I recently read an essay from an education professor exploring whether young people still consider teaching a desirable career. The researcher’s account of high schoolers’ skepticism struck a nerve with me. Not because the concerns the essay raised about workload, stress, and respect are untrue. They are real. It struck a nerve because I felt compelled to be a voice for the educators and young people who still believe deeply in this profession and in what it can be.
Rather than simply defend teaching, I want to ask a more practical question: What can school leaders do right now to help make teaching a profession talented people want to enter and stay in?
As a high school principal, I believe the answer begins with support: not support as a slogan but support as a leadership practice.
In this biweekly column, principals and other authorities on school leadership—including researchers, education professors, district administrators, and assistant principals—offer timely and timeless advice for their peers.
While we cannot control every condition affecting the profession, principals influence many of the daily experiences that shape whether teaching feels sustainable or draining. Our actions directly impact the retention of our teachers. Here are three places to begin providing that much needed support:
1. Protect teachers’ time.
When teachers talk about support, they often begin with time. Teachers need time to plan well, collaborate meaningfully, and think deeply about their craft. Yet, planning periods are often the first casualty of good intentions. They get filled with meetings, added responsibilities, or one more initiative layered onto already full plates.
Early in my principalship, I sometimes mistook access to teachers’ planning time as flexibility in the schedule. Experience taught me otherwise. Principals should view planning time as a working condition, not a scheduling convenience.
That also means being willing to practice what leadership coach, former principal, and my fellow EdWeek Opinion contributor Peter DeWitt has called “de-implementation”: removing outdated or less effective expectations when introducing new responsibilities, rather than simply adding more to teachers’ plates.
Our calendars reveal what we value. At my school, that has sometimes meant asking a simple question: Is this faculty meeting necessary, or can the information be shared another way? This school year, in November and again in March, I canceled faculty meetings because the content could be communicated by email instead. The subject line read: “Stuff you can just read.”
It was a small move, but it communicated something larger: “Your work matters, and your time matters.” That message builds trust, and trust supports retention.
2. Reduce isolation.
Teaching has always been demanding. It becomes far more difficult when it feels solitary. New teachers especially should not have to navigate complex classrooms, student needs, and school systems alone.
Support must be structured. At times, that structure can be formal, like mentoring, common planning, and strategic use of support personnel. At other times, it can be relational.
In my own practice, I have tried to reduce isolation through small but intentional acts: checking in with new teachers, writing notes of encouragement by hand, or ensuring they have trusted colleagues to turn to when the work gets hard.
As I have argued in prior writing on school culture, people thrive in environments where they experience belonging, trust, and shared responsibility.
3. Make the work feel shared.
One reason teachers burn out is not simply the volume of responsibility but the feeling that they carry it alone. School leaders can change that. In my own leadership, making work feel shared has often meant approaching difficult problems as something to solve with others, not for others.
This year, when we sought to strengthen support for students taking a standardized proficiency assessment for English learners, the work did not begin with a directive. It began with collaboration. Alongside the chair of my school’s multilingual learners department, an assistant principal, and central-office colleagues, we developed new strategies together, including holding a pep rally that helped students understand the importance of the assessment and feel encouraged going into it. This created a sense of shared ownership.
People are less burdened by decisions they help shape and will often be more likely to invest. When principals solve problems alongside staff, listen carefully to concerns, and visibly share responsibility for the hard parts of the work, teachers feel supported, not managed.
Leadership is not simply asking people to do difficult work. It is helping make difficult work feel possible. And when teachers believe challenges are shared, the weight of those challenges often feels lighter.
We often speak of retaining teachers as though it begins with persuading people to stay. I believe it begins much earlier, by creating schools where talented educators intrinsically want to remain. Protecting time, reducing isolation, and sharing responsibility may seem like ordinary leadership choices. They are not. They are culture-shaping decisions and they are well within a principal’s reach.
