5 Lessons to Lighten Teachers’ Loads
School Administrator, August 2022

Georgeanne Warnock delivers meals to classrooms for students in Terrell, Texas, where she serves as the superintendent.  PHOTO COURTESY OF TERRELL, TEXAS, INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT

Georgeanne Warnock, superintendent in Terrell, Texas, shared how she has tried to improve teacher morale by taking things off teachers’ plates.

»No. 1: Lesson plans are for the teacher! The school district decided to stop having teachers turn in lesson plans in a particular format or in a certain way. “If there are concerns in the classroom and there is a lack of evidence of planning, the administrator works with that teacher one-on-one rather than having everyone submit plans. A big win with teachers,” Warnock said.

»No. 2: Reduce the frequency and length of meetings. Consider what truly needs to be in a face-to-face meeting and what can be conveyed through e-mail.

»No. 3: Ask the staff what tasks it can stop doing ... and follow through on stopping them. People don’t have survey fatigue — they have “nothing ever gets done with this information” fatigue. “We asked people for feedback and sent a list of 13 immediate responses that detailed what we would either do or stop doing,” Warnock said.

»No. 4: Reduce stress of the evaluation/appraisal system. Whatever is in your control to reduce, do it. The district reduced the number of formal observations in its appraisal system from two to one. Having 45 more minutes of formal observation is not going to move the needle on teaching and learning.

»No. 5: Press pause where you can. Understand how many initiatives are truly at work in the district. “We pressed pause on several new initiatives — even some good ones,” Warnock said. Pressing pause now doesn’t mean we can’t re-evaluate another time to bring it back, or we may realize we didn’t really need the new initiative.

Warnock can be found on TikTok and other social media platforms at @subbingsupt