The Transformative Power of Appreciation

Hello friend and welcome to another episode of Art Works for Teachers. I’m your host, Susan Riley, and today I am joined by Kathleen Eckert, who is a school administrator from Texas. She’s actually a former middle school teacher and current administrator. She actually works with administrators all over the world and has written a book all about school transformation through teacher appreciation. And so today, in honor of getting ready for Teacher Appreciation Week that’s coming up very soon, my friends, we’re going to be talking about all the ways that we can show appreciation to teachers more than just one week out of the year. So if you’re a school leader who is listening, Kathleen’s going to share some brilliant ideas for ways that you can share appreciation during Teacher Appreciation Week. 

But she’s got some other ways that we can showcase teachers and share appreciation for them all year long. I would love for you to really tune into how you can retain teachers throughout the year and really build into your teacher relationships through her four quadrant method that she’s going to share. And then she’s got a really brilliant idea for how to get parents to help you show teacher appreciation throughout the year that I think you’re really going to love. I have never thought of this. When she brought it up, I was like, oh my gosh, how do we not all do this already? So I think this episode is going to really help all of us as we’re thinking about supporting one another. 

It’s not just for school leaders. As teachers ourselves, and as I think about this with my own team, I’m thinking about ways that I can be working on my relationship with my team members more consistently and showcase how I appreciate them on a daily basis. So I’m I think this episode is going to help all of us really work together to show all of our team members and our peers and our colleagues just how much they mean to us, because I think gratitude goes a long way for everyone. So without further ado, here’s Kathleen. 

All right, welcome, Kathleen. I’m so excited that you’re able to join us today. 

Thank you for having me. I’m very excited. 

Of course, of course. So for people who may not be familiar with you and your work, 

Can you give us an overview of your background and why you moved into school leadership?

I started out my career as a history teacher and a softball coach and slowly just kind of I became the girls athletic coordinator. And my principal, Kathleen Richardson, she’s like, I need you to start working on your master’s in administration. I’m like, I do not want to be a building principal. I’m good. And she had me start subbing for one of the APs and doing discipline because I just had this way with the kids. They would listen to me, our typical like runners, because we’re at an inner city school in Fort Worth ISD. And so the kids that would literally run from administrators, if I showed up, they would stop. 

And so she’s like, no, you really need to do this. You need to do this. And it took 10 and a half years to get my first, my four year degree. And so I was like, I do not want to go back to school. And I finally did. And I busted out my master’s in one year. And yes, during varsity softball season, ball making playoffs. So my husband’s like, you are not getting a doctorate. And then Ms. Richardson kept pushing me and stuff. I went into school administration, was an assistant principal for four years, then moved to another district as an associate. and then i was a middle school principal for 10 years. And that’s kind of where a lot of my ideas and i just always knew even as a softball coach, you had to appreciate those that were helping you or different things like that. 

And I always went above and beyond. Like in my book, I tell a story about Mark, one of the guys that works on sprinklers and the relationship i had with him and how the baseball coach, if i could text him and he come fix something on my campus, But the baseball coach had a work order in for like three months and he had a big tournament coming. But he didn’t have that relationship. He didn’t show that appreciation to them. And I noticed that in many aspects of when I was a coach and the guys that worked on my lawnmower, the guys that got the graffiti off my softball field, you know, all of that. And I took that with me into leadership. And then when I became a building principal, the first day I met with my secretary, I go, OK, how much money do we have that I can spend on teachers and what can I do with it? And my very first day, what can I do? Because I knew I’ve got to really love on those teachers to get them to take the campus in the direction that I wanted to go. And so that’s kind of just how it all just kind of got rolling together. Yeah. 

And so now. You have a book out called School Transformation Through Teacher Appreciation. Right. And it’s all about these strategies and tools that you’ve developed over the years for teacher appreciation. 

Right. Yes. There’s a little over 130 strategies in it and it’s it’s in three parts. 

So the first part is really about getting going, the transformation. ways that I appreciated the teachers to get them to the point where we were doing teacher on teacher walkthroughs when I left my campus, about 3,000 a year. The teachers were videoing lessons and watching them as a department for the other teachers to help coach that teacher on how to improve that lesson. And it was a baby step process through a teacher appreciation that got us there. Then part two is momentum, how things to keep it going, how to grab teacher’s voice, how to support And if you really don’t want any of that and you just want ideas of how to recognize and appreciate them, part three is just full of ideas. 

Just simple little ideas that you can do to help teachers know how much you appreciate and love them. 

