Teacher Morale and Wellness
The new lurking crisis on staffing requires diagnosis and action, not one-off appreciation gestures

To ease teachers’ stress, Georgeanne Warnock (left), superintendent of Terrell Independent School District in Terrell, Texas, has provided hands-on support that included multiple substitute teaching stints. PHOTO COURTESY OF TERRELL, TEXAS, INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT

In January 2020, Georgeanne Warnock was an excited first-time superintendent who had big plans for an incredible entry into her school district. But 65 days later, a global pandemic forced her schools and others across the nation to close. Warnock fearlessly led her staff through the year that followed and, like many others, was hopeful the 2021-22 school year would be better.

As the past year started, Warnock’s team was all-in on supporting her teachers in the 5,000-student Terrell Independent School District outside of Dallas, Texas. She and her two deputy superintendents delivered Sonic drinks to each classroom, shared messages of gratitude with school staff and found other ways to show appreciation. 

But during a teacher advisory session, a sweet teacher shared that while she loved the kind gestures, the reality was that there were three people with doctoral degrees delivering drinks while she and her colleagues were doubled up with classes and losing conference periods because the staffing shortages were so immense.

Warnock jumped into action and sent many of her central-office administrators onto campuses to fill in as classroom substitutes. A former English and social studies teacher, she included herself, devoting one day a week to subbing. She began to chronicle her experiences as a substitute teacher on TikTok with the handle of the @subbingsupt, amassing more than 42,000 followers.

The things Warnock learned while subbing were invaluable. She asked the teachers once where the ice machine was located. They chuckled and shared that it was broken. She asked how long it had been broken, and they said three years. She asked how to make photocopies and learned there were limits on copying paper. And she saw first-hand the challenges of student behavior. “I heard all of this,” she said, “but I didn’t really get it until I was back in the classroom.”

More Than a Feeling

When you step into the superintendency, crisis is part of the job. It’s not an if but a when. My nine years in the superintendency were bookmarked by a financial crisis in my first year and a global pandemic in my last.

But a new crisis is lurking in education. We’ve seen the foundational signs for years: more teachers retiring than entering the pipeline, coupled with historically low retention rates. The pandemic has taken an already fragile ecosystem and set it on fire with teachers at all levels leaving en masse.

Teaching always has been challenging. You must be all the things: curriculum designer, instructional strategist, assessment developer, relationship builder, administration negotiator, kid whisperer, parent mediator, counselor, coach and mentor. And that was before a global pandemic took everything we knew about teaching and learning and turned it upside down.

As COVID-19 rates declined and schools returned to in-person instruction, many thought things would get better. But 2021-22 was anything but better. From shortages among substitutes and gaps in student learning to behavior challenges among students, new mandates, increased mental health concerns and an exploding political firestorm, serving as a classroom teacher never has been harder.

At AASA’s 2022 National Conference on Education, a standing-room-only session on “How to (Finally) Crack the Code on Teacher Morale” co-led by Warnock and Ben Court, director of K-12 research at EAB, discussed findings on teacher morale and shared practical advice on supporting teachers.

When it comes to teachers’ experiences in the classroom, the word morale comes up frequently. Initially, I struggled with the word as it indicates how we feel about the work, yet what is happening to teachers is more than just a feeling.

The truth is that teachers are stressed, burned out, dissatisfied, demotivated and demoralized. And morale has plummeted. EAB’s national survey found that “Teacher morale is at an all-time low. Nearly a third of teachers indicated they had low morale and two-thirds of teachers agreed their morale levels are lower today than five years ago.”

We also know that what we’re doing to help isn’t working. Back in the day, perhaps we could get away with allowing an extra “jeans day” or bringing in a lunchtime massage therapist for staff. Those one-off gestures don’t even come close.

Cracking Morale’s Nut

When it comes to morale, many organizational leaders focus on “surprise and delight,” the small or large gestures that show appreciation. EAB, in its 2021 Teacher Morale Survey, noted these one-off appreciation efforts along with employee wellness initiatives fall in the “caregiver” archetype of attempts to improve morale, which is what most school districts attempt to do.

A smaller but significant percentage of districts attempt to operationalize every morale factor they can find, otherwise known as the “generalist” archetype. Just 3 percent of districts approach morale like a “doctor” and slow down enough to diagnose the root problem of morale and partner with employees to solve it. (See diagram to the right)

What matters most is removing friction, EAB says. If you want to make people happy, make their lives less difficult. Warnock attempted just that in the Terrell Independent School District — and did it in a pretty simple way. She sent out a survey and simply asked these three questions:

»What could a classroom fairy bring that would make your life better?

»What would make your job easier?

»What could we take off your plate?

She asked. She listened. And she responded. And her teachers noticed.

Diagnosis and Action

EAB considers this the proper formula. To become a “morale doctor,” you must create and use a feedback loop to diagnose causes, prioritize threats and co-design solutions.

»Diagnose causes. Spoiler Alert: Those once-a-year climate surveys are no longer enough. Leaders need actionable data on what the real issues are. The data collection doesn’t need to be elaborate, but it does need to be frequent. John J. Murphy notes in “8 Steps Leaders Can Take to Support Employees with Burnout,” a blog post on the Mindful Leader site, that our job as leaders is to empathize and seek to understand and then understand more deeply. “The first thing we can do,” he says, “is seek to understand the situation without fear, resistance, pre-judgment and defensiveness.”

»Prioritize threats. School districts must “prioritize tackling one or two root causes of morale at a time based on potential impact on morale and the feasibility for the district” to address effectively the root cause, according to the EAB report.

»Co-design solutions. Ask what the issues are and understand them deeply enough to prioritize what to address first. But bringing teachers to the table does not mean putting the onus on them to solve the problems that they didn’t create. EAB says districts must “find ways to lower the participation barriers to solution development and avoid putting teachers on the hook to figure out how to improve their own morale. Instead, district leaders should offer a menu of ideas that teachers can help refine.”

EAB’s doctor archetype is also powerful in approaching teacher morale and wellness because mental health is such a critical need among our staff. Catherine Gewertz addressed this in an Education Week article on mental health, encouraging leaders to talk openly about mental health, train teams to identify mental health struggles and create ongoing systems of support.

In one of my favorite TikTok videos, Warnock shared how she visited one elementary school, where she stepped into classrooms to check in and give her teachers breaks. With tear-filled eyes, she shared, “They are just so good. Teachers are just so good.”

The entirety of the work we do as leaders to support and serve students rests on the quality of our teaching staff. And in whatever way that makes sense for us — stepping into a classroom to allow that teacher to grab a coffee or sending out quarterly check-in reports to find things to take off their plates, we must put teachers front and center to diagnose their biggest pain points, prioritize actionable concerns and partner with them to co-design solutions to improve their work. Because, as Warnock said, “Teachers are just so good.”

JILL SILER, a former superintendent, is the deputy executive director for the Texas Association of School Administrators in Austin, Texas. Twitter: @jillmsiler