Mastering Educator Retention: Unlocking Secrets to Long-Term Success
Summary:
Join Dr. Jim as he discusses the critical factors influencing educator retention with Ben Kirby, Superintendent of Forest Hills Public School District. Explore Ben's insights on fostering relationships, addressing onboarding challenges, and ensuring a supportive environment to retain educators beyond the pivotal first three years. Discover how effective leadership, safety measures, and celebrating successes contribute to a thriving educational community. With decades of experience in education, Ben shares invaluable strategies to inspire and empower both staff and students, ensuring a productive and welcoming district for all.
Key Takeaways:
- Onboarding Impact: A streamlined onboarding experience is critical for new educators, significantly influencing their likelihood of staying with the district.
- Building Relationships: Establishing trust and strong relationships within educational teams, from leadership to classroom teachers, is fundamental to retaining staff.
- Celebrating Staff: Embedding celebration and recognition into the work culture fosters a sense of belonging and motivation among educators.
- Safety and Support: Ensuring physical and emotional safety for staff and students alike is a multifaceted approach crucial for a supportive educational environment.
- Leadership Development: Empowering principals with skills to handle educational and personal challenges enhances their effectiveness as leaders.
Chapters:
Strategies for Retaining Educators in Their First Three Years
Leadership Evolution and District Challenges in K-12 Education
Streamlining Onboarding to Enhance Educator Retention and Satisfaction
Celebrating New Educators to Foster Retention and Community
Empowering School Leaders Through Self-Awareness and Collaboration
Strategies for Enhancing Educator Retention and School Safety
Improving Educator Retention Through Effective Onboarding Processes
Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk
Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung
Connect with Ben Kirby: https://www.fhps.net/
Music Credit: Shake it Up - Fesliyanstudios.com - David Renda
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Transcript
If you're bringing on people, To your team and you aren't keeping them for at least three years, you're probably losing out on a lot of long term value. So how do you set up your educators for success in the first three years? What does your leadership team need to do and what resources do you need to have in place?
To make this successful. These are just some of the questions that we're going to tackle in today's conversation, featuring Ben Kirby, who is the superintendent of Forest Hills public school district. Ben's career in education spans over three decades during which he has held various positions that have shaped his comprehensive understanding of the educational landscape.
[:Prior to joining Forest Hill public schools in July of 2024, Ben served as the superintendent of Lake Orion community schools from 2020. His experience includes tenure as assistant superintendent in South Lyon community schools, and that for further broadened his administrative experience. He's a proud Spartan holds a bachelor's degree in elementary education from Michigan state university.
Last year had to be a terrible year for you having. Michigan win the title. He furthered his education with a master's in education leadership from Western Michigan University and an educational specialist degree in educational leadership from Grand Valley State University. Ben, welcome to the show.
[:[00:01:56] Dr. Jim: That's a positive mental attitude to have, especially when you're talking about [00:02:00] NCAA football and talking about how Spart, Sparty is done versus the Wolverines. But on the flip side, you have a different story to tell if you're talking about basketball, but this isn't a sports show. This isn't sports talk radio.
This is a podcast on a K through 12 leadership best practices. So I know we covered a lot of different ground on the intro in terms of your background and experience, but I think it's important for us to sit a bit. In this space and share some of the key moments in your career and also your career progression that helped shape your leadership philosophy and some of the things that you do.
So why don't you walk us through some of those key moments that really influenced and shaped you as a leader?
[:And so that kind of evolved into a reputation. And that's really, I got into the assistant principal role and I really enjoyed working with. That 10 percent of students that you get as a assistant principal. So it really forming those relationships and really digging deep Alan Mendler is somebody who had a philosophy in a book around discipline with dignity and having difficult conversations and those kinds of things.
And that really spoke to me. And that really set that relationships were key with everything that we do in education. And it really helped start my launch into the relational capacity grounds.
[:But as you get further and further removed from the front lines of teaching, it's tougher to have that show up in specific ways [00:04:00] that's visible. How do you still satisfy that sort of mission or need or driver when you're not really in front of the students in any large degree as you move further up the ladder.
[:You still have to figure out how to get back into the classrooms and be engaged with students. Cause that's the passion of all educators. But in 2008 had some training around capturing kids hearts. And that is really the. The piece that has really driven me as I've continued to be a leader and a leader of adults.
I focus back. How do I help [:Build tools so that they can help continue to have those great relationships with students, which is essential for their learning
[:[00:05:25] Ben Kirby: My current district which I started in july. We're we have a approximately just under 9 000 students 18 school buildings three high schools three middle schools we have an alternative setting so we have a great variety for our students, we have some, full immersion programs, Spanish immersion, Chinese immersion gone boarding project next, like we have all kinds of unique opportunities and each of those opportunities, there's great passion around every single one of them.
here's just a lot of passion [:[00:06:12] Dr. Jim: So when you look at taking over a district of this size and you're still fairly new in the role, how did that compare to previous districts that you've run?
