by Dan Gehrke
When my ten-year old son was six, my wife and I signed him up for karate at the local recreation center. Weekly he would join around twelve other six-year olds and his teacher would put them through all sorts of drills and discipline exercises. We sat in the “parent gallery” and watched. His karate teacher was a joy to watch. She had an innate ability to control an entire room full of little boys and get them to do exactly what she wanted. She moved about the room effortlessly, critiquing their form, encouraging their efforts, and bringing them back in line when needed. My son loved it. I only asked my wife one time, “What is karate costing us?” It is not a coincidence that was the week the instructor was out of town, and he had a substitute instructor who wasn’t quite as good.
I tell this story often when I address prospective parents at open houses and other admissions events. The point I make to parents is that they “know good teaching when they see it.” I really believe that they do. They are “gallery parents” who have been watching every interaction adults have had with their kids since birth. Great instructors, coaches, leaders, and teachers develop almost a cult-like following around their innate ability to “teach.” Talent whisperers (those that bring out the best in people) are consistently in demand. (Read The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.) I think our schools underestimate just how much talent whisperers are actually in demand and how much people will pay for them.
A few years back our admissions team developed a messaging plan to combat the growing number of educational options in the Parker area—specifically the news of a charter high school opening soon near our campus. Focus groups, surveys, and interviews all nudged us toward the same thing: we needed to move “teacher talent” to a core value. I felt like our staff was good enough overall that we could do this. Who we would be going forward was a highly relational Christian high school that surrounded our students with talented teachers and coaches. Sure, this was always the goal, but now the stakes were higher in outright saying it. Although every Lutheran high school I know talks about how great their teachers are, this was ramped up to a different level.
If a school preaches teacher talent as a core value, two things need to be true:
1) The teachers in your building actually have to be talented (people can’t be rolling their eyes when they hear one of your core values).
2) It has to be shown to the parent gallery.
I’m going to skip right past #1. This isn’t an article about “hiring.” If the leader knows instinctively that his/her staff is average, this article should be filed away and revisited two years from now after #1 is fixed. But, if talent-whisperers are present, I believe that any school can “sell them” for little to no cost. Here are some suggestions:
Tell the public that your teachers are better. Don’t be shy about it. Tell prospective parents that you believe that your teachers are worth paying money for their kids to be around every day. Stand up at open houses and tell the community that you have something that no one else has: highly relational Christian teachers that are worth the price of admission due to how good they are in the classroom.
Most parents ask about teaching certificates and master’s degrees because they don’t know how else to judge good teaching from afar. So bring them closer and redefine the narrative! Put your teachers on display. Be willing to set up a parent gallery in every classroom if need be. At Lutheran High School in Parker, we have a standing invite to prospective parents to view any class they want. We are happy to allow prospective parents to watch our people work. (On a side note, we’ve found that parents in our area usually want to view a theology class.) (On another side note, truly talented teachers don’t object to a gallery.)
Be a pioneer in promoting your best teachers. Film a classroom lecture and market the highlights. Showcase their abilities with testimonials from current students, alumni, and parents. Write blog posts about the new and innovative things that are being tried in their classrooms. If you are walking through the building and see a great lesson at work, spontaneously film it and get it on Instagram. Make people believe that something is going on in your classrooms right now that they are missing out on.
Use your teachers’ student evaluations in your marketing materials. If you have teachers who consistently rank high on their student evaluations, selectively use those results to make your point. For example, if 95%+ of all the students in your school “strongly agree” that their teachers “return graded tests and homework in a timely fashion,” SELL IT. Many parents simply want the little organizational aspects of teaching to be done well.
Talk about your hiring systems and how you get your talent-whisperers. We do several public Q and A’s with prospective parents during the year, and I always get asked: Where do you find your teachers? Be ready to give an answer that impresses and shows process, diligence, and an edge over your competitors to get talent. For example, parents in our area seem to love knowing that we give a personality test all prospective teachers before they are hired to make sure they are a match for the things that we are asking them to do.
Share with prospective parents how your teachers are evaluated and guided by administration. Sometimes I tell potential customers that when I observe a teacher I need to think: “I would pay money to have this person teach my kid.” Be frank about how swiftly you’ve acted in the past to remove or reassign under-performing teachers. I openly tell parents that hiring, evaluation, and growth are the most important things that we as administrators work on during the year.
No doubt other ideas exist as well to sell your school by selling your people. The good news is that in the competitive landscape of high school education, this is an area that can be won with enough hard work, effort, and creativity. It places larger non-personnel budget items in a place of secondary importance. After all, great facilities aren’t worth a thing if the adults working in them aren’t any good at their jobs. Technology is really only useful when utilized by rockstar teachers. AP classes are great to have unless the teacher is mediocre, then it’s just a really difficult independent study. A class of twenty-five students with a great teacher beats a class of twelve with a poor teacher every day of the week.
Today’s gallery parents are absolutely thirsting for great teachers and coaches. If your school has them, let the whole world know about it. Your enrollment numbers will thank you for it.
Dan Gehrke is the Executive Director at Lutheran High School in Parker, Colorado and can be reached at dan.gehrke@lhsparker.org.