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Teacher Retention in a Teacher Resiliency-Building Rural School

Rural Educator, The, Winter 2007 by Malloy, William W, Allen, Tawannah

This article focuses on the challenge of teacher retention in rural schools in relation to the No Child Left Behind mandate, that school districts must attract and retain highly qualified teachers. This case study examines the extent to which a rural school enhanced teacher retention by overcoming the barriers that might otherwise have presented a challenge to teacher retention. Findings from this study suggest that the nurturing the nurturers concept, inherent in teacher resiliency-building schools, enhances teacher retention strategies.

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Controversy continues to swirl over the impact of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act 200!(Linn, R. L., Baker, E. L., & Betebenner, N. W. 2002). One concern relates to the implications of the Act's emphasis on the achievement gap between majority and minority students, which continues to marginalize the minority students. Additionally, there are concerns related to the issue of how high and low wealth school districts will implement certain aspects of the act (i.e., school choice). Perhaps one of the greatest concerns relates to school districts' ability to attract and retain the highly qualified teachers needed to meet the letter of the act. This case study focuses on the latter concern related to successful teacher retention in a rural K-8 teacher resiliencybuilding school in an era of high stakes accountability, in the year 2004 (Carter, 2003).

Most of the focus on resiliency and education has been on developing or sustaining protective factors that impact student resiliency (Henderson & Milstein, 2003). Resiliency is defined as the ability to bounce back successfully despite exposure to severe risks (Krovetz, 1999). High expectations, meaningful participation, and caring are the most commonly referred to protective factors emerging from resiliency research..

Unfortunately, the student-centered focus of resiliency has overshadowed the importance of teacher resiliency. Thus, although a nurturing school climate has been acknowledged to reduce risk factors in the lives of children; what is far less acknowledged is that creating this climate for students necessitates creating this environment for all school personnel (Bernard, 1993). As Henderson and Milstein (2003) argue, "We need to promote a healthy, selfconfident, effective workforce if we expect educators to be willing and able to support the resiliency needs of students" (p.55).

Because rural districts experience difficulty in recruiting and retaining qualified teachers, scholars have suggested that an ideal recruitment and retention strategy would be to emphasize the benefits of rural schools, benefits such as, attractive class size, genuine personal relationships and a high degree of involvement in the decision making process (Lemke, 1994; Sargent, 2003). What is needed then is the identification of a recruitment and retention plan that contains components that can be readily applied to rural settings. Rosenholtz (1989) summarized the literature and supplied ten essential components of such a plan:

1. carefully selected initial assignments which avoid placing the new teacher in the most difficult schools nor with the most difficult situations

2. opportunities to participate in decision-making, coupled with autonomy in many classroom choices

3. clearly set administrative goals

4. regular, clear feedback and specific suggestions for improvement

5. encouragement from administrators and colleagues

6. a non-threatening environment which encourages questions

7. opportunities for discussion with experienced colleagues

8. encouragement to experiment and discuss the results with colleagues

9. clearly set school rules for student behavior

10. opportunities to interact with parents (Rosenholtz, 1989, pp. 436-437).

There are rural schools and school districts that employ one or more of these strategies to attract and retain teachers. Unfortunately, there appears to be no systematic effort to incorporate these strategies into a coherent plan. Consequently, it is difficult for districts or individual schools to articulate a sustained and coherent effort to maintain the "brightest and best" teachers. What we are suggesting is that a comprehensive retention strategy should employ a resiliency-building focus on nurturing the nurturers' concept (Henderson and Milstein, 2003).

Henderson and Milstein (2003) have developed a sixstep strategy that is needed to develop a resiliency-building school. This strategy is based upon a Resiliency Model (Richardson, Neiger, Jensen, & Kumpfer, 1990) that suggests that when an individual (adult or child) is confronted with adversity, he or she tends to draw upon protective factors to mitigate that adversity and to enable the individual to move forward. This six-step strategy to foster resiliency is divided into mitigating risk and building resiliency.

It has been the intent of the investigators to use the three steps in the building resiliency component to examine the extent to which a K-8 school has established a resiliencybuilding school culture. These steps are: providing caring and support, setting and communicating high expectations and providing opportunities for meaningful participation. The use of this strategy will enable the investigators to describe how one school has developed into a teacher resiliency-building school.

Teacher Retention in a Teacher Resiliency-Building Rural School

Rural Educator, The, Winter 2007 by Malloy, William W, Allen, Tawannah

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