[:One of the other things that happened with me as an educator, as I was in Lake Orion, as there was the terrible shooting at Oxford. Public schools in Michigan, and they were our neighbors. And so my lens coming into this district has a lot to do with safety and security and couple that [00:07:00] with, the relational capacity that I know is so important, we have to really build that foundation for our students and our families so that they know that we're in a safe place.
They need to see that they're in a safe place. They need to feel that they're in a safe place. And that has really been something that as I moved to this district, Further away from Oxford, a couple hours away, there's a different lens that has been looked through here than, those that were right next to it.
So I think that's something that's different. I come in with a different perspective and some things that are important and not that they weren't important, but maybe a different level of of needs that we've been serving.
[:[00:07:47] Ben Kirby: So I'm really starting over. So when you talk about priorities, my first three months, which, I'm just wrapping that up. It's all been about learning. And that's what I've been doing is really learning about the culture, not only what [00:08:00] people say, but how we actually act and learn.
But also about the programs, some of the programs that I mentioned earlier, they're fantastic. They're amazing. They've been in place for a while. But the question hasn't been answered in recent time. Are those programs still serving our students in the way that they were intended to begin with?
And our students today have changed from five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, when some of these programs are in place. So we really have to take a deep dive into that. So I've had to refocus and re, really learn about these programs and what our community expectations are. And thankfully I've worked with a board that Understands that it takes time.
We're going to get through, a year and really understand, the district, the programs, and then really start to look towards a strategic plan for our future. Which may or may not include, the particular programs that we're continuing to do and potentially new focuses.
[:[00:09:02] Ben Kirby: Yeah. So I've spent a significant amount of time meeting with people. So I've had a lot of one on ones with my school board, obviously all of my leadership team, all of my directors. So in that first month I had, at least one hour meetings with probably 70, 75 people. My executive assistant was amazing at getting everybody in and still doing all the other things, but it's been really a lot of listening.
Getting around, watching past board meetings getting around functions within the community. Just listening to people meeting new business representatives, members of the chamber Big businesses that we have in the community and really trying to understand what is the relationship with the school district and how can we make stronger relationships or maintain where we're at if we're already in a good spot.
So a lot of listening, I really call it a listening tour.
[:Is there anything that stands out as far as, Oh, this should be something that's high on my radar in terms of prioritization?
[:So there's definitely some some pieces there when you're dealing with staff and really trying to. Increase morale and make sure that everybody's feeling valued and equitable. There's those pieces that have become, really important. It's the whole relationship and the trust and really trying to understand how all of these great things we're doing have these peripheral impacts that maybe are unintended consequences at times.
[:So when you look at your game plan for. The district that you're just starting out in. How does all of that fit together in terms of your overall plan?
[:But really from an application side, all the way to the higher side, what is the experience that, that our staff has? And then once they actually get on board, what are the things that we're doing to support them? Cause we do have to make sure that they're being successful. And really supporting [00:12:00] them, as we move forward.
So again, meeting with my cabinet members, our HR assistant superintendent, like our processes and how we support right from the word go to the time that school starts is super important.
[:And that was the onboarding process. And your experience within the onboarding process. So when you look at the employee life cycle, the onboarding experience is a big predictor of how likely an employee is to stay within your organization beyond year one. What are the things that you've been doing from an onboarding perspective that is really tied into this overall new teacher plan that you've implemented or you're going to be working on [00:13:00] implementing in your district?
[:So we actually made some serious revisions on our web page and made it a little bit easier to navigate. And then. Once you actually get into, yes, you're the finally the person and you go through the process. And there was some work that was done there as far as communicating with our principles, some expectations about what you do in an interview process.
Who's communicating when making sure that everybody's communicated with throughout the process. Making sure people understand the expectations of the process and the timeframe and what to have and stuff like that, really trying to prepare people was super important. And then once you, they're actual chosen person to be that educator, then we branch forward.
of the other things that we [:You have to do a live scan fingerprint. There's only so many entities that actually do fingerprints. So you got to, in our community at the time, we had to get a appointment. It might've been four days down the line. It might've been 40 minutes. It might've been two weeks. Because the police station had limited staff and so on.
