Three Tips to Increase Your Longevity in 2023-2024 as a K-12 Administrator
Tell me if this sounds familiar.
During the school year, you put everyone first. You lead by serving. If a teacher has an emergency, you step in to help. If a disgruntled parent calls a meeting with a teacher, you step in to mediate. Without fail, you check in on your staff’s mental health so that they can hang on to their passion for education for years to come.
You lead by example to train the next generation of great educators and leaders!
But while you’re tending to everyone else’s needs to lift the burden from their shoulders, you’re not getting support when you need it throughout the school year. You’re not taking time to practice self-care, scheduling in rest and doing things that fill up your cup before you pour yourself out to everyone who needs you.
And if that’s true, your longevity is at risk, and your trainees, those teachers and leaders, to whom you’ve given your best years, will follow suit.
Whether you’re a new administrator looking ahead to twenty or thirty more years in your career or you’re thinking about moving up your retirement or changing your career, you have to ask yourself one question:
If the teachers are supporting the students and you’re supporting the teachers, who is supporting you?
If you want to increase your longevity and effectiveness in the K-12 space so that you can continue to raise passionate leaders and educators, you must do the following three things:
Train
Retreat
Get Consistent Support
Keep reading to find out how these three things benefit your mental health, encourage leadership growth, and foster a culture of mutual workload, understanding, and synergy at every level of leadership.
Principal Attrition Rates are Rising
During the 2022-2023 academic year, the principal attrition rate reached a high of 20.20% in the state of Texas, according to the Texas Education Agency, which resulted in nearly 1700 new hires across the state.
And in a role where some principals are dedicating 30, 40, and even 50 years of their lives, that percentage can feel like the twilight of an era. The younger generations are stepping into the gap to fill roles that are more emotionally and physically demanding than ever before.
A 2021 survey by the National Association of Secondary School Principals found that 47% of school leaders surveyed reported that their role has changed very much since the outbreak of Covid-19: “79% of principals report they have been working harder, 73% report working longer hours and 62% report having a harder time doing their job than ever before.”
And while it’s obvious that new administrators and principals need the most help and support as they navigate the pressure of managing school operations and education programs, veterans in the role must also acknowledge their need for a new and different kind of support in this changing arena.
These are culture leaders as well as instructional leaders. They lead by example. They need to prioritize their mental health to survive the new challenges and pass the baton to the next generation of leaders.
The way to increase your longevity may look much the same as what you’ve already done, but that’s to be expected in a role where you may have excelled up to now!
K-12 Administrators and Principals: Tips to Increase Longevity
#1 Train Up Exceptional Leaders Who Will Emulate You
Big-hearted administrators seem to be found in schools where resources are lacking or community support is low, and that’s because there’s so much opportunity to effect change and make a positive impact there.
But those administrators may also face more difficulty retaining teachers and staff due to the lack of community support, wages, and resources.
My advice to you? If you don’t have any exceptional leaders, go make some!
Our goal as leaders should always be to train ourselves out of a job so that when the day comes that we have to lay down our pens and go swiftly into retirement, we can do so with no remorse.
If you are a principal or administrator who leads sacrificially, make sure that you train your team to do the same. When everyone is giving 110%, when they can, the emotional and mental burden is equally distributed.
But as important as it is to model hard work and empathy, exceptional leaders also need to know how to ask for help so that they’re never pouring from an empty cup. And this is a principle that will keep them active and effective for the long term.
If there simply aren’t enough staff members to share the load, specifically in your communications department, I offer a monthly retainer package that includes access to me and the team, crisis communication support, thought partnering, leadership development, questions, and any type of low-level support that you and your team need.
The monthly retainer package helps to take responsibilities off the plate of central office and district communication, especially if you don’t have a communications team.
#2 Retreat Regularly for Team Building, Synergy, and Refreshment
Last week, I facilitated a twelve-person leadership retreat for the Pasadena ISD communications department.
While I penciled in plenty of rest for the team, we also worked through exercises to build team synergy. They learned tools to help them cultivate a positive mindset and create positive interactions with each other and community members next year.
The most exciting part is, when school starts up again, they will be rested and refreshed and have clearly established key norms to help them work well together and be even more effective during the school year. Build up your communications team so they can function independently with less elbow grease from you.
But, while my leadership retreats are power packed and designed to rejuvenate teams in a short period, summer can’t be the only time you fill your cup. Unlike most other professions, education has clearly defined seasons. And that’s great for the hard-working educators and leaders who need a change of pace and fresh perspective over the summer.
But, if you and your educators are relying on the breaks alone to preserve your mental health, you could be putting yourself and your staff at risk.
#3. Get Support. Know When And Whom To Ask For Help
One way to fail as a leader is to be solely responsible for too many things and thereby work yourself into the ground. But with the proper supports in place, you can keep your cup full—even as you pour it back out to serve others around you.
Here are three layers of support you can put in place to give you peace of mind throughout the school year.
Have an experienced communications professional on speed dial whom you can call during a crisis or when you need a thought partner.
Monitor your mental health. At some point, everyone needs to raise the white flag.
Consider therapy sessions so you can talk through anxiety before it becomes a bigger problem.Make time for your spiritual health and your hobbies. It’s important to have a rich inner life and outlets alongside your daily job to keep you focused and motivated.
Conclusion
Passion and character are caught, not taught. Can you imagine the legacy you’re creating twenty years from now? When you develop leaders who also know how to re-fill their cups so they can serve other people, you can help to lower attrition rates and ensure that there will always be a healthy, strong and passionate teacher in every classroom.
Interested in preserving your mental health during the 2023-2024 academic year? There are so many ways I can help! Book a leadership retreat for one or all of your teams. Get me on monthly retainer to receive crisis communications consulting, thought partnering, and low-level social media support all year long. Monthly retainers can be customized to fit your needs.