By Amber Strong Makaiau, Ph.D.
To kick off the start of the new year and semester, I had the opportunity to participate on a speaker panel at the Hawaii Education Association’s annual summit held on Wednesday, January 8, 2025, 9:30 am – 1:30 pm at the downtown YWCA. The Hawaii Education Association (HEA) chose to focus this year’s educator summit on topics critical to the current moment: teacher recruitment and retention. While reporting from the start of the 2024-25 school year seemed to indicate that both recruitment of new teachers and retention of veteran teachers are improving in Hawaii because of a new contract from the teacher's union with greater pay incentives,” Civil Beat reporter Megan Tagami (2024) also explained: “Hawaii’s high cost of living and isolated location have made recruiting and retaining qualified teachers a long-term challenge for the state. The Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated the problem when thousands of Hawaii teachers left the classroom.” As a career educator myself, who earns considerably less compared to other professionals with similar education levels, I wholeheartedly agree that increasing teacher pay is a critical piece of the teacher recruitment and retention puzzle both here in Hawaii and beyond. I also wonder if a more progressive shift in the overall culture of the profession could create systems and structures for diverse, ongoing, and meaningful professional development that would better support educators in both joining and staying engaged in the vocation.
At the HEA summit, the title of our particular panel was Empowering Educators: How Quality Professional Development Fosters Retention and the Growth of Master Teachers. The moderator and fellow panelists included:
Moderator: Jonathan Medeiros, HEA Vice President, Teaching as a Career (TAAC) Club sponsor at Kauai High School, and teacher participant in Project Equal Access
Panelists:
Joan Lewis, Instructional Coach, Kapolei High School
RJ Rodriguez, Human Resources Officer, Hawaii Department of Education
Meredith Maeda, Mentor / Coach, Professional Development and Educational Research Institute, New Principal Academy
Dr. Amber Strong Makaiau, Professional Development Center Director, Hanahau‘oli School & UH Mānoa
Tracey Idica, Licensing Specialist, Hawaii Teachers Standard Board
Ms. Diane Gibson, IPD Specialist, Hawaii State Teachers Association
Among an array of important questions, I was asked: How can professional development address potential burnout or stagnation that teachers may experience in the later stages of their careers? My brief response in this time-restricted panel setting: (a) Create an occupational culture, including institutional structures and systems that create space for professional development as an integrated part of the job (instead of on top of the job). (b) Educate teachers on how to reflect and advocate for frequent, sustained, and cohesive opportunities for personal and professional growth across their teaching lifespan. (b) Apply progressive education principles to design, cultivate, and nurture meaningful professional development experiences. Here I offer additional insights into my proposals for actions school leaders can take to help educators stay invigorated and engaged in their important work.
Create an Occupational Culture with Structures and Systems that Make Space for Integrated Professional Development
As I’ve shared in previous blog posts, progressive educators have always framed the profession of teaching as both an art and a science. Never static, each of the profession’s key players – teachers themselves, children, and the world around us – are always changing. Therefore, to be an effective and impactful educator, teachers must always be learning. Lucy Sprague Mitchell founded the Bureau of Educational Experiments (1916) in the same year that John Dewey published Democracy and Education, with the objective of establishing a school that would cultivate educators who had the knowledge, skills and dispositions to sustain a career that required lifelong learning. She wrote:
Our aim is to turn out teachers whose attitude toward their work and toward life is scientific. To us, this means an attitude of eager, alert observation; a constant questioning of old procedure in the light of new observations; a use of the world, as well as of books, as source material; an experimental open-mindedness, and an effort to keep as reliable records as the situation permits, in order to base the future upon accurate knowledge of what has been done. Our aim is equally to turn out students whose attitude toward their work and towards life is that of the artist. To us, this means an attitude of relish, of emotional drive, a genuine participation in some creative phase of work, and a sense that joy and beauty are legitimate possessions of all human beings, young and old. If we can produce teachers with an experimental, critical, and ardent approach to their work, we are ready to leave the future of education to them (Mitchell, 1931, p. 251).
This philosophy of what it means to be a professional educator continues to be a defining feature of the progressive education movement. And since the progressive era, many teacher preparation programs and some schools have adopted this fundamental belief that teaching requires ongoing curiosity, inquiry, experimentation, learning, creativity, growth, and reflection. However, our actual school structures and systems have not provided adequate time and space (as a regular part of a teacher’s job) to successfully translate this philosophy of education into a viable and sustainable practice.
Too often, professional development is seen as something teachers need to do on top of their regular job responsibilities. While it is true that many school or systems level professional development initiatives are given time during a faculty meeting or professional development waiver day, very few schools or systems provide space within the regular school day or away from one’s teaching responsibilities for a sustained period of time to pursue individualized professional growth interests. In fact, most professional learning, especially if it is driven by a teacher’s intrinsic motivation, passion, or interests, is usually pursued on top of other designated duties and responsibilities (before or after school, on the weekends, or during summer vacation). And more often than not, educators fund these initiatives out of their own pockets with very little guarantee that their professional learning will lead to any sort of pay increase or promotion.
In academia and some school systems, sabbaticals are meant to create space for professional learning within the organizational structure of the institution. First established at Harvard in the 1880s (Kang & Miller, 1999), sabbatical leaves (if applied for and granted) guaranteed a period of time away from teaching duties to focus on research, writing, or travel for the purpose of rest, reflection, and the advancement of knowledge or practice. While sabbaticals continue to be an important “perk” in the profession, not much has changed about the practice (e.g. granting a year of leave at half-pay every seventh year) since they were first established. In an effort to address issues like teacher recruitment and retention, the profession must get more creative in thinking about how our organizational systems and structures can further support educators in living out the philosophical ideals that Mitchell outlined as critical for the successful teacher.
Lia Woo, Head of School at Hanahau‘oli, has experimented with a number of initiatives in recent years that play around with systems and structures for cultivating and nurturing a progressive education school culture that supports and integrates professional learning. This has included partnership with philanthropy to provide funding for each teacher to “learn something new” (e.g. watercolor, spearfishing, hula) and engage in self-care of their choosing. She also piloted a Teacher Scholar role at the school (documented in part I and part 2 of this blog series), which if fully adopted could release teachers from classroom teaching on a regularly scheduled basis (like once every three semesters) to work on professional inquiry projects on campus. Additionally, she has worked to ensure that blocks of time for planning and reflection are a scheduled part of each teacher’s regular school day. While anecdotal evidence demonstrates that designated systems and structures like these positively impact the work of teachers, they do require financial investment. It’s probably time we took a harder look at recalibrating our resources so that integrated and sustained professional learning is a regular part of each teacher’s school day, week or month at the very least.
Continued Growth as a Person and Professional Must Be Sustained Over time
In a 2007 paper written by Nancy Nager and Edna Shapiro titled, “A Progressive Approach to the Education of Teachers” the authors provide five principles that help frame a “vision of good teaching” (p.5). Among them is the idea that teachers–as a fundamental part of their job–must have opportunities to continue to grow as both a person and a professional. They explain, “true to a central tenet of progressive thinking that education must address the ‘whole child,’ the teacher is regarded as a whole person, [who is consistently working towards the achievement of] an integration of personal and professional identity” (p. 25). As a result, teachers must be provided with structures and systems that support “the development of a multi-faceted teaching person” (p.7) throughout their whole career. The important link between ongoing personal and professional growth must be established when teachers first enter the profession.
Nager and Shapiro (2007) explain:
One of the fundamental premises of a program of teacher education must be that it cannot be [thought of as] complete. Students should know that graduation does not confer expertise, that they should expect to fumble and make mistakes, that they will and must keep on learning and trying and reexamining their experiences (Shapiro, 1991, p. 17).
Therefore, brand new teachers must be taught how to reflect on their inner and outer lives, and advocate for frequent, sustained, and cohesive opportunities for personal and professional growth across their teaching lifespan.
If educators join the field with the understanding that teaching is both a personal and professional endeavor that must be cultivated and nurtured over time, they will be less likely to leave the profession because of burnout or stagnation. Instead they can adopt a steady process for developing “a sophisticated integration of personal and professional identity” (Nager & Shapiro, 2007, p. 29). This can start with educators developing a personally meaningful professional line of inquiry (e.g. curiosity about arts integration in math, examining how older learners can teach younger students, experimenting with place-based science, etc.) that they can build on throughout their careers. And it can be enhanced when educators realize that the exploration of their professional line of inquiry might not always include participating in academic, school-sponsored, or traditional professional learning experiences.
Tracy Idica (Licensing Specialist, Hawaii Teachers Standard Board), a fellow panelist, shared with the summit participants about her first years as a teacher in California in the 1980s. She was a high school English teacher, teaching American literature to a diverse group of students, many of whom were pacific islanders. She started to ask both the personally and professionally meaningful question of how she could better represent their voices and experiences in the readings she selected for the course. To support her professional growth, she not only spent time researching and reading diverse texts for the class, but she also enrolled in a class to become a licensed travel agent. She wanted to gain the skills and credentials needed to design and carry out extended learning through travel with the students – as a licensed travel agent she could expand and grow what she was capable of offering as a teacher. The travel eventually led her to Hawai‘i where she has made an incredible impact on the local community. This is an example of how the personal and professional identity of educators is intertwined, and both must be nurtured for teachers to remain engaged in the vocation. I think of myself and the oil painting class I took at the Honolulu Museum of Art while I was on sabbatical writing my dissertation. I knew that I needed a creative outlet, a completely divergent activity for my brain and body, if I were going to make it through my doctoral studies. I am certain that this seemingly unrelated endeavor was critical to my personal and professional growth.