So one of the things that we did early on was we identified that as a barrier and we actually got our staff certified to do the live scan finger printing. We got the system right inside our office. So when they come in and they have their paperwork and all the things that get done, we get Done with the process, we got finished with the process while they were there, rather than go out to your appointment in four days, then the prints get sent over.
t takes to get them ready to [:[00:15:00] Dr. Jim: So I like how you're focusing in on some of those bottlenecks and I think that's important to smooth out the onboarding process, but I want to zoom out a more and get line of sight into Why the focus in these areas was important as part of your overall talent strategy when it came to driving educator retention outcomes.
[:And as they come here as forest hills, not coming in as frustrated and Oh my gosh, it took me so much to get here. And then we really would launch and then we launched them forward with a lot of support and love as they start their profession with us.
[:What's the timeframe that you're looking at when you're thinking about a teacher's onboarding process?
[:We celebrate them. Our board would applaud them again. It's a large school district, but I will always think of them Thought it important that our board members and community know who these faces are. Cause then they go off into the buildings and do their great work. But I want to have that initial start for them to feel like they're part of the district.
very proud of. But we would [:It was an enormous place, had a great setup, but we would bring in our. All of our staff, but the new staff were really emphasized. So we actually had all of our new staff report to a certain area. We had everybody come in. First of all, you're mingling when you first, you come in the parking lot, our banners up about, being proud to be a dragon they would walk through.
We'd have our band playing. We'd have a bunch of student athletes just making, made the team. Tunnel for all of our staff to walk through. That's how we started out the school year. And it was just a celebration, a lot of fun. And we had some things going on in the inside, food and all that educators love food, including myself, but that is a key for that, but then as everybody shifts into the open space, what we actually did is we would take our new staff members.
he stage and they would come [:But that is how they got there. First day of school was a celebration for them. So they would come down and then be part of it. We also would celebrate people at different levels in their career as well during that particular meeting and, go through some things. And then as they really start to get into the pedagogy and the strategies, we actually would have multiple days where we would meet with this cohort of new teachers.
In Lake Oregon, it was three pack days. And what we would really try to do is, really again, try to reduce those barriers and some of the things that really choke people up in the profession, but get all the technology stuff taken care of. Can you get logged in? Can you do all the things in the grade book and then get into, the behavioral pieces of it?
ssroom management is so very [:We did positivity project in Lake Orient. So really teaching them how to build the relational capacity. And then also during that timeframe, teaching them about our programs, our academic programs, getting them involved in the curriculum with like people and creating their cohorts to learn together so that they had this.
Family within a family as they journey throughout their careers. So it was a very important time that we would get them all together and really support them.
[:Retention outcomes when you're embedding fun and celebration into, the work aspect of the job.
[:I would dig into that a little bit, but what I would mention to you is as we move into the school year, our strategy has been using our instructional coaches to. Intentionally over the first three years of their profession, work with them, model instructional practices, give them a safe space to be vulnerable and have people to talk to outside of their evaluator, which is, their principal, their assistant principal, and have people in the classroom and also give them an opportunity to go watch other instructors.
ers. And getting our younger [:So what do we do as a district? What we did is we came again, we were all dragon. So we actually gave them a onesie for their newborn child, along with, the congratulations and so on, and really letting them know that we, remembered them and their big life event. We did other things.
We. Actually had our HR team, they really worked hard on changing their perception around staff and they're there to support, but they actually did a couple of times a year at each of the buildings, went around in the mornings on a cart and, Delivered coffee, donuts, but did things like that.
And we would do that as a [:And really doing those kinds of things. Then the other thing, that I would just say as a leader, we have to be visible. And what that does is it gives them comfort to know that they're not in this fight alone. So the work is hard and they need to know that we're there to support them, whether it's the building principal, the assistant superintendent, that we're in this together and ultimately trying to build leaders from within and also build our.
Principals and the higher level leaders into positions that they can take our jobs as we, go away into different parts of our profession and lives.
[:[00:23:28] Ben Kirby: So we've done a really good job in the district as far in Lake Oregon, especially, and we're still growing in this one, but of getting our principles, all of the information, all of the skills, the strategies, our instructional coaches would actually come to our leadership team meetings and explain.
hey're there as a support so [:[00:24:18] Dr. Jim: So that makes sense on the curriculum or educational delivery side of it. How are what are the things that you're doing to upskill your principles from school? A leadership conversation perspective, because sometimes a teacher is going to come to a principal, not with a curriculum issue. They might be stressed out or dealing with some stuff.
What are the things that you're doing to get your principles leveled up when it comes to having those sort of conversations?
[:Growth edges are where your constraints are and where your strengths are. And then in year two, what we did with them is we moved into I talked a little bit about capturing kids hearts, but flipping leadership group does leadership blueprint. And what that is again, it's about identifying your constraints.
