Teachers are assets to society not just to disseminate information to students, but also to create and sustain a culture of learning, take the students through the best learning experience, motivate, and lead them, identify and develop the talents in them, positively influence them, direct them to the right career path, and help them to achieve excellence.
It requires both strong school leadership and new approaches to teacher recruitment, development, and promotion to sustain institutional consistency and excellence, technical skill plus critical competencies.
There are a couple of realities today with teacher recruitment and retention. The first reality is that teacher recruitment is getting harder and more challenging. One reason is that teachers these days just have more choice on where they can teach and work. Another reason is the economy; when the economy is strong, there are a lot of jobs available and a lot of choice available to high-skilled workers. Teachers are feeling overwhelmed, they feel unsupported in many districts and they’re just frankly burning out. On the other hand, schools that prioritize teacher recruitment and retention as systems are actually seeing a lot of great success. For example, the ats recruitment software analyzes hiring process results, so the school can increase efficiency and hire the best teachers sooner.
In the past, we had a recruitment season almost once a year in April or May. But now we have moved to a recruitment system that is ongoing. As a result, knowing that we have to recruit all year round has broaden our scope and outreach to possible candidates.
Another part is really developing multi-layered systems of marketing. Schools are redesigning their websites and brochures so that they state clearly their identity and why teachers would want to come work for them. When you feel supported in your job, that increases your chances of staying. If teachers are the biggest lever for increasing student achievement, then recruitment and retention must be at the very top of a school’s priorities.
In case you are looking for free recruiting software, please check this website. Provitrac has been providing services to large and small companies since 2002.
Here are five tips to encourage and retain teachers while getting the best out of them:
- Trust your teachers. The main focus should be to empower the teachers and to give them the freedom to teach in their way. Teachers who feel empowered and in charge of their class and methodology not only feel happy about their work, but also feel loyal to the institution that lets them do so.
- Pay them well. This should be a no-brainer, but in reality, it is often ignored. The teaching profession requires a lot of energy and patience, and remunerating the teachers well should be a priority for schools. Proficient teachers tend to reach out for better opportunities if the compensation is not fair.
- Equip the teachers with modern skills. In this era of constant evolution, teachers must be trained and updated with international best practices and all the technological advancements in the teaching methodology. This will furthermore help in polishing their expertise and skill set and give your school great results.
- Use transparency in your operations. In the 21st century, one flaw that can no longer be tolerated is lack of communication. There must be proper communication and understanding between the management and the teachers. This transparency also builds trust. School management must do their best to establish clear channels of communication between the school, teachers, parents, and students.
- Support your teachers. Parents have become a lot like consumers when dealing with schools. Many times, they expect the school and teachers to be service providers rather than educators. In the past, when a child did not do well in school, it used to be the child’s fault; now it increasingly is becoming the teacher’s problem. More often than not, it is the teachers who carry this burden of parental expectations. School management should back the teachers and create a system of looped feedback, where parental expectations are tempered and managed without burdening the teachers. This will in turn free the teachers up to do what they do best: teach.
Changes catch you off guard, markets and conditions change, employees leave, get sick, retire or growth takes over. That’s the time to call Will Source. They are a full service professional staffing firm that can provide the top caliber employee or candidates for direct hire.
Recruiting a teacher for your school may seem easy sometimes, however the real task for a lot of school management is how to retain the best teachers. Even with the best infrastructure and all the facilities, a school doesn’t stand a chance without great teachers. Teachers are the real foundation of schools. The success of a school depends on the learning experience of the students, the unique teaching techniques employed by the teachers, coupled with their dedication towards the growth of the students.