How to boost teacher morale....

Call out the people/politicians who who refer to us as groomers and indoctrinators. Get loud calling that stuff out.

Get loud at board meetings when some members want to ban books or remove posters that promote inclusion from classrooms.

Pay us a professional salary and make sure our classrooms are well stocked with the things we need to do our job.

Differentiate our PD based on our experience level and content area/grade level. Don't insult us with hours/days of PD that are useless or irrelevant when we could be working in our classrooms or collaborating with colleagues.

Give us adequate planning time and reasonable class sizes.

The discussion at yesterday’s staff meeting was interesting. The seasoned teachers know what they can say/ask for and what they can’t without being viewed negatively. Since I am a 2nd year teacher, I just listened.

What everyone really wants, rather than the treat cart, is the gift of time. The endless PD on top of teaching is staggering. And the teachers used to have more “work from wherever” professional development/teacher work days. Those have all become work-at-school days.

Many morale booster activities involve teachers being asked to do nice things for each other: secret buddies exchanges, gifting a favorite type of pen to another teacher who is then expected to pay it forward.

We are allowed to wear jeans and leggings whenever we want to. Pre-COVID there was a “jeans only on Friday’s + school t-shirt” dress code. Now, as long as we aren’t wearing stained old sweats with holes in them, we are allowed to wear casual wear. I even wear knee-length shorts. In elementary school, I cannot imagine dressing up - I am on the floor throughout the day.

One of my principals once said teachers need time, money and food. I think administration will gravitate towards food because it is easy and cheap. Last year our district last gave us a return bonus for any teacher who came back last year. We got $1,500 for returning for the year in two checks at the beginning of each semester. It was nice. They have also done Christmas bonuses based on our position in the building. It doesn't go towards our overall salary (and therefore retirement $), but it is nice to get $1,000 check right before Christmas. One thing that a previous principal did was to extend lunch for our team each semester for a day. Instead of the regular 25-30 minute break, they gave us an hour. Administration would go in and cover our class for an extra half hour so our team could have 60 minutes for lunch. It was just a little thing, but it was awesome.

As far money goes, many teachers spend a lot just to give their kids the experiences that wealthier districts offer. I would pay for breakfast/lunch for students when their accounts didn't have money, made sure they had books in hand, paid for materials for teaching like science experiments etc. I was easily spending $100 a month on my room that had nothing to do with decorating or just maintaining a working classroom. One time my principal came in and said he was spending too much on my room (joking-it was decked out). I said I bought all of the stuff in the room other than the teacher desk, filing cabinet, desks and chairs. My first year, we were given one box of staples, some push pins, and that was about it. I had to bring in my stapler, scissors, note pads etc. It was rough!

Yup!  

One year for Christmas we all got one popcorn ball. While we very rarely got anything more than something that cost about the same, it was the idea that a bunch of adults that were 20-60 years old would eat a popcorn ball. I ate mine, cuz, sugar, but I do remember the staff being miffed. One year I got a little spiral that holds different sizes of post its. Probably the most useful gift. I keep it in my car.

In my district last year, we had THERAPISTS for the kids…not counselors. In my previous district, our counselors did not provide therapy…only 6 week “groups” and emergency 1:1 counseling meetings (one time only). It was impossible for our low-income families to get help for their kids outside of school (the local agency was booked out for months). The therapists in Santa Bárbara were contracted out from a local company and were actual therapists and not just school counselors (not that school counselors aren’t amazing). And we also sent kids to them outside of school hours. I had girls that self-harmed (cut) and had suicidal ideation (11 years old), so it was a Godsend.

But here’s the kicker…they were there for US, too! Around November, my principal must have been afraid I was going to have a breakdown, or worse—quit. So she sent our therapist to me for weekly “check-ins”. At first, I was embarrassed, but she was amazing and really helped me not take my kids’ lack of everything personally. We met for 20 minutes every Thursday, and I really looked forward to it. I don’t think I would have made it through the year without her. (She was also from Texas, so we bonded over our love of queso and frozen margaritas.) Honestly—having on campus therapists for teachers sounds a little over-the-top, but I think it would be a game changer. Teachers face stressors that most professions do not and the personality traits that made us want to become teachers cause those stressors to affect us even more deeply.

