Skip to main content

The Leadership Factor: How Adminstrators Shape Whether Teachers Stay

 

The Leadership Factor: How Administrators Shape Whether Teachers Stay

This is the third post in a series sharing findings from my doctoral dissertation on teacher self-care and retention. 


So far in this series, I've shared why I researched teacher self-care and retention, and what teachers actually meant by "self-care" once you moved past the wellness-industry version of the term. In this post, I want to focus on a theme that ran through nearly every interview I conducted: the outsized role school leadership plays in whether teachers stay or go.

Leadership Came Up Constantly, Even When I Didn't Ask About It Directly

I didn't set out to write a study about administrators. My questions were about self-care and retention. But teacher after teacher, when describing what made their job sustainable, or unbearable, brought the conversation back to their principal or school leadership team.


That wasn't a coincidence. It reflects something anyone who has worked in a school building already senses: the tone set at the top shapes nearly everything else about daily life in a school.

What "Good" Leadership Looked Like to These Teachers

The teachers who described feeling supported and who spoke about staying in education long-term tended to describe leaders who:


  • Backed them up in difficult situations with parents, students, or discipline issues, rather than leaving them exposed.

  • Communicated clearly and consistently, so teachers weren't blindsided by new expectations or last-minute changes.

  • Protected their time, pushing back on adding more to teachers' plates without removing something else.

  • Checked in as people, not just as employees noticing when someone was struggling before it became a crisis.


None of this required massive budgets or new programs. It was about consistency and follow-through.

What "Unsupportive" Leadership Looked Like

On the other side, teachers who described feeling unsupported often pointed to leadership that was reactive rather than steady, quick to add new initiatives without warning, slow to defend teachers in difficult situations, or largely invisible until something went wrong. A few teachers described feeling like they only heard from administration when there was a problem to address, never simply to check in.


Importantly, none of the teachers described leadership as intentionally harmful. Most described principals who were themselves overwhelmed, stretched across too many responsibilities to lead in the way they might have wanted to. This points to something structural, not just individual, school leaders need the capacity to lead well, not just the intention.

Why This Matters for Retention

This finding reframes a common assumption. Teacher retention efforts often focus on things like pay, benefits, or classroom resources, all of which matter. But my research suggests that day-to-day leadership experience may carry just as much weight in a teacher's decision to stay or leave. A teacher who feels backed up and trusted by their principal can tolerate a lot of the profession's other hard days. A teacher who feels alone in it, even in a well-resourced school, may not.

Coming Up Next

In the final post of this series, I'll pull these threads together and talk about what this research suggests for school and district leaders who want to actually move the needle on retention. Practical takeaways rather than just findings.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Teachers Told Me about Burnout, Support, and Staying in Education

  What Teachers Told Me About Burnout, Support, and Staying in Education Every year, schools lose good teachers. Not because they stopped caring about students, but because the profession slowly wore them down. As someone who spent two decades in K-12 education, as a teacher, a coach, and later a school administrator, I watched this happen more times than I can count. It's part of what led me to spend the last several years researching teacher retention for my doctoral dissertation. My study, The Perception of Teacher Self-Care and the Impact on Retention , is a qualitative study built around conversations with nine teachers. I wanted to understand something that gets talked about constantly in education circles but rarely examined closely: what does "self-care" actually mean to teachers, and does it genuinely affect whether they stay in the classroom or leave? Why This Question Matters Teacher turnover isn't just a staffing headache. It disrupts student learning, dra...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Self-Care Actually Means to Teachers

  What Self-Care Actually Means to Teachers This is the second post in a series sharing findings from my doctoral dissertation on teacher self-care and retention. In my last post, I introduced the research behind my dissertation: nine teachers, one central question: Does self-care actually affect whether teachers stay in the classroom? Today I want to dig into one of the clearest findings from that research: teachers and the education world at large often mean two very different things when they say "self-care." The Wellness Industry Got There First Walk into any school in August and you'll likely see a poster about self-care in the staff lounge, something about drinking water, taking deep breaths, or scheduling "me time." It's well-intentioned. It's also, according to the teachers I interviewed, almost beside the point. When wellness culture talks about self-care, it usually means individual habits: exercise, journaling, unplugging on weekends. Useful t...
Post a Comment
Read more