Attrition & The Growth Mindset

Teacher attrition is a significant concern in public education today. Inadequate compensation, limited upward mobility, expanding obligations, workload burnout, and other challenges lead many fledgling educators to explore alternative careers. Though there's no easy solution to this, I believe that teachers must remain proactive in addressing these macro-issues, but not at the expense of bypassing the power of micro-actions in our classrooms and schools. We’re always prompted to look elsewhere for precedents and solutions. Public educators are bombarded with an array of moving targets, inflated expectations, and tertiary responsibilities. We need to understand, respect, and evaluate precedents while avoiding mimesis, and we must temper our calculated embrace of external models with a more dedicated internal commitment to growth and risk. As an educator, I aim to embody this creative growth mindset and encourage my students to do the same.

One of the aspects I love about teaching is the fact that I am responsible for what happens in my classroom. I can sculpt and design experiences and outcomes. Sure, I have to follow curricula, meet the demands of teacher evaluation, and so forth, but at the end of the day, I am steering my own ship. Those of us who work in the arts and humanities embrace the intrinsic challenge of creative responsiveness. No lesson is perfect, final, or fixed. Each day represents an opportunity for growth, and a path upon which improvements present themselves. When Picasso was asked which of his paintings was his best, he famously replied, “my next one.” This mindset may not solve public education’s issues overnight, but I believe it’s a good place to begin. I address this approach by encouraging and reinforcing the same belief system in my students and colleagues: our work is never “done;” instead, we’re finding satisfaction on each rung of a never-ending ladder.

Authentic adoption of this thinking modality requires the acknowledgement of relative failures. Teachers and students must learn to view failures as necessary steps in personal and intellectual growth. When one of my lessons falls flat, I see it as a welcome means by which I can carve out a more refined, successful approach.

As an educator, I can often point to a select group of near or post-retirement mentors that have modeled this sense of intellectual curiosity and advancement. They somehow maintain the “it factor” throughout the highs and lows of their careers. They can gauge the swing of the research-initiative pendulum, and they don’t let it bog them down.

As educators, our ships must never find their moorings. I believe that successful, resilient teachers embrace the possibilities of creative perpetuity. Educators who recycle instructional materials from the same stockpile will understandably develop frustrations. Some expect that the job will get easier as time passes. I believe this expectation of stagnation, when met with the realities of progress, is what drives many teachers to leave the profession. With the authentic adoption of a teacher growth mindset, I believe we can begin to remedy this problem. -TK