This really resonated with me! The district I worked in was all about starting new programs, sometimes more than one, which meant it was hard to see if a specific program was really effective. And while it was all gung-ho every time we began another one, they all inevitably petered out over a couple years and then it was on to the next one.

Project Based Learning was another that the superintendent at the time jumped on - so much so that the new junior high was built around a giant room (equal to about six classrooms, that could be subdivided) to be used for this purpose. It’s even called the PBL space. And it’s not used nearly as often for that as I’m sure they thought it would be.

Adding when you are out and about in the community or at neighborhood gatherings or in conversations with friends and teachers start getting blasted, ask questions like, "How do you know that?" and "Don't you think that seems blown out of proportion?" and "Did you talk directly to the teacher about this?" It's so easy to talk shit about teachers and if no one challenges the conversations, it never stops. Sometimes children overhear their parents talking smack about their teachers and you know that has to affect their views and possibly their behavior.

Notice what teachers do and send them notes about it. I would have loved to receive a note that went something like, "Dear Mrs. XYZ, I want to thank you for the very direct, helpful, and personalized written feedback you gave to Johnny regarding the poems he wrote. First, kudos for getting my son not only to write poems, but really good poems! I know the feedback you provided for him must have taken at least 7 minutes to compile, maybe more. What astounds me is that you did that for 149 other students as well. Quick math tells me you spent over 17 hours grading this one assignment. I know this didn't happen at school, so your own time was taken to complete this task. THANK YOU. While I don't think it is fair you had to spend time away from your family to grade, I appreciate how invested you are in your students' success as writers. The Smith family appreciates you!"

A note of recognition like this one would carry me for a very long time. Write the notes or the emails or the facebook messages. Last year, I got a facebook message from a parent of a kid I had years ago. She updated me on what he's doing and thanked me for what he learned about writing in my 7th grade class. I burst into tears. Teachers spend a lot of time thinking what they do is inconsequential. Hearing that you've made a difference is life changing.
 

Oh here's another one - stop pitting us against each other. People who go into teaching tend to have a collaborative mindset rather than a competitive one. Pay for performance and unfair systems that pay some "high value" teaching areas more than others are morale killers. My district is rolling out both of these things next year. Paying for test scores, which incentivizes teachers not to help each other with lower performing students, and paying secondary ELA and math more than elementary teachers and elective teachers at all levels because, as our new state-appointed superintendent says, we elective teachers don't work as hard, know as much, or contribute as much. Literally spoke those words in a training yesterday.

So yeah. If you hear your district rumbling about pay for performance, know that you will kill morale and you will lose excellent teachers over it. It's simply not who we are.

I've been watching all the garbage with this takeover and thinking about you and all the teachers in your district. I cannot imagine all the bs that has been coming your way. I'm sorry you are dealing with all that.

Taking work off our plates would be nice. I'm barely treading water this week with all the expectations of back to school.

Remove the behavior problem when I call. I don’t call often so when I do respond.
Clean our rooms so we don’t have mice running around the room during instruction. At least, the roaches wait until dark to come out. So tired of the droppings on my desk each day. And no I don’t have food on my desk!
For the love, if you want to see what’s happening in my room, come on down and visit so I can go pee!

Beginning of year - making copies, laminating things and cutting them out. Putting up bulletin boards. Assembling shelves and other furniture.

Start a group that rotates through doing carpool and other duties to give teachers duty-free days, if that’s allowed.

Not a teacher either, but another PTO exec board member here 😊. We are able to offer some financial support for our teachers in addition to the usual lunches, volunteers, etc.  I just finished cutting the annual stipend checks for every teacher and counselor to help minimize out of pocket expenditures. We also offer grants for professional development opportunities that teachers and counselors can apply for each fall. And while not directly helping the teachers, we also have a separate program to help provide for struggling families in our school community. We are a fairly affluent area, but not without families that struggle. So if a need is identified the PTO has the ability to help with food, clothing, hygiene items or other items that teachers are known to help with when they learn about a need.  We know money can’t solve every issue and our funds aren’t unlimited, but we try to address some of the gaps where we all know teachers fill in themselves. 

Yeah, anyone taking away some of my NINE WEEKS of lunch duty would be a freaking HERO!