And I actually really love the first part because as an arts integration specialist, something that we really promote a lot is peer-on-peer observation. I think it’s important because sometimes with administrators coming in and watching, it can be nerve-wracking. And then just having a peer do it can oftentimes lower that risk factor. But being able to do that through appreciation and having each other’s back, as you will, and having that section in there, being able to observe each other and providing those ideas, I think that’s so valuable. And so your take on that through the appreciation lens, I think… is fantastic. I don’t think it’s something that many people do and i think it’s um i think it’s innovative right well thank you. 

Yes, it’s, and it’s, it’s a baby step process on that because when, when teachers first go in and start doing it, it’s like they wanted the feedback and the administrators just can’t get there as much. And, um, so teachers, when they would first go in, they were told if you did two this week, you got genes for a few days. So that’s how we started. And then we built it into our professional development calendar. But they would just say, great job. Good job. I like this. And so, you know, you’ve got to actually coach them through and take them through. And where we landed was this is what I liked that I saw. This is how I could use it in my classroom. 

And here’s some other opportunities. And those were the three questions when they would go in that they would do every time. And it was a QR code. The teachers would fill it out. And when they submit, both the observer and the teacher were sent a PDF of it. And they had it and just were able to reflect back on it. But it is a process because when you first do it, they’re going to be nervous and they’re not going to know constructive feedback to be able to give to a teacher to help them grow. So you really do have to walk them through it. It was probably about a four-year evolution for us. Wow. Wow. But I mean, what a great transformational process for teachers and for everybody to learn how to do that. 

Right. Because we can give feedback to students all day long. Right. We’re used to that. But doing it with a colleague is different. And so being able to be empowered to do so, that’s a great leadership opportunity for everyone on campus. So it is a teacher who wants that feedback. They want it. Absolutely. Absolutely. 

So now as a school leader who is passionate, passionate about teacher appreciation and sharing that. Why do you feel that teachers are so underappreciated right now? And what are some strategies that other school leaders can use to turn that around? 

It’s going to sound weird, but for about six weeks in COVID, we had this sweet spot where everybody was like, oh my gosh, I could never be a teacher. 

How do they do it all? I mean, it’s you had that sweet spot and then social media just ramped it the other direction. Yeah. And so I think that they got a glimpse of what it really takes to go day in and day out to to be a teacher. But now with the social media aspect and people are so negative and what I noticed as a building principal is, There used to be a thing that you spend 95% of your time with 5% of the kids. And I think that’s probably about 10% now. It’s kind of upped a little bit for being realistic. But those 95 or that 90% of the parents, they don’t reach out to the school, but they love the school. 

They love the teachers. They love everything. And it’s, you know, how can you get them to start giving the praises to the teachers that they need? Because all we hear is that negative 10%. And that’s all the teachers here. That’s the only emails the principal gets. That’s the only emails the superintendent gets. And so what ways can we put out there for those parents? I ran across a district and I’m sorry, if I thought about sharing this, I would have done it sooner. I would have looked it up. But there was a district that on their front page website, they had a comments, a positive comments link is what it was called. Just right there. And you just you click it and you put a positive comment. 

And I thought that is so brilliant. Why not as a middle school principal, as we’re waiting for the basketball game to start, parents go to the website. We’d like each parent to do one positive comment about staff member while we’re waiting for the teams to warm up today. And, you know, just finding ways to bring those parents that love it and let them show it, because it’s really not everybody. It’s that five to 10 percent. but how do we get that other 90 to out voice that 10 is the challenge 

That is so good and i’m thinking like you know when we’re when we go to our favorite restaurant right and you have a really good experience it’s so easy right they give you a qr code or something that it makes it easy to do a yelp review that you just five stars great experience it’s something simple right.

But you get a nice little reward for it and maybe an incentive program for parents that I don’t know if there’s some sort of a way that we could embrace having parents come in or if there’s some sort of way that we could incentivize that like restaurants do or that others places do. That would be a really fun way to kind of rethink how to bring our parents in as a way to help. provide that positive feedback for our teachers, but I’ve never thought of that. That is a wonderful opportunity to engage our parents who, you’re right, they do love our schools and they don’t necessarily get activated in that way. The parents who are the squeaky wheels usually get the grease, right? 

So how do we activate our positive parents? That is a wonderful opportunity.

