Keeping and Growing Great Teachers: 12 Lessons
Last week, Teaching Ahead here featured a discussion focused on "Teaching's Revolving Door." Here are some thoughts, based on my experience working to retain science teachers in a high poverty district.
I think it was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said "nothing is permanent but change." He seems to have been secretly put in charge of school reform in the US for the past decade. But as research has emerged documenting the negative effect of teacher turnover, we are now beginning to see turnover not as a chance to lose dead wood, but as a real problem to be addressed.
In Oakland, turnover has been a crippling factor for many years. For reasons I described here several years ago, the District has used teachers recruited by organizations like Teach For America to fill vacant classrooms. For my last four years in Oakland (2007-2011) I led a project called TeamScience which had the goal of supporting
I think it was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who said "nothing is permanent but change." He seems to have been secretly put in charge of school reform in the US for the past decade. But as research has emerged documenting the negative effect of teacher turnover, we are now beginning to see turnover not as a chance to lose dead wood, but as a real problem to be addressed.
In Oakland, turnover has been a crippling factor for many years. For reasons I described here several years ago, the District has used teachers recruited by organizations like Teach For America to fill vacant classrooms. For my last four years in Oakland (2007-2011) I led a project called TeamScience which had the goal of supporting
