcast that I have a colleague that always talked about building relationships through making deposits before you can ever make withdraws. And he's right. We have to make a lot of deposits. And this time of year is when we're relying on all of those deposits that we've made because there might be some moments here where we've really we've really got to work with teachers to try to get through these next few weeks before we hit another break. So as we're talking about these relationships, start with the fact that you know, you need to have open communication, that open and honest communication. This is a good time to start doing some active check ins with people. Schedule those. A lot of us try to offer opportunities for check ins. This might be a good time of year for us to require those check ins or find an opportunity to be able to sit and meet with some of our staff members. Schedule those frequent informal check ins. You know, create an open dialogue with our staff members, conversations. They need to be focused on their workload, their challenges, personal professional goals. Think about ways that you can try to help them process some of the ideas that may be going on in their head, or maybe some of the questions that are going on in their head. This is a time year with a lot of educators question why am I doing what it is and I'm doing Try to help work through those with them, and we do kind of put on that counselor hat a little bit. The only way we're going to be able to do that is if we're if we're in with our staff member, so you know, think about ways to be able to make that check in happen. And then when we're there, we got to practice that active listening. Those techniques is paraphrasing, summarizing, asking, those clarifying questions, all of that good stuff that leaders do to demonstrate that empathy and understanding and continue to foster that trust and open communication with your staff members. And then the other part too is to provide honest feedback. Deliver that feedback and a constructive and solution focused manner. Use ice statements to avoid sounding, you know, any accusatory at all. Provide specific examples to help illustrate our points. Focus on strengths, Focus on areas of growth. I mean this time of year that support piece. Not only can it come from emotional support for outside of school, but it can also be an area where we can really focus on the growth inside the school. Our teachers got into this business because they want to be good. I mean that we don't. There's nobody that goes into this because they think the job is easy. They go here because they have a passion for it. And here's a good opportunity to help re focus ourselves a little bit by focusing on the work that we're doing now might take us into thinking about how we're doing PD. Have you done a needs assessment of where you're at so far? IMPD. I'm sure you've had a plan for the year. How's that gone so far? Have hit the goals that we've tried to hit? Do we have specific areas where teachers are going to require some support? Maybe we tailor a PD a little bit right now to try to hit those areas of support. Have we done through surveys or interviews or during those meetings that you're having with people, ask that question? You know, what is PD doing for you right now? Are we hitting those marks? Are we doing what we need to be doing? Maybe I'm seeing that in classroom observations as well. Good time to also focus on those mentorships. I'm sure you have those for your new teachers in your buildings, but also think about maybe some of those teachers that are three four years in or maybe career teachers but they've only been with you for a couple of years, or heck, can I be your most experienced teachers you have. It's a great opportunity right now to think about those mentorship pieces and try to reconnect people, provide some coaching sessions. If you have instructional coaches in your building, that's awesome, that's great. That might come to your plate. That's okay too. It's a good opportunity for us to focus on those things again. It kind of takes the ideas off of everything outside of school, focuses it on what we're doing in school to try to help re energize ourselves a little bit. Also think about a quick boost to what's going on in your PLCs. It's a common timing year where people will get off track a little bit and their POC conversations. Focus those on what we're there to do and try to really make sure we're focusing ourselves on student data and responding to student data and what we can do with that, and that POC opportunity is a great chance for us to not only get some work done, but also be able to get an opportunity to continue to build relationships. Again. There's certainly a lot going on this time of year, and these are not going to be the catch all, end all be all, but some opportunities for you to think about some ways to continue to strengthen your teachers and continue to try to motivate our teachers as we as we get through this first week of the last few weeks of this calendar year. It's crazy, it's flying by, and it's going to continue to fly by. Making a few moments to focus on a few of these things and to help support your teachers and help us get through these next few weeks and on to the next calendar year. You have been listening to your morning boost from AWB Education. You can learn more about our services and find resources by visiting AWB education dot org. Please leave a rating and review to help us spread our message. Otherwise, go have a positive impact on our futures as you do the job on a few can do. We got this