Helping new teachers stay and thrive in rural schools

Among the many challenges facing rural administrators, recruiting and retaining teachers is often at the top of the list. Given the time and energy they must invest to successfully attract, recruit, and hire a new teacher, there is a significant need to adopt strategies that will help to retain those new teachers. Rural administrators can support new teachers so that they stay — and thrive — in rural districts by connecting teachers with the community, supporting place-based practices in the classroom, and helping new teachers build relationships both in and out of school.

Managing teacher turnover in regional schools

Employee resourcing comprising employment activities such as human resource planning, employee recruitment, selection, and adaptation, or retention planning and managing employee turnover seems to be a critical function of school management. It enables school managers to ensure the school has quality teachers and other employees it needs to achieve the expected objectives of the school. The biggest challenges of school managers in employee resourcing involve retaining teachers and dealing with teacher turnover. Based on the example of Czech regional schools, the article aims to discuss the current challenges of school managers in employee resourcing in regional schools and define possible ways to deal with the issue of retaining teachers and teacher turnover. The article applies findings of the authors' questionnaire survey on the practice of employee resourcing in Czech regional schools with the focus on the teachers' adaptation as a critical tool for retaining teachers. The authors' questionnaire survey was carried out in the second half of the school year 2018/2019 and in the first half of the school year 2019/2020. The respondents included managers of Czech preschools, elementary schools, and high schools. The answers were obtained from 19% of schools (116 out of 600 addressed schools). The findings show that surveyed regional schools can successfully deal with the challenges in employee resourcing, however, they should apply a more systematic approach, especially to the teachers' adaptation that could help them to deal with the challenge in retaining teachers and reducing the teacher turnover.

How a principal's action as an invitational leader with a social justice orientation can serve as a factor in recruiting and reciprocally retaining teachers at high-poverty, high-minority, high needs urban high schools

The number of individuals going into the teaching profession was dwindling at a time when the rate of retirement and people leaving the profession was increasing. Sutcher et al. (2016) noted that in 2015-16, the United States was short 64,000 qualified teachers. They predicted this to grow to as much as 300,000 teachers needed per year by 2020 and up to 316,000 by 2025. The COVID-19 pandemic may exacerbate this challenge even more (Page, 2020). Teachers need to be recruited, supported, and retained in high-poverty, high-minority, high-needs, urban high schools (Freedman and Appleman, 2008; Greenlee and Brown, 2009; Hughes, 2012; Petty, et. al, 2012; Podolsky, et. al., 2016; Simon and Johnson, 2015; Stotko, et. al., 2006; Waddell, 2010). In a time when inequities are being exacerbated in the field of education, the principals and the teachers will be called upon to do more with less (Page, 2020). Empowerment of school principals who are willing to take on the schools that are the most challenging (Bartanen, 2019; Levin and Bradley, 2019) is needed. They must to be trained to demonstrate leadership dimensions and supporting actions (Martin and Miller, 2017) that can guide them to build a team of team of irreplaceable teachers (The Irreplaceables, 2012), which will build collective efficacy (Hattie, 2016) to help students furthest from opportunity reach their high potential in academic and personal achievement. In the contention of Martin and Miller, (2017) aligning the dimensions of invitational leadership (Purkey and Novak, 2016; Purkey and Siegel, 2003) with action and self-reflection of social justice leadership for principal leadership will better prepare principals leading schools with diverse populations. This study further contends that if the principal's action as an invitational leader with a social justice orientation it will serve as a factor in recruiting and retaining teachers in the schools where they are needed most.

Employee Voice Contexts and Teacher Retention in Remote Secondary Schools in Tanzania

Retaining teachers in their work stations is influenced by many factors which are contextually explained. Teachers’ retention practices in Tanzania and most Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries have been ineffective partly because of being monetary based. While ‘voicing’ is regarded as a more feasible strategy for retaining teachers in these countries, conditions which favour voicing over exiting a remote school particularly in the Tanzanian context have been not systematically mapped out. This article presents and discusses seven conditions, to include: empowering, listening and cooperative leadership; habitability; friendliness outside school environment; investment potentialities; a supportive and peaceful school working environment; life as a “challenge” mindset; as well as patriotism and profession commitment, which were found to favour voicing over exiting a remote school. The findings imply that there is a need to empower teachers to influence change and reforms that matter to them, increasing teachers sense of investment in schools they are posted and in the profession (social and financial capital), checking ‘who goes into the teaching profession and with what level of struggle’; improving school-level relationships including justice practices from leaders and management, positive co-workers exchanges; training teachers to become patriotic to the nation and be committed to the teaching profession; and the need to improve cooperation and understanding between schools and their surrounding communities.