That’s great. So, gosh, you’re full of great ideas. Wonderful. So Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up as of this time of recording. I think it’ll be probably two or three weeks out at the time of this recording. So obviously, teacher appreciation is something we should do long term. And I want to get to that in a moment. But for those who are thinking about Teacher Appreciation Week itself, obviously, we’re you know, principals think about this and they’re like, okay, what can I do for my staff that week? And they’re thinking about maybe some special days that they could set aside. What would have been some of your favorite ways that you have celebrated teachers during that week that maybe you could share? 

One of the fun things to do is dress up themes. But it’s got to be themes the teachers like. It can’t be superhero day. Right. Because the teachers might feel obligated to go buy a superhero shirt. So in other words, have a couple of PJ days because they all love to wear their PJs. Two years ago, I’m a middle school principal. So I did dress like a student day. Just thinking, let’s see what happens. Oh my gosh, the staff loved it. I heard stories about my staff renting Crocs from students. And they showed up in leggings. and hoodies up with one air pod in and I mean, with Crocs. And it’s, I mean, we took a picture out in front of the school. 

It’s the staff loved it so much. So are there little fun things you can do that way? Recently in my news is my March newsletter. I do a newsletter that’s free on my website. I told, I told administrators something to think about that I always do. As I start around November, December, and I have my office staff start calling businesses, hey, can you donate something for Teacher Appreciation Week coming up? And they just, when they have their downtime throughout about four or five months, they just start making phone calls. And every year, I have a staff about 120. Every year, by the time the week got here, we would have enough that we would be able to do drawings and every teacher by the end of the week would get something. 

And so we would put all the staff names in a bowl and periodically go on the PA and just call teachers names out. And you’d hear the kids cheering when names got called. And nobody would know that by the end of the week, everybody got something. They would just get all excited. So little things like that that don’t cost anything you can do. If you’re struggling for money, there are ideas and ways you can do meaningful gifts to teachers. They don’t want a school blanket. You know, that’s sweet, but they don’t want a blanket. They want something meaningful, thoughtful. I was talking to a principal the other day that’s like, I’ve got about $15 a staff member that I can spend. What could I get? 

I go, why don’t you put out a Google form that says, hey, what’s your favorite candy? What’s your favorite pin? What’s your favorite this? And make them a personalized little bag with about $10, $15 worth of stuff in it. They would rather have that than a school blanket because you took the time and the thought to give them their junior mints and their flare pins that they like. So make it meaningful. What can you do to make the school gift meaningful? Yes. Absolutely. And being personal with it and finding that information out. Right. So it takes a little bit of extra time, but that extra time is what makes it meaningful for those teachers. 

So that’s going to take me to my next question, which is about teacher retention, because this is something that we’re facing right now that I don’t know that it’s going away anytime soon, right? 

So we’re talking about short-term appreciation with teacher appreciation, but when we’re looking at long-term appreciation, that’s really what is going to drive teacher retention, right? 

So knowing that you’re appreciated more than just one week a year. So how do you recommend that administrators show that authentic appreciation so that it’s more than just one week or more than just one bag of a personalized set of studies, which is wonderful, but how do we do this long-term? It’s like anything, you need to plan it out. You are never going to be able to authentically show appreciation to your staff on the fly. And so when principals are working in the summer, plan it out, plan it out by month and get the plan in place, decide who’s going to be in charge of this, who, what are the supplies, get it all ready to go. 

Cause when the school year starts, you’re moving and hustling and you’re going to forget. And this is the one thing that really needs to be your top priority as you move into a school year. And I like to, I’ve started working with districts and I like to break it into four components. And so, um, How are you showing support for your teachers? So support. How are you giving them voice? How are you having fun? And how are you recognizing and appreciating them? And I tell school administrators, you need to do one thing per month from all four of these. What are you doing? How are you planning this and building this out as you go along? Something for teacher voice could be your end of year teacher survey that you do. 

Getting teacher voice, like as a school administrator, there are hundreds of little decisions that we have to make all the time that we no more care what the outcome is. We just need the answer and let’s go. Let’s get the plan. For instance, an early release day at middle school. Do we want to go to all eight classes or do we want to just go to four? I don’t care. I don’t have, I’m not a teacher. I don’t have the horse in that race. I mean, it’s kind of, that’s the teacher’s. So I would put it up to the staff and the faculty, me, hey, we need to vote real quick. What are we doing? 

