Accumulated knowledge, skill sets honed over time, and perceptions sharpened by experience lead to this observation: “At the point of retirement, most teachers know more, can do more, and have more value as teachers than any preceding year in their career”. A veteran teacher who persists through decades of teaching has high value to children, colleagues, and a school in her pre- and post-retirement years.
Take Away
How do schools make the most, in fact exploit, the valued commodity of a veteran educator? The answer is – we don’t. The teaching assignment and expectations for a veteran teacher mirror the expectations of a first-year teacher. We treat teachers with proven talents and teachers of unproven talents as similar “plug and play” personnel.
Teachers, of all ages, still operate in the block box of a classroom. A veteran teacher’s knowledge, skills and perceptions shine in their classroom, but are seldom known or discussed in whole school or faculty settings. The black box syndrome and mentality defeats the value of experience because of its isolationism. Whether the veteran is a Kindergarten teacher with decades of success in causing our youngest children to read or a high school AP teacher with years of causing our college-bound children to earn college credit while in high school, teachers work in isolation of each other and nominally alone within their school.
Informed experience is a value-added commodity that is achieved over time. A recent graduate knows the latest pedagogical theories and best practices and is ready to apply them. A veteran who is up-to-date on the latest theories and best practices adds the value of knowing which theory and practice works best with some student but not with others. The discernment of what, when and why children need specific teaching is an acquired judgment that is earned with experience, yet is undervalued in school.
It is essential to appreciate that all veteran teachers are not created equally. Some vets grow and ripen and enrich with time while some only repeat their first year of teaching over and over again every year.
A faculty group photo helps us observe many truths about our teacher corps. We see many contrasts. Faces and, to some degree, hair color portray two-thirds of the faculty as looking younger and less than one-third looking older. If we compare annual faculty group photos, we observe fewer and fewer of same veteran faces. There is a gradual yet steady decline in the number and in the continuity of older, veteran teachers. We believe that the work force in our nation is “graying” but, in public education, the work force is getting younger and younger. This means that we are losing the professionally-developed talent, knowledge, experiences, and perceptions faster than we are growing the talents of our young teachers.
What Do We Know?
In the 2015-16 school year, teachers in public schools averaged of 14 years of experience. If we interpret this in age as experience, the average teacher is in her mid 30s and has been working as a teacher for about one-third of her anticipated work life.
http://neatoday.org/2018/06/08/who-is-the-average-u-s-teacher/
In that year, the most common public school teacher is in her first three years of teaching. These data are supported by the fact that 44% of first year teachers leave the profession before their fifth year. That means that most schools have a continuous turn over of young and inexperienced teachers. We see this in the faculty group photo – so many look so young.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2018/10/today_teaching_force_richard_ingersoll.html
The average retirement age for teachers hovers around 59. Interestingly, many teachers retire before they are eligible for social security. Part of the reason is that salary tables tend to top out with little to no annual salary improvement after a set number of employment years. Some states and districts enact “rule of 30” incentives that encourage teachers to retire when they gain 30 years of experience or “rules of 55” that set the retirement incentive at a combination of age and years of teaching experience equaling 55. A teacher’s annual income of pensions and social security may be equal to or more than their annual working salary well before their anticipated retirement year. Why stay? Why not start a second career with earnings on top of teacher retirement benefits? We have created professional structures that purposefully diminish our teacher talent pool.
https://smartasset.com/retirement/why-your-retirement-age-matters
School leaders know the teachers in their faculty who perennially cause the greatest student learning. They know the “rain makers”. Principals know this through applying Effective Educator processes, comparing student assessment data, and sitting in classrooms observing teaching. They know it through their work with students and parents. And, they know the journeyman teachers who annually do a satisfactory job of teaching. However, this knowledge remains tight-lipped behind screens of confidentiality. If it were discussed, the parent demand for placement in “rain maker” classrooms would be impossible for satisfy.
Why Is This Thus?
