How to Get Teachers On Board with your Marketing, Retention and Development Efforts

Do you often wonder how to get teachers to help out with marketing, retention, and development efforts?  As more and more responsibilities are being added to teachers' plates AND marketing/development/admissions efforts continue to evolve and need additional support, we need strategies to get teachers motivated to help us move things forward. 

During one of our Small School Solutions trainings this month, Aubrey shared a variety of strategies to help schools develop an effective solution and system for getting teachers on board, and we are sharing some of those tips with you here in this blog. 

Tip # 1: Faculty In-service is one of the biggest, and best ways to get people on board. Let's just use marketing, for example. I'm marketing and I'm saying, gosh, I need these teachers to do X, Y, and Z for me this year. So how am I, during faculty in-service going to make this happen? The first thing is I give a presentation, or better yet a workshop because I think it should be engaging,  and during this time it's really important to not be saying, this is what I need you to do. Cause that does not work!

It's really important to start out by creating a positive atmosphere. So what I'll do is pull some positive quotes from parent surveys or testimonials, or you can pull them from online, and I read them to the faculty and staff.  Or even better, I print them out and I cut them into little strips and I pass around a hat and they read them to each other. It really sets a tone that says, Hey, you all are valuable and you're doing an amazing job. And that's really important because often we come in and we're like, you're not doing enough and you need to do more. So it really sets a positive tone, and this allows them to join you in your quest.

Tip # 2: Explain the why, because a lot of times we skip into the action step, but we don't explain the why. And I like to pull data, I like to pull trends. I like to show this is what's happening in the independent world with the other schools near us. So I pull data and trends that support the reason why and show that this is not just what I think, it is something meaningful and tangible in the reality of their world.

Now I can highlight what we'd like to do during the year to better sell our school, and attract mission-appropriate families. And then, this is important, I explain how we're going to support them to make this happen. Because by just saying, this is what we need you to do, but we don't say how we're going to help them, that leaves a lot on the teachers. So it's important to explain how we're planning to support them during the year.

Then we give them time during that meeting to come up with their ideas for how this might work best. We've said, this is what we need from you, now they can have some time to contribute to a plan for how to make this work. By including them in the process they become a part of the team, rather than feeling like it's just one more thing being heaped onto their already full plate. 

There are several more great tips for Getting Buy-in From Your Teaching Staff in this Small School Solutions mini-training library. And if you become a member you can participate in these mini-trainings and ask specific questions as well as get feedback from me and the other participants in the room. 

I hope you found this blog post helpful, and if you are interested in getting access to more high-touch live trainings tailored specifically to small school marketing, enrollment, and development teams then be sure to check out our SMALL SCHOOL SOLUTIONS  {affordable} Annual Professional Development Tailored to Small Schools! 👉 https://www.easyschoolmarketing.com/solutions 

• Individual School Teams: $35/Month $420/Annual

• MEMBERSHIP FEATURES

  ✅ Team Membership | enjoy affordable professional development for your entire team - marketing, enrollment, and fundraising -  for one low monthly fee. 

  ✅ Resource + Training Library | receive instant access to on-demand templates, best practices, workbooks, and presentations to create easy solutions to your biggest challenges

  ✅ Monthly Live Guest Expert Trainings | Learn about topics like ads, websites, customer experiences, fundraising, and more that impact your school so you can make informed decisions about how, where, and when to invest your resources.

  ✅ Monthly 30-min Community Q+A with Aubrey | Submit your questions and receive expert feedback from Aubrey + open-source support from our community of small school leaders in real-time.

  ✅ Monthly 20-min Mini-Training with Aubrey | Turn your focus toward a timely + often overlooked or underleveraged opportunity to enhance your skillset, prioritize the growth of your school, and move the needle forward.

  ✅ Monthly 5-min Pulse Report from Aubrey | Press play on the quick video in your inbox to stay on top of the latest news, best practices, + changes relevant to your school. 

  ✅ Entire Team access to Small School Leaders Virtual Conference | Join us in this highly anticipated, first-of-its-kind, comprehensive virtual conference in February 2023, featuring a variety of guest expert speakers, roundtables, + more. This conference will provide strategies + answer questions that will benefit your school immediately, all without the astronomical expenses of travel, post-conference exhaustion, logistics of your entire team being out of town at the same time, or implementation gap that often happens after you re-enter the day-to-day.

  ✅ Google Calendar Access | All meetings + details in one streamlined, accessible, + easily integrated place so you won’t miss a beat! 

  ✅ Small School Community | Casual, intimate, friendly, a great way to network, develop deeper relationships with people within your same situation who face similar challenges + situations, be yourself personally & professionally, and have the opportunity to candidly discuss team dynamics, negotiations, and more.

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