Reflection 1

Grant Sterling would recruit and retain teachers in various ways. I think he retains teachers based on his excellent leadership abilities. As he said while answering a college student’s question, “…employees and students look forward to coming to the workplace each day; the environment is inviting, secure, happy, and physically comfortable…Teachers teach well and feel a sense of pride in their work and accomplishments” (92). When you have an ability to create a work environment like that for your staff, in any industry, you will have minimal turnover. People feel appreciated, safe and feel like they are making a difference in Grant’s schools that is why they stay. I do not remember too much in the way of recruitment that he did beyond all of his contacts with central office, which is very important. Networking is going to continue to be important in education. It is good to have business cards and talk with people at every conference or workshop you attend. I believe Grant is an excellent people person and would use his many connections to find qualified people if he had not already met them himself. On the same hand, once you have a team in place you like, if your retention is high your need to recruit is minimal.
Recruitment and retention of quality faculty members is a very large part of student success. I currently teach at a very low-socioeconomic charter school that will have an entirely new leadership team next year (again) and no teachers with more than five years experience. This has allowed me to grow quickly in terms of responsibilities that I would not have if I had been working at a typical ISD school, however, the students are the ones that suffer in this situation. Most teachers, especially those who have done alternative certification with no student teaching, face a good size learning curve their first year (or two). If they stayed, the school and students would eventually reap the benefits of waiting. However, most leave to go somewhere else or decide education is not the field for them. Students are constantly coming back to school in the fall to look at an entirely different set of teachers than what they left just a few months earlier at the start of summer. Students lose on two ends. One, they are getting very limited experience in a large amount of their classes. Two, they are not able to create lasting bonds with very many of their teachers. At the small school, some of the students will have teachers from year to year and it really helps in developing relationships. Good teachers make the difference.
Grant learned about school climate in a variety of ways, which I think is necessary if you hope to get an accurate read of a campus. He spoke with people from district office, teachers, custodial staff, parents, community members and students – all before the first day of school. He made a very strong effort to have an open door policy so that he could develop each of those relationships. Grant understood the key to success is relationships, with everybody from the Superintendent down to the students.
The biggest technique I need to learn from Grant is what I guess I would call assertiveness. Even though he does not always feel it, especially at first, he can portray a very strong and confident person. I know I could have dealt with the former custodian at Central and Pastor Lewis, but I do not know if I could have done it in the fashion that he did. I was very envious of his finesse and coolness with those situations. I also have had the feelings he described when afterwards he was having trouble calming back down and relaxing. Obviously the situation with the man with the gun falls into this category as well. I’m afraid I would have trouble thinking straight in a situation like that. He keeps his cool very well, I’m thinking of many interactions with troubled teachers, angry parents and so forth where he remained very calm but was also very firm. That is probably the one I need to apply the most.
I actually have trouble finding a trait I do not want. I think in today’s day and age a lot of the things he did run more of a risk now than they did back in the time he did them. It is a delicate balance of going ‘the extra mile’ and crossing the line in a relationship where you can get in trouble. For example, a lot of my students walk to school and while I think it would be nice to give them a ride in that puts me in a bad situation for either talk or if I were to have an accident. All of his risks with students worked out, but if one of them didn’t, such as the student working on his car, he could have lost his certificate or even gone to jail.