In most school systems, a teacher with 40+ years of teaching is at the top of the district’s salary and benefits scale. The first consideration school boards make toward veteran teachers is financial. In many school districts, a veteran may cost twice that of a first-year teacher. If finances drive the decision making, “helping” expensive teachers to retire is a school board and administrative priority.
There is a large scale failure to understand the cost of less effective teachers. Successful initial learning is the most cost effective instruction. When a teacher must re-teach lessons to classes of children or extend the planned time for a unit of instruction, there will be instruction at the end of the year those children will not receive. That instruction must be taught the next year. The accumulated effect of ineffective teaching is graduates who did not learn all of their curricular objectives. Tier 2 interventions requiring “specialists” in addition to classroom teachers add significantly to the cost of a public education. Remedial summer school adds cost in large doses. The greatest cost is the sum of lost knowledge, skills and attitudes children suffer year after year that diminish their capacity for success in college and career. These are not costs in the hundreds of dollars, but in the millions nationwide. Getting teaching and learning right in initial instruction is the gold standard.
Most observers assume that veteran teachers with 30-40 years of teaching are slowing down. Their best years are behind them. They miss the point. Doing the same thing over and over diminishes energy, not the talent to work. Give a proven veteran a new assignment or change the challenges of the children the teacher instructs and the combination of informed experience and expertise takes over. Intellectual adrenalin makes vets act and look like younger teachers.
Too often principals respond to student and parental wants and demands and place veteran teachers in high popular demand or politically visible assignments. Parents want rainmakers teaching AP and college prep track courses. Rarely do parents of low achieving children stress principals to assign rainmakers to children performing below grade level. Some times teacher assignments are made for parents and not for children.
Lastly, phasing veteran teachers toward retirement is the way schools always have approached personnel. As institutions, schools are slow to change past practice, even poor past practice.
To Do
Use the informed experience and talent of veteran teachers for customized assignments, such as underachieving regular education children or children living in poverty who lack out of school resources. The vet’s understanding of chunked instruction, pacing, modeling, tutored guided practice, and interval reinforcement work well for children needing nuanced teaching.
Use the wisdom for instructional design. We engage large groups of teachers, most of whom are inexperienced or less experienced, to write curriculum and units of instruction. One of our misapplied thoughts is that every voice has equal value. Engage “rainmakers” in designing best strategies for making more rain for everyone.
Assure that talented veteran teachers work with small, discussion groups to refine student understanding. Too often, vets are assigned to large group information sessions because they are more entertaining. Knowing the right question to ask at the right point in a child’s learning is an acquired talent.
Weight employment using the value-added of informed experience and past records of causing significant student learning to create combinations of teaching and teacher coaching. First-year teachers graduate from mentored student teaching assignments straight into “you are on your own” classrooms. And, if they are assigned a mentor, mentoring seldom includes mentor observations because of their respective teaching classroom assignments. Give a proven and productive veteran released time to coach one or two inexperienced teachers.
Create emeritus teaching assignments for retired teachers. With closed-minded thinking, many states make it difficult for a retired teacher receiving a teacher’s pension to re-enter the classroom. An emeritus assignment need not be full-time or full-year. A highly trained veteran-in-retirement can work a very customized teaching assignment to cause children to learn. It may be an assignment that is “on demand” when children need talented and personalized instruction the most. Be creative.
The Big Duh
More than 40% of all teachers who start in the profession leave before their fifth year. The majority of teachers in any school are inexperienced due to this constant turn over. Among teachers who persist in the classroom are those who sadly repeat their first years of teaching over and over again. These often seek their first opportunity for an early retirement. And, there are talented rainmaking teachers whose experience, continuous professional development, and refinement of acquired art and science of teaching make them high valued veteran teachers. School leadership needs to optimize the use of their rainmakers and be creative in keeping rainmakers in the most productive of teaching assignments. A veteran teacher is a talent we cannot afford to waste.