Theories and Concepts in HR Management

All school administrators are human resource leaders because they work with and make decisions about people. When we look at school budgets personnel costs vary from 50% to 80%. As we, the school leaders, spend most of our resources on human resources, we also spend most of our time with the adults in a school building. I look at the principal position as coaching. In sports terms, the principal is the coach and teachers are the players. The coach’s job is to observe the players while playing and give them feedback to improve their individual performance along with the team’s performance. The coach does not play but observe. The coach is where the game is being played. And the coach understands the game.

What Does it Take to Retain Good Teachers?

Studies have shown that good teachers can improve student achievement by as much as an extra grade level during a school year. In the previous blog we talked about what principals should look for in teachers. Spotting and hiring good teachers is a challenge for principals. What is more challenging is how to keep them.

Martin Haberman of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has developed an interview designed to identify effective urban teachers. The Haberman Urban Teacher Selection Interview has been used to hire 30,000 teachers in 160 cities, and Haberman says that follow-up studies suggest these hires have performed at least as well as other teachers and remain in the profession longer.

What to Look for in Teachers?

Good teachers are key to school success. Students spend most of their time with the teachers in the classroom. There are studies that show the detrimental impact of having a bad teacher on students. In the mean time, we all remember that good teacher who had a life long influence on us. 

Effective principals know this as a fact and spend a lot of time in selecting the best teachers possible. It also takes a seasoned principal to identify good teachers and those candidates with potential to be a good teacher. What should a principal look for in a teacher? Here is a list of characteristics that good teachers have in common based on research. McREL researcher Bryan Goodwin identifies them in a 2010 Educational Leadership article.

"Cages of Their Own Design" by Frederic Hess

Principals, particularly in charter schools, think that they are or will be hamstrung by union contracts, policies, and regulations as the conventional wisdom suggests. However, American Enterprise Institute education director Frederick Hess suggests differently in a 2009 article in Educational Leadership.

 

Hess believes that many school leaders are afflicted by “debilitating timidity” that makes them “tepid agents of change.” Principals and superintendents should boldly take advantage of the power they have, says Hess. He describes how principals can do that:

A Major Element in Human Resources: Negotiation. What Can We Learn From the U.S. Army About Negotiation?

Conflict is inevitable in democratic organizations due to divergent views of individuals. Conflict takes place between individuals or groups and arises from disagreements regarding values, responsibilities, and ways of doing things, as well as from competition for scarce resources.

“Negotiation is the most widely used means for settling conflict in organizations and is the least costly in terms of time and money.” (Seyfarth, 252) Simple conflicts could be resolved through negotiations. In their efforts to resolve conflicts with and between teachers, and parents, school leaders negotiate almost every day. They have to be skillful negotiators so they can resolve conflicts relatively quickly to maintain a positive, productive, and vibrant environment.

Effective Teacher Induction Programs

Kenneth Wilson, a Nobel-laureate physicist at The Ohio State University, co-author of Redesigning Education uses the analogy of climbing a mountain when describing what teaching means for new teachers. “There are two ways to get into it,” observes Kenneth Wilson, “You could take a practice run with somebody who has lots of experience and the ability to share it. The other way is to be taken to the base of Everest, dropped off, and told to get to the top or quit. If you don’t make it, your enthusiasm disappears, and you seek ways to avoid similar challenges in the future.” (1)

Effective Principal

“Producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect: impressive, striking: ready for service or action: actual: being in effect: operative. This is how Merriam- Webster defines the highly-sought adjective in today’s world, “effective.” Another dictionary defines it as “adequate to accomplish a purpose; producing the intended or expected result.” However, when this mighty adjective is put before “principal” or “school leader” it encompasses more than its explicit meaning in the dictionary.  

“The intended or expected results” of business is to make money. Neither business nor leaders of such business would be called effective if there is no profit involved. One would not call his/her car “an effective way of transportation” if it is not moving, hence not serving its intended or expected result.