America has a teacher shortage crisis. The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age has a blueprint for solving it.
Gone are the days of the lifetime employer. In its place, argue the authors, is the "networked age," where employees serve short-term "tours of duty" (5 years, give or take) gaining experience and skills before moving on to another tour within the company or leave for a new tour at a new company.
"Think of employment as an alliance: a mutually beneficial deal, with explicit terms, between independent players....In an alliance, employer and employee develop a relationship based on how they can add value to each other."
Once determined how that value can be added to both parties, "tours of duty" are agreed upon.
"In the context of the alliance, the tour of duty represents an ethical commitment by employer and employee to a specific mission."
Key here is that both employee and employer gain something valuable when that tour is over.
At present, teachers don't have any legitimate way to grow and develop outside of length of time served. And simply occupying a classroom for multiple years doesn't mean the person in that classroom is developing as a professional. Yes, there are opportunities for professional development, but as many others have noted, these are often "one-and-done" experiences without any legitimate development.
Because of this lack of opportunity for growth, the majority of teachers in America serve on what the authors call "Rotational" tours. "A Rotational tour isn't personalized to the employee and tends to be highly interchangeable--it's easy to swap an employee into or out of a predefined role."
They go on to describe two types of Rotational tours, the second of which is key to understanding the current state of the American teacher.
"These tours are highly structured and largely programmatic....Most blue-collar jobs fit into this category. For example, working on a particular assembly line can be thought of as a Rotational tour. A UPS driver is on a Rotational tour as well--it's routinized and structured, and the role is such that talent can be swapped in and out relatively seamlessly."
In the world of the standardized classroom, regulated by strict adherence to the standardized curriculum and enforced by the standardized test, teachers are on a "routinized and structured" Rotational tour where "talent can be swapped in and out relatively seamlessly."
Unless, of course, there is no one to swap them out with.
And in cities such as Las Vegas, NV; Charlotte, NC; and Decatur, GA, that is the case. There are not enough teachers to replace those who are leaving the "routinized and structured" American classroom.
Where The Alliance has value for teacher retention and alleviating our country's teacher shortage is in its explanation of the "Transformational" and "Foundational" tours of duty. First, there is the Transformational tour.
"Unlike the Rotational tour, a Transformational tour is personalized. The focus is less on a fixed time period and more on the completion of a specific mission. It's negotiated one-on-one by [employer and] employee....The central promise of a Transformational tour is that the employee will have the opportunity to transform both his career and the company."
Allowing a teacher to negotiate what her job would look like in exchange for the opportunity to transform both her career and the school would be a game changer for U.S. education.
Typically, you begin work as a teacher of a specific subject or age group, and you continue to teach that subject or age group until you leave the school or retire. There is no discussion of how you, the new teacher, are going to transform yourself or the school.
Arguably, there should be.
Many people enter teaching because they want to make a difference in students' lives--indeed, we might even say to transform lives.
In too many of today's increasingly scripted classrooms, there are no opportunities for transformative education. The lack of autonomy, coupled with the lack of opportunity to be a transformative agent, are two reasons why teachers are leaving the profession.
The final, and perhaps most progressive, reading of The Alliance involves placing teachers on "Foundational" tours. People on Foundational tours...
"...are fundamentally intertwined with their [schools]....The [school] has become the foundation of the person's career and even life, and the [teacher] has become one of the foundations of the [school]. The [teacher] sees his life's work as the [school's] mission and vice versa."
Just as with the Transformational tour, individuals on Foundational tours are committed to the organization. But, rather than learning skills or gaining experience and then moving on, these individuals remain for the duration of their careers.
Importantly, The Alliance argues that Foundational tours are not only for senior executives--or in the case of schools, principals and superintendents. The authors explain:
"People on Foundational tours, wherever they are on the org chart, provide a company with continuity and institutional memory. These stewards of the company way are the intellectual and emotional foundation of the organization. For example, they take greater pride and care when it comes to product quality because they develop a sense of (nonfinancial) ownership."
What is often overlooked in discussions of teacher retention, turnover, and shortages is the impact on "continuity and institutional memory" and the "intellectual and emotional foundation" of the school. Teachers who stay at a school 10, 15, or 20 years become fixtures of the community, both within the building and in the area surrounding it.
If we continue to run half of all teachers off in their first few years because we have them on Rotational tours, then we risk losing the heart and soul of our schools. It doesn't have to be this way, and it wouldn't take much to change a teacher's tour from Rotational to Transformational or Foundational.
Instead of "one-and-done" professional development, teachers should be given the opportunity and support to transform themselves in areas relevant to both their passions and the students they serve.
For example, a teacher may want to become an expert in preventing bullying. Toward that end, the school should support a customized professional development plan that involves several years of focus and study on that topic. When the teacher has finished that study, he can be the go-to expert in the building or district, and he becomes both Transformational and Foundational.
At present, teachers have one path for advancement, and that is into administration. While this may be a gain for the teacher, they leave the classroom--and often the building--when they are promoted. This is a loss to the "institutional memory" and "intellectual and emotional foundation" of the school.
Giving teachers genuine opportunities for professional growth and personal transformation both preserves the school's "institutional memory" and "intellectual and emotional foundation" and radically changes the teaching profession.
I'm wary of people who argue that schools should be run like businesses, but the ideas put forward in The Alliance have merit. If we want to solve the teacher crisis shortage, we should create spaces for transformative and foundational teachers in our schools.
This post first appeared here.