Teachers vote, share it out. Hey, 85% of y’all said, let’s go to just four. 15% said this, we’re going to this. Boom, we’re done. They made the decision. They had the voice and you share the results with them. And it’s a very minor decision. But as you’re giving them more and more of those minor decisions, they feel like they have a voice in the school. So planning out, how to give them voice, planning out how to support them, things that you can support them with, planning out how to have fun and stuff and planning out how to appreciate them. And if you plan, do a little something every month of all of them, those teachers are going to want to stay with you. They’re going to stay with you. They’re going to want it. I mean, when I have teachers leave, it’s a tearful thing. 

They cry. I cry. We’re like, Oh, you know, and they’re like, but my husband’s job moved three hours away. And, You know, I had a teacher that commuted an hour and a half when her husband’s job moved, an hour and a half to keep coming to work with me. And I had to sit her down and say, honey, this principal in this district’s looking for a math teacher and you’re amazing and we need to start talking about your family. And, you know, giving her that support and saying, it’s time, you’ve got to do this. Because once you actually give them all those support pieces and you plan it out and you’re thoughtful about it, they don’t want to leave you and they are your best recruiters. 

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Just the other day, I was watching another principal’s Instagram and I would love your take on this. His take on teacher retention is that the administrator’s job is to be the customer support person for the educators in the building. It’s not your job to be the necessarily to think of yourself as above the teachers in the leadership role, the traditional leadership role, your job is to be customer support. So whatever that teacher needs, if they need a bathroom break, your job is to be there to give them that bathroom break. And no job is too small for you to attend to whatever that educator needs. What do you think about that?

I think that’s spot on. And I would add to it by saying, as a school administrator, you cannot override your teacher to the parent. And something I share in some of my PDs, an example is when you sit down with those parents and that teacher to work out whatever’s going on, you’ve got to have that teacher’s back. OK, now teachers are human and they’re going to make mistakes. So before you go into that, if you’ve done your research and you realize, OK, your teacher messed up. So what you do is you sit down with the teacher beforehand and And you’re like, OK, guess what? You kind of messed up on this one. So how are we going to fix it? And so what I like to do is sit down. We work out a plan of this is this is the compromise and the teacher helps create that. 

And then I tell the teacher, OK, when I put my pen down, that’s the signal that you make the suggestion. OK, but if I don’t put my pen down, don’t make the suggestion. Let’s see if we can. Let’s see. Let’s see if we can work through this without using that. But if I put my pen down, you offer out that suggestion. And then when the teacher does offer that suggestion, then I’m over there going, you sure you want to do that? You know, you don’t have to. Wow, that’s awfully nice of you because I don’t know if I would do that as a teacher. And then you start making them, putting them on this pedestal in front of the parents. 

And at the end of the day, you’ve worked out the issue. The teacher was wrong. You fixed it. you’re back on the right track, but that teacher’s made out to be a saint because they suggested it. And you’re like i don’t you sure you want you know, you’re just kind of like, oh, you don’t have to do that. And the parent doesn’t see an administrator is overriding that teacher. Right. And that is critical. Parents cannot think if they go to the principal or the school leader, they’re going to get their way. They’re going to get what they want from the teacher. And so it’s just you’ve just got to figure out how to support them and to be there for them. Yeah, I think I’ve chased a squirrel. 

No, but I think I think that’s so important. I think so many teachers need to hear that and understand that that there are leaders who understand that perspective and will support them because that’s that’s a tricky spot. And many administrators don’t know how to do that well and through no fault of their own. Right. Because that’s not taught in an admin school. Having been in admin school, having been in admin school with yourself, you know, they don’t teach you that. They should. That’s not something they teach, though. That’s just practical experience. And so that’s just something that you learn over time. And so having people say that and learn that is really important. I think that’s something that’s great to share. So before we head out, though, I do want to talk about when administrators bring new initiatives to schools because… 

One of the things that we focus on with teachers and administrators is bringing in arts integration and bringing in creativity. And sometimes that is seen as certainly a new initiative, right? And we get pushback in terms of that’s something that’s totally new and I don’t know if I can add it to my plate. And so how do you introduce new initiatives when it’s something that you’re passionate about, but the teachers might feel maybe some resistance to it? How would you go about doing that in terms of helping them understand that this is something that we can do together and not see it as something as me versus them? 

When I think about new initiatives, there’s two different types of initiatives. There’s those that the principal’s passionate about, and there’s those that the district says you must. 

And so for the ones that you’re passionate about, I guess I’m better with giving examples. So we wanted to, I had some teachers that wanted to do a one day community service project where all 1300 of my middle school kids did community service one day. And then school nearest was doing it. We went to a conference in D.C. and a school from North Carolina was sharing how instead of final exams the whole last week of school, they do nothing but community service projects. and each teacher does a project and they get kids that weren’t even in their class. The kids sign up for them, all this stuff. And we’re sitting in the conference and one of the teachers goes, we don’t need to do what we’re talking about. 