By having leaders have people give them specific feedback and you'd have five different people give you feedback and then actually where your target range is. And then from that, we've actually created growth plans, but the power and all that is that we did this learning together, so we got to see.
elf well, and that's part of [:[00:26:05] Dr. Jim: When I think about the things that we've talked about you have a three year time horizon that you're looking at making sure new educators in your building are retained for at least that amount of time. When I look at this from a resources perspective, what are the type of resources that you're looking at resources and investment that you're looking at the district level?
And if I'm a small school or small district leader, how can I actually apply this to fit a small school, a small district environment?
[:And when I [00:27:00] worked in Ionia, we were one of those small districts that had people that we could pull from and really using them to help grow your people is super important. And we can't forget about our local people. And that's something that, that I can't emphasize enough, and we really, In our last three, three districts I've worked in, we've really emphasized that.
But I think the other thing is. Just because you're in a, like I'm in a large district now, I get very little at risk money and a lot of times smaller districts that might be in a more rural setting that have a higher poverty level have financial resources that some other suburban districts might not have.
So it allows them to bring in, experts and so on to really do training with people. So I think it's really about being creative with things. The resources that you have and really branching out. If you're in a small district, that doesn't mean you have to think small. You have to think big. What do you want to be?
Not what are you and think about how you want your leaders to be, not where are you right now with your leaders?
[:[00:28:24] Ben Kirby: It's a really great question. And it doesn't matter what district you're in, probably in the nation right now and again, it looks different everywhere, but this feeling of coming to work and it being safe is really important. And by that there, there's a lot of different. Elements that move into safety.
There's the emotional safety when they're, are they supported, but you start talking about physical safety. Can people just walk right into your classroom? Can people walk into your building? Are there things that are in place that prevent the bad actors from coming in or angry parents? We've seen so much of that.
Across our profession and it [:[00:29:23] Dr. Jim: So when you look at the focus on safety and all of the different versions or variations that can take what are some examples of things that you've put into place that's really moved the needle in terms of driving those educator retention outcomes?
[:You actually had to get through three doors in Lake Orion and there's two doors here and Forest Hills. But staff know that those people that are in the hallway are supposed to be there and they've been vetted. They have on passes, badges, one, those types of things. So I think that's really important.
Another thing that we did is created a situation where. Inside of a classroom, you can lock your door so you don't have to go outside to actually stick your key in like you used to have to lock your door. So if there's a time of trouble, you're not going in harm's way to protect all of the Children and yourself.
, whatever it is that you're [:So those are some of the things that we've done to try to, I think that are good bang for your buck to get people. Comfortable and know that they're in a great environment to work.
[:[00:31:41] Ben Kirby: Yeah, I think the bottom line in our profession to be successful and to maintain is really to build relationships because we have to have trust with the work that we do with our communities. I think that's the biggest piece. And that's a big piece that I'm working on now. But you have to have great relationships amongst [00:32:00] your colleagues.
Students to staff, students to students staff to community, board to community, superintendent to board, that is really super important. And then I also would say that there are great things happening outside of your district, but don't overlook it. The things and the people that are within your district that are great, that you can emphasize and that you can utilize to try to help the profession of education to grow it even stronger than it is in Michigan, especially every district is unique.
We have different levels of resources based on social economic needs and so on. So it looks different everywhere. And I think probably the last thing that, that. That I really would emphasize is to celebrate. There's so many great things that every single school district does, but we, I don't know if it's about humility or being humble, but we have to do a great job of telling our story because the bottom line in education, especially these days, if we don't tell it, somebody else is going to tell it for us and it may not be accurate.
o we really got to work hard [:[00:33:04] Dr. Jim: Great stuff, Ben. If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
[:[00:33:24] Dr. Jim: Awesome stuff. Appreciate you hanging out with us, Ben. I think this is a good conversation for everybody to pay attention to because when you look at the challenges, the K through 12 is facing, finding and retaining talent is one of the toughest challenges to solve. And it's particularly difficult in the K through 12 space due to some of the constraints of what the job involves.
he experience that potential [:And I think it's important to focus in on the experience, especially from an application and onboarding perspective, because that is the first points of contact that an educator has with your organization. The studies are pretty clear that if you don't have a good onboarding process, it's highly likely that you're going to have a turnover issue over the long run.
So it can't be ignored that making your application process, your interviewing process and your onboarding process as smooth as possible is going to help you drive better retention outcomes. And I think there needs to be a particular focus in those areas as well as all the other areas that you talked about.
e. So appreciate you hanging [:For those of you who've been listening to this conversation, thanks for hanging out. If you liked the discussion, make sure you leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. If you haven't already done so make sure you join our community. And then make sure you tune in next time where we'll have another leader hanging out with us and sharing with us the game changing insights that help them build a high performing team
