Teacher Morale and Wellness
August 01, 2022
Appears in August 2022: School Administrator.
The new lurking crisis on staffing requires diagnosis and action, not one-off appreciation gestures
![Georgeanne Warnock](/images/default-source/school-administrator/2022-august/31-georgette-warnock---teacher-of-the-year-and-sign.jpg?sfvrsn=30a1f751_7)
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.”
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5 Lessons to Lighten Teachers’ Loads
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
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