Solving Jewish day school teacher shortage with professional development - opinion

While an educator shortage in Jewish day schools has been a topic of conversation for well over a decade, it has reached true crisis levels: both new and seasoned teachers are leaving in droves and not being replaced by incoming talent, as people choose to enter other professions that offer more flexibility, less stress, and higher pay. It is safe to say that recruiting, supporting, and retaining excellent teachers are truly among the most urgent challenges facing Jewish day schools today.

Teacher pipeline crisis: The challenges

As a partner of more than 300 Jewish day schools across North America over the past 20 years, Jewish New Teacher Project (JNTP) has had a front seat to the unfolding pipeline crisis. Based on this experience, and supported by research, we believe that a leading indicator for retention is a teacher’s self-efficacy – the confidence that they are effective in the classroom.

A recent article from JNTP’s parents organization, the New Teacher Center, discusses evidence that teacher efficacy is related to teachers’ persistence, motivation, commitment, and instructional behavior, as well as having an impact on students’ achievement, motivation, and their own self-efficacy beliefs. Conversely, poor self-efficacy is linked to higher teacher burnout and stress, which in turn leads to a higher rate of attrition. The goal, then, is to help teachers have early success and gain confidence in their abilities, so that they have greater job satisfaction and a stronger commitment to staying in the profession long term.

Here are some of the factors that lead to poor self-efficacy and burnout:

• Insufficient training and preparation: There is nothing that can adequately prepare new teachers to run their own classrooms until they are actually running their own classrooms. Many new teachers have never taught a group of students before they step into their own classroom. Only on-the-job experience gives teachers the practice to develop the skills that they need to be effective. Teaching can be overwhelming, especially for those who are not adequately supported, which is why nearly 45% of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years.
• Feelings of isolation/lack of support: In many ways, teaching is an isolating job. This may sound paradoxical since teachers are surrounded by people all day long. However, with some exceptions for those in co-teaching arrangements, most teachers spend the day professionally alone. They plan lessons, grade papers, and manage their classrooms without input from or collaboration with peers.

This can feel very isolating. Administrators aim to offer support, especially to new teachers who are adjusting to their roles, but they themselves are often overwhelmed and don’t have the time to provide  as much support as a new teacher requires.

• Lack of opportunities for growth: For seasoned teachers, few opportunities exist to grow their skills and/or gain new responsibilities while staying in the classroom. Over time, teachers can feel that they aren’t growing professionally.
• Lack of morale: The teaching profession has lost status in our communities and beyond. According to Dirck Roosevelt, director of doctoral specialization in teacher education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, “there is definitely a crisis of morale and confidence. The belief that one can do good work and do good for young people and have a rewarding, satisfying career in teaching has gone down the tubes.”

How high-quality professional development can impact recruitment and retention

The good news is that there are ways to address many of these challenges. It comes down to schools providing high-quality, effective, long-term, job-embedded professional development. This is not a “one-and-done” quick fix workshop. Real change with demonstrable results only comes with deep and sustained professional learning. Relative to the cost of teacher turnover, the potential impact of high quality professional development on individual schools and on the field of Jewish day school education as a whole can be monumental.

Effective professional development can be part of a solution to the educator crisis. Here are some of the ways we at JNTP have seen effective professional development address the challenges listed above:

On-the-job training accelerates growth. We’ve seen that for teachers, growth accelerates when a mentor visits their classroom and provides one-on-one feedback on an iterative basis.

New teachers learn what works and what doesn’t work quickly through this collaborative process with their mentor. When teachers feel supported and effective, when they are able to successfully weather the transition into their new roles, they stay in the profession longer.

Relationship-based professional development breaks isolation. Having a mentor who meets with teachers regularly means that teachers are receiving constant, targeted, customized support. They never feel left on their own to “sink or swim,” learning their craft on their own. Additionally, in the case of JNTP, veteran teachers who train as mentors are part of cohorts that meet regularly to learn together and share experiences, providing opportunities for collaboration and support even for experienced teachers, which sustains satisfaction over the course of a career.

Clear role definition and standards of professionalism create cultures of excellence. Quality of teaching and leadership improves when educators are driven by and held accountable to clear role expectations and a defined set of standards that promote excellence. When faculty across a school share the same language and standards, it creates a culture of excellence, which then leads to improvements in student achievement, respect for teachers and administrators, and educator morale.

Mentoring creates opportunities for professional growth. At JNTP, we have observed that veteran teachers who become mentors find that their own teaching skills improve as they mentor beginning teachers. They, too, adopt professional standards of practice and learn to evaluate their own performance against those standards. Furthermore, mentoring provides an opportunity to take on leadership roles within the school that are outside of administration, whether as a mentor and role model for other faculty or leading professional learning for their colleagues.

Schools that provide a positive work environment characterized by ongoing, job-embedded, observation and standards-based professional development for teachers can address the Jewish day school educator shortage crisis by boosting teacher retention and developing a leadership pipeline from within. If schools, communities, and the field as a whole can help our teachers feel more successful and experience greater job satisfaction, we can begin to move the needle in the right direction.

The writer is executive director of the Jewish New Teacher Project, celebrating its 20th anniversary, at the New Teacher Center. She recently participated in the Jewish Day School Educators Pipeline Working Group, sponsored by Prizmah and the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge.