Teaching is the most noble profession in the world and teachers have been doing the job for thousands of years. In fact, Plato, Socrates and Aristotle were all teaching people before Christ, so then why do so many 21st century teachers want to quit the profession?

Does this mean there is something wrong with 21st century teachers? Or could there be something wrong with education?

When the founder of Leaf Academy, Doc Schwartz, M.Ed. first stepped into the school administrator role, he was faced with a similar dire situation. Not only were his student test scores plummeting, but more than 40% of his school faculty were threatening to quit their positions if he didn't fix the problem.

But what could he do? How does a school boost student achievement without more funding? How can a school get kids to stop misbehaving, when they have run out of consequences to give them? And how can you stop teachers from quitting, when the school offers them every support they can think of?

Those were the questions Doc was faced when he first became a school administrator.

So what did Doc do?

It turns out the solution is to think outside the box. The first thing Doc did was gather all the data and start to analyze what was happening inside his school. Why were test scores so low? Why were the students acting out so much? And why did more than 40% of the faculty want to quit? 

And that's when he found the answer. The reason the kids were acting out in class was because the teachers stopped giving out positive praise. And because the teachers spent more time on discipline and classroom management techniques, there was less time on teaching the material. This is why the test scores were plummeting.

Therefore, if Doc could fix the behavioral issue, he could make the classrooms less chaotic, which in turn would make the teachers not want to quit anymore.

But how was he going to get the kids to stop acting out? The problem is Doc didn't have a lot of time to think about it. He was named the new administrator in June and the new school year was starting back up in September. That meant, he only had a matter of weeks to solve a problem that most schools don't know how to fix.

And then Doc had a Eureeka moment!

What if he could give the teachers more targeted professional development that helped them become better teachers in the classroom? In other words, what if he could teach the teachers how to deal with real life situations, instead of bringing in traditional PD presenters who would spend 60 minutes going over software solutions?

And that's how Doc developed "The Teacher Development Program." 

But Doc knew their skepticism was sparked by previous administrators who failed to be helpful. And the "Teacher Development Program" was going to be the first teacher support program that worked. And here's why?

The very first thing the Teacher Development Program did was give each teacher a legal Professional Development document. This document allowed each teacher to finally take control over their own PD for the year. This meant, each teacher was no longer obligated to sit through the traditional boring PD workshops after school, especially if those workshops were not part of their own PD plan.

For the very first time, teachers were in control and this made some of Doc's teachers very happy. 

For instance, the art teacher, PE teacher and other specials teachers felt like someone was finally on their side. "Now we don't have to sit through a 90 minute lecture on math skills, when we don't teach math," said one PE teacher.

But that wasn't the only thing the Teacher Development Program did. The second thing the Program did was focus every teacher's attention on the 10 Teaching Standards. To Doc's surprise most teachers didn't even know these 10 teacher standards even existed. "Where have these been my whole career?" one veteran teacher said.

By focusing each teacher's PD plan on the 10 teaching standards, it gave teachers a clear focus for skill development. It also helped the teachers better understand Doc's comments and feedback when he would do walkthroughs and classroom observations.

"I've been teaching for 15 years and I never understood what any of my principals were talking about," said one veteran teacher.

Obviously, giving teachers back control over their time and making PD more focused seems like a no-brainer, but how could this innovative program reduce student behavioral issues and also boost student achievement? Because unless it could solve those two problems, many of Doc's teachers were ready to walk out the front door.

Which is why the next thing the Teacher Development Program did convinced every teacher to get on board. This was the one deciding factor that turned every skeptic into a believer. 

So, the single biggest issue with traditional PD workshops is that they all follow a "one size fits all" model. The problem with this model is that when a PD presenter visits a school, teachers are forced to adapt to the presenter, instead of the presenter adapting to the teacher's needs.

What the Teacher Development Program does is put the individual teacher in the driver's seat of their own career growth. No longer are teachers beholden to school district whims and changing priorities. Each teacher has the 10 teaching standards in their hands and they get to choose which standards they want to work on for that year. And more importantly, once the teacher and principal sign off on that official PD plan - the school cannot change its mind. 

Therefore, if one teacher wants to focus on how to elevate their lesson plans from low order critical thinking skills to higher order critical thinking skills, then that teacher gets full credit for all the hours, research and learning they will be doing, in order to elevate those lesson plans.

That's no longer wasted time, but official CEU credit time. 

And once every teacher saw how they could use their time more wisely and they were no longer forced to sit through PD workshops that had nothing to do with their classrooms or jobs - they felt FREE!!

All of a sudden the new Teacher Development Program didn't seem like a problem anymore, instead it seemed like a savior for them and their careers. Doc ran the Teacher Development Program from 2009 to 2019 and nearly 5,000 teachers went through the program. 

And over that time frame, zero teachers have quit the profession so far, which is saying something since more than 1 million teachers have quit the school system since 2018. 

But what about student behaviors and boosting student achievement?

Now that every teacher had the power to choose their own career path, Doc asked the teachers to get together and discuss the most demanding classroom problems the teachers wanted to solve. And to no one's surprise all the teachers wanted to learn how to reduce student behavior.

So Doc did the research and then created his own PD workshop to teach the teachers how to reduce inappropriate behaviors in the classroom. And the results were groundbreaking. Since all the teachers were now focused on solving one major problem, they didn't feel distracted anymore in class.

And based on Doc's academic research, he was able to show the teachers that students act out simply because they are seeking attention. Therefore, every teacher needs to make sure they are providing enough opportunities for positive attention in class, otherwise the students will always go after negative attention seeking behaviors.

Armed with this new knowledge, the teachers embarked on the most comprehensive positive praise program in any school in the country. And since the teachers and Doc were now on the same page, the teachers welcomed his walkthroughs and classroom observations. In fact, Doc would enter each classroom and count how many positive praise comments each teacher would give the students, by using a clicker counter in his hand. 

In any other school, this would have been seen as a "gotcha" tactic, but now that Doc introduced the Teacher Development Program and teachers were being recognized for their growth, the data Doc collected was now being used by each teacher as a benchmark for success. 

"I would have quit teaching, if not for the Teacher Development Program," one teacher said after completing the two-year training program. "When you graduate from college, you think you're prepared to be a teacher, but that's not really true. You learn "what" to do in college, but this program teaches you "how" to do it in the classroom with real kids."

In the end, all the teachers were able to reduce student misbehavior and subsequently boosted student achievement. Not only did this make teaching fun again for the teachers, but the students liked coming to school now that they could receive more positive attention and less negative attention. Of course, the less phone calls home made the parents happy and proud of their kids as well. 

This is what out of the box thinking looks like. And if you want to help your teachers feel less stressed out, or how to find more spare time then maybe you want to consider implementing the Teacher Development Program in your school too!