How Was Your Day at School?: Improving Dialogue about Teacher Job Satisfaction

Addressing the alarmingly low rate of job retention in classroom education, this guide offers practical advice to administrators and teachers for avoiding teacher burnout and increasing teacher satisfaction and performance. Since the quality of the classroom teacher is the single most important factor in predicting student success, retention of high-quality teachers is essential to student achievement. This discourse affirms that systemic change can be achieved by applying the strength-based approach of Developmental Assets® to the teacher-administrator relationship, and demonstrates the parallels between a nurturing environment for students and a nurturing environment for teachers. The common adversarial teacher-administrator dichotomy is abandoned in favor of multiple levels of accountability and change, and mutual goals for individual teachers and administrators are advanced. When every stakeholder in the school environment sees teacher job satisfaction as a win-win situation resulting in retention and higher student achievement, staff, students, and administrators can work together to build great places to teach and learn.