Building Your Building: How to Hire and Keep Great Teachers; Your Guide to Recruiting and Retaining Teachers

by Jasmine K Kullar, Scott A Cunningham

A growing teacher attrition rate, combined with fewer teachers entering the profession, has created a teacher shortage in many schools. In Building Your Building , authors Jasmine K. Kullar and Scott A. Cunningham detail how school administrators can overcome these challenges to ensure they proactively hire (and keep) great teachers. Within this practical guide, you will find best practices for recruiting and retaining teachers, from interviewing candidates and mentoring new teachers to providing meaningful recognition and more. This book will help you improve the teacher hiring process and beyond to increase teacher recruitment and
Million-Dollar Decisions
Chapter 1: Features of Effective Teachers
Chapter 2: Hiring Practices
Chapter 3: Supporting New Teachers
Chapter 4: Mentoring New Teachers
Chapter 5: Recognizing Teachers
Chapter 6: Implementing Professional Development
Afterword
References and Resources

176 pages, Paperback

Published August 14, 2019

Reviews

[PH V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Building your Building: How to Hire and Keep Great Teachers is a quick read with tons of information and resources for anyone in a leadership role in the education field. The free reproducible resources from the book can also be found on the Solutiontree.com website. The book is broken down into two parts, part one is on hiring great teachers and part two is on keeping great teachers. There are six chapters altogether, the first two chapters focus on features of effective teachers and the hiring process. Chapter three focuses on supporting new teachers, four is on mentoring new teachers, five is on recognizing teachers and six is on implementing professional development. At the end of every chapter there is a “look ahead” reading that summarizes everything in the chapter and then a “next steps” to help guide how to use the reproducible resources in your workplace. Every chapter also has reflection questions for anyone who might be doing a book study or just wants to use it.

Chapter one went over characteristics of effective teachers and they are: passion, a caring nature, high expectations, and capacity for reflection. When explaining a caring nature, the chapter also referenced Abraham H. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory: (1) physiological, (2) safety, (3) love and belonging, (4) esteem and accomplishment, and (5) self-actualization. This chapter also focuses on Dr. Richard DuFour’s PLC model and the three big ideas of a PLC– (1) a focus on learning, (2) a collaborative culture and collective responsibility, and (3) a results orientation.

Chapter three to six went over how to keep great teachers. To keep great teachers it depends how the beginning of their career starts. When there’s new teachers, they need some sort of support whether it’s personal or job related support. New teachers need a strong mentor because without a strong mentor they are more susceptible to failure and burnout. Similar to support, Belle Rose Ragins, John L. Cotton, and Janice S. Millar concluded that new teachers need some type of mentoring whether it’s informal or formal, it’s better than not having a mentor at all. When teachers have support and a mentor, they are happier, more effective, and students learn at high levels.

The book also talks about the importance of teachers being recognized. Tim Hodges, the director of Research for Gallup’s Education Practice mentioned how research shows that recognition is a key driver of great workplaces and a way to help keep employees.

Throughout the book it’s been mentioned that when schools have a strong PLC, all teachers know what they want students to know and be able to do, what students have learned, what to do when students haven’t learned what’s taught, and what to do when students already know the lesson being taught. Schools with strong PLC are connected with longer teacher retention because they feel less isolated, they are working towards a common goal, allowing teachers (veteran and new) to share and discuss their practices.

This book is still fairly new, published 2020, therefore there aren't many articles out there that referenced this book by Kullar and Cunningham. There are two dissertation papers that use this book as a resource: New-To-Profession Elementary Teachers’ and Mentors’ Perceptions of the District-Wide Mentoring Program: A Narrative Inquiry Qualitative Study and The Use of an Application Screening Assessment as a Predictor of Teacher Retention at a Midwestern, K-12, Public School District.

[Beth Lind · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great info that I can use with my faculty.