Miles to Go Before We Sleep

“The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.”

-Robert Frost “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”


Snow on Christmas Day a Few Years Ago

               Robert Frost’s poems are often taught in the English classroom as exemplars of symbolic and thematic meaning.  His poems, including the famous “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” examine the major quandaries of life, the questions of life and death and the choices that we make.  While the last stanza of this famous poem alludes to the eternal sleep of death, I also find these four lines very apt in describing the past few months of my journey as North Carolina Teacher of the Year and the journey we all have before us to improve public education in our state.

               Over the months of November and December, my home has become my car, and I have spent many hours traversing the miles across North Carolina.  In fact, in the first three weeks of December alone, I put almost three thousand miles on my car as I spoke in different counties and announced the nine new Regional Teachers of the Year!  There have been many moments where I have felt like there are miles and miles to go before I get to rest, and at times the journey has been overwhelming.  I’ve found myself wanting to stop and rest, comforted by the “lovely” sights and sounds of my familiar home in Guilford County, yet I’ve continued traveling, often a little road weary, from place to place because I know that the job I have as an advocate for public education in our state is far too important for me just to stop and relax, complacent with where I am.

Miles to Go...

 

               This idea of continuing the journey and not stopping in the embracing arms of what is comfortable also resonates for all of us in public education.  While there are many ways that we can keep moving forward, there is one area that most recently has received a great deal of press: the rather disappointing number of teachers who have left public education in North Carolina.  The Teacher Turnover Report released by the Department of Public Instruction reveals that teacher turnover in North Carolina is at a five-year high of 14.33% in 2012-2013.  While numerous factors were cited for teachers leaving their current positions, including some teachers moving into other non-classroom education positions, this increase in turnover should be addressed.  One of the largest groups to experience turnover was the group of tenured teachers in North Carolina.  Many of these teachers retired last year, and in the upcoming years we can expect to see more of the baby boomers retiring from their teaching positions.  Knowing that positions will be opening, it becomes clear that we must think carefully about how we can recruit and retain the best and brightest into the teaching profession.  I certainly do not have all the answers, but below are some ways I believe we can recruit and retain great teachers.  Note that some ways are quite simple and can be completed in-house with little additional funding, while other ways require more financial investment and commitment to education. 

Raise the Floor to Raise the Bar

               Much has been written about the low salaries for teachers in North Carolina, especially for those in their first six years of teaching.  I will not address salary increase too much in this post, but it still needs to be addressed.  The average salary in North Carolina falls forty-sixth in the nation and tenth in the Southeast, ahead only of West Virginia and Mississippi.  That is a sad decline for a state that was once at the national average and a leader among its Southeast peers.  If we are going to attract our brightest students in North Carolina, we have to make education become a valued profession.  

Why We Teach--Our Students (Students at Evergreen Charter in Asheville)

One of the most visible ways to make education appear more appealing to top achieving high school students and their parents is to increase the base pay for teachers.  If we raise the base pay and find ways to create a new, more sustainable salary increase over the years of teaching, then we will be able to attract and keep more outstanding scholars in the field of education.  All too often I’ve been told by the parents of my exceptionally gifted International Baccalaureate students that as much as their children want to become teachers, they are discouraging them from entering the profession because they are worried they will not make a sustaining salary.  If we raise the floor of the base pay for incoming teachers and allow opportunities for professional and salary growth as they advance in their careers, then we will raise the bar for the type of students who will want to enter the teaching profession.

The Irreplaceables—Compassion, Gratitude, and Opportunities for Leadership

My ideas for this area of improvement come not only from personal experience, but also from a report titled “The Irreplaceables” that was published by TNTP in the summer of 2012 on ways to retain the top teachers during the critical first few years of their teaching careers.  Fifty percent of teachers leave the profession in the first five years of teaching, and this report examines a myriad of reasons for the exodus of many great teachers, including factors like compensation, lack of opportunities for increased school leadership, poor school culture, and ineffective school leadership.  What I find most interesting in this report is the list of eight “low-cost” intervention strategies that are grouped into four categories: 1. Feedback and Development (regular, positive feedback; guidance in discovering areas to develop; informal, critical feedback about performance), 2. Recognition (recognized publically for success; informed that they are high-performing), 3.  Responsibility and Advancement (shown paths for growth as a teacher; placed in charge of key school activities or initiatives), and 4.  Resources (provided with more critical resources for their classrooms).  Information from the report showed that when an outstanding teacher in the first few years experienced just two or more of these strategies, then they stayed up to six years longer than other “irreplaceable” teachers who did not experience this support from their administrators. 

A Holiday Social Honoring Beginning Teachers and Their Mentors in Lexington

These eight strategies are easy ways to make our new teachers feel valued and like they have chosen a viable career path.  One of my former administrators did an outstanding job with categories one through three for me (I entered teaching during the recession, so extra classroom resources were not really possible at that point).  This administrator gave me both formal and informal feedback on my teaching, which included both praise and areas for improvement.  She recognized my hard work and successes (high AP scores for students and a positive observation of me working with my inclusion students) at a faculty meeting, and told me one-on-one that I was a high-performing teacher in our school.  Finally, she reached out to me to encourage that I hone my leadership skills as a co-chair of the “Possibility Thinkers” at my school, a group that sought innovative solutions to improved school financial expenditures and instructional practices.  Her encouragement during my first few years teaching were major factors that led to me continuing in the teaching profession.  Think about the difference we can make in the careers of our outstanding young teachers if we simply acknowledge their strengths and help them grow as practitioners and leaders in the school.

Take a Breath

               While I am a proponent for effective change in our schools, sometimes we need to take a step back and look at all the changes we have recently implemented and see how they interact with each other.  We need to take a deep breath and think about which changes most directly impact the success that our students will have.  Often these most impactful changes do not involve increased paperwork and stress for the teacher who needs to spend those hours planning engaging lessons, differentiating learning, providing feedback on assignments, and tutoring students.  We need to find a balance for educators so that they are able to spend their time focusing on the real reason why they started teaching—their students.  Far too many new teachers and experienced teachers become disillusioned with the disconnect between their passion for educating and working with students and the additional, often seemingly unnecessary required paperwork and duties.  Like the speaker in Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” although we still have many miles to go, we must also stop from time to time to examine how we need to keep moving forward.

Taking a Breath in Edenton, NC to Enjoy the Sunset

In essence, we need a combination of all of these strategies in order to improve teaching as a profession in North Carolina.  We cannot become so comfortable in the “lovely, dark, and deep” traditions of the past, that we forget that we still have “miles to go before [we] sleep.”  Nor can we keep moving forward so fast that we don’t take the time to discover what is really needed to recruit and retain the best teachers in our state.  It is going to take effort from all stakeholders to improve the teaching profession in North Carolina, and I sincerely hope we can all work together in order to make the journey more sustainable and rewarding for all involved.  Let us travel the miles together so we can focus on “the promises to keep” for success for all of our students.

The Train Tracks and Road Ahead in Dillsboro, NC