Use Progressive Education Principles To Design Personally Meaningful Professional Development Experiences
Finally, in an effort to use professional development as a tool for addressing the potential burnout or stagnation teachers may experience in the later stages of their careers, we must apply progressive education principles to design, cultivate, and nurture meaningful professional development experiences. There are many definitions of progressive education (see this most recent blog), but I’ll use Alfie Kohn’s 2015 list of progressive education principles to help illustrate the ways in which a progressive education approach to teacher professional development is useful in creating personally and professionally meaningful professional development experiences:
Attending to the Whole Child – Attend to the Whole Teacher
Support educators with professional development that attends to their social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual and practical development as teachers. Ensure that professional development opportunities address the entirety of our multifaceted teaching selves, not just the academic or technical parts of our jobs.
Community – Provide Opportunities for Teachers to Connect with and Build Relationships with Other Educators
Humans are social animals. We learn from one another in caring democratic communities, and also need to be part of these kinds of communities to feel an overall sense of well-being and connectedness. Professional development experiences must create opportunities for educators to share stories, reflect, commiserate, and build relationships with their peers in the profession.
Collaboration – Practice Collaborating and Constructing Knowledge with Others
Professional collaboration is essential to the success of schools. The only way educators are going to build their abilities to engage in meaningful work with their peers and collaboratively solve problems together, is if they have time to practice this. This includes creating structured and intellectually safe spaces to experience social mishaps and successful relationships that can be reflected on in an effort to grow both personally and professionally.
Intrinsic Motivation – A Teacher’s Own Passion and Interests Should Drive the Majority of their Professional Learning
While some professional development is driven by department, school, or system needs and initiatives, teachers will experience less burnout and more satisfaction if they can engage in professional learning that is born out of their own curiosity and desire for improvement. Educators must have institutional systems and structures in place that allow them to follow their own personal and professional interests.
Deep Understanding – Create Opportunities for Teachers to Pursue a Sustained Professional Line of Inquiry Over Time
Too often professional development can become an accountability tool for administrators, schools, and systems to check boxes (e.g. 100% teachers were trained in restorative justice practices), rather than an opportunity for educators to organize professional learning around enduring problems, projects, and questions that are personally and professionally meaningful. Make space and design supports for more sustained and ongoing professional growth that can be pursued over time.
Active Learning – Professional Learning By Doing
Instead of just learning about the ideas or practices of others, challenge educators to construct their own ideas and engage in new practices in a variety of real-world settings. Some of this could occur in schools, but there must also be opportunities to dabble in and engage in contexts and careers outside of education and teaching.
Taking Kids Seriously – Taking Teachers Seriously
Teachers must be treated as professionals who can use their academic training, experience with children in schools, and keen observations of the rapidly changing world to advocate for the professional growth opportunities they need. They deserve both financial rewards and time to pursue meaningful personal and professional development across the duration of their careers.
Social Justice – Teacher Professional Development is an Act of Social Justice
Education is a vehicle for creating and promoting social justice and encouraging participation in democratic processes, and the professional development of teachers should be aligned to these goals. Educators need professional learning that not only taps into what is personally meaningful or relevant, there must also be professional development around social, political, or cultural movements that are larger than themselves. This is the premise of progressive education: teachers, students, school communities can all be important levers of change for creating a better future world.
Final Thoughts
It was such an honor to be included in the Hawaii Education Association’s annual summit. Being a participant, especially listening to the comments and insights of the other panelists and the keynote speaker, provided me with a window into some of the most pressing questions in the current moment, from a variety of important perspectives. It was a reminder that we are each playing a unique but important role in improving the ecosystem of education in Hawai‘i and that we must make space to connect, listen to, and engage in meaningful dialogue on how we can hui together in the service of children, families, community, and the natural world.
Works Cited:
Kang, B., & Miller, M.T. (1999). An Overview of the Sabbatical Leave in Higher Education: A Synopsis of the Literature Base. Retrieved at: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED430471.pdf
Kohn, A. (2015). Progressive education: Why it's hard to beat but also hard to find. Bank Street College of Education.
Mitchell, L.S. (1931). A cooperative school for student teachers. Progressive Education, 8. 251-255.
Nager, N., & Shapiro, E. (2007). A Progressive Approach to the Education of Teachers: Some Principles from Bank Street College of Education. Occasional Paper Series, 2007 (18). DOI: https://doi.org/10.58295/2375-3668.1169
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Amber Strong Makaiau is a Specialist at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Director of Curriculum and Research at the Uehiro Academy for Philosophy and Ethics in Education, Director of the Hanahau‘oli School Professional Development Center, and Co-Director of the Progressive Philosophy and Pedagogy MEd Interdisciplinary Education, Curriculum Studies program. A former Hawai‘i State Department of Education high school social studies teacher, her work in education is focused around promoting a more just and equitable democracy for today’s children. Dr. Makaiau lives in Honolulu where she enjoys spending time in the ocean with her husband and two children.