We need to do this. And I was like, okay. So I went back and i started talking to some people and i’m like, well, here’s what we need to do. I got with community business leaders that i would eventually want to help support the projects. And they gave me the money to send six teachers to North Carolina to spend a week seeing that. I did not go because I didn’t want this to come back and be Kathleen Eckert’s thing. And so six teachers went and watched it and they brought it back to the campus. So they had the passion. They had that this is how we’re going to do it. They became what I refer to as my masterminds for these projects. And it was great. Never, I’m telling you, we did this like six, seven years and never once had a complaint. And teachers were having to find outside companies to work with and different things, but it was their favorite thing of the year, every year. So get teachers to be the ones that sell it, not the administrators you know when you have to do something, um, we had something called units of study. It was, we’re told you were, it is all in, this is what you’re doing. And I sat and I had to tell my teachers, here’s the thing. We’ve been asked by the district to be all in and to follow this exact. We’re going to do that. Now, here’s what I am going to give you. 

We’re going to talk through the issues that you’re having. I created a Google sheet where they could go in and they could, as they’re hitting units, they could type what they don’t agree with. Sometimes we’d look back on it. Sometimes it would be notes as we got into the next year. but giving them that outlet to vent. And when I would sit in and I would look at it, I would start saying, is there something I can be doing on the backside to help with it? So they may not have agreed with what we were doing, but I still gave them that voice and they knew it was in a non-punitive way and that I wasn’t going to share the sheet with the district and say, well, look what so-and-so said. 

But I would go to the district and say, okay, I’ve got a teacher that’s got this concern about this unit. What can we do? And start working through it. So even if it’s a must do thing, how can you give your teachers a safe voice, not just a voice, but a safe and secure voice to work through things? Because even if they don’t agree, if they’re able to talk through and work through it, eventually they’re going to come on board because they’ve got the voice and the say. So it really depends on what’s going on. Yeah. There’s multiple ways.

I was going to say, and, The fact that you were able to do that in a Google sheet, that is a testament to your staff’s trust in you, that you would keep that private. 

Many others would, I would recommend that it’s an anonymous share, some sort of, as you said, safe spot where teachers are going to know that it’s not punitive at all and that it is anonymous kind of feedback. 

The bad thing about the anonymous though, is if you’ve got a question about something that says you can’t follow up, Right. And that’s what I’ve told my staff. We do like I would do anonymous one month. Is there anything you need, Ms. Eckert, to know or work on? At the end, every faculty meeting, they had that question. One month it’s anonymous, one month it’s not. And I rotated because I told them I need to know who so I can come back to you. So once I follow up with you, but two, if I have questions and over time that trust got built in. 

Yes. Yes. And so when we do stuff like that, they now trust me that I’m not going to cut them off at the knees because they looked at me cross-eyed and we’re all good. 

Yes. Well, and as I said, that’s, again, that’s a testament to you and you’re building relationships and trust with your staff. And I think as we wrap up the episode, I think that is the core of what everything that you’ve shared is the building of relationships. I think it all comes down to that. Whether it’s about appreciation or building a new initiative or strategies for building relationships with others, it’s all about having each other’s back and building those strong relationships and having a way to do so consistently with others through respect. 

That word consistently, that’s the vital word in what you said because We may know that this teacher has two kids and this kid plays soccer. But how are you building that relationship consistently? Just knowing that doesn’t do it. When you’re making your rounds through the school before after school, are you, hey, how’s Susie’s soccer game going? Or how’s this going? How are you continually coming in? Yes. And building that behind the scenes. Yes, absolutely. 

Oh, Kathleen, it was wonderful speaking with you today. 

Thank you for having me. Absolutely.

So where can people learn more about you and get in touch? Because I know that they’re going to want to. 

My website is Kathleen Eckert dot com. And it’s all there. And there’s links to the book. 

I do try to do a monthly newsletter that’s completely free. You can sign up for it. But all my past newsletters are up there. Different presentations and workshops I do are posted on there as well. And some other resources for people that I’ve worked with in the past, you know, like ones about school mental health and just stuff like that. It’s so everything and anything you could think of is on my website.

Wonderful. We will post that in the show notes as well. So everybody can go back to that as they listen to the episode. Thank you so much, Kathleen. It was wonderful to speak with you today. 

Thank you very much I do appreciate you having me.