Baruti Kafele is a household name in school leadership. A long-time teacher and middle and high school principal, he led the transformation of four urban schools in New Jersey. Now, he is the host of the popular “AP & New Principals Academy” YouTube channel and a sought after keynote speaker and leadership consultant. Baruti is also author of many influential books in the field, including The Principal 50, The Assistant Principal 50, The Equity and Social Justice Education 50, and Is My School a Better School Because I Lead It? His forthcoming ASCD book, What Is My Value Instructionally to the Teachers I Supervise? will be available for preorder this fall. We recently asked Baruti for advice on how to help new teachers truly thrive. To set these educators up for success, he tells EL, school leaders must be laser-focused on two C’s: coaching and culture.
What mistakes do school leaders make when it comes to supporting new teachers?
Expecting that you can just put this new teacher in the classroom and they’re going to flourish. Let me give you an example: It’s game day at ABC High School on a Friday night in the fall. The team is in the locker room, they have their pads on, their uniforms on, and the head coach delivers that final message to get them hyped up. The coach ends the speech and says, “Now let’s get out on that field and let’s get this win!” And then the coach adds, “Oh, by the way, if you need me or my assistant coaches, we’ll be here in the locker room. Come get us. Now go out there and take care of business.”
What’s happened here is the team is going out onto the field uncoached for four quarters, which happens in schools every day. We tell the teacher, “Let’s get these students ready. Let’s elevate these scores. Let’s perform miracles.” And we send them into the game with no coaching. See? So now they’re on their own. Imagine you just finished four years of preservice. You’re 22 or 23 years old. You may not have ever been in an environment like the one your school is in. You have not been a teacher outside of student teaching. So now you’re thrust into the classroom, and that leader is holding you accountable.
Just like in sports, coaching shouldn’t be reserved for practice sessions; players need to be coached throughout the game.
That can’t happen. Just like in sports, coaching shouldn’t be reserved for practice sessions; players need to be coached throughout the game. New teachers require ongoing guidance and mentorship to increase the probability that they’re going to be successful.
New teachers have the potential to be great, but they need support. It doesn’t have to be solely from administration. It could be from mentors that you assign them, colleagues, or peers. It could be from whomever, but I certainly would want that evaluating principal or AP to play a role as well.
How can school leaders support new teachers instructionally? Is there anything principals need to do differently to support alternatively certified teachers?
Look at the difference between the two. The teacher who went through preservice, that’s someone who had a dream and knew they wanted to teach. So, they spent four years preparing for it. But think about that other person who’s on a job and tired of what they do. They love kids. They think they might be a good fit, but they really don’t know. But they want to try. That was me.
Many alternatively certified teachers go into the classroom and find out it is not as easy as they thought it was going to be, right? It’s not the way they may have been taught when they were a child, where there was a teacher standing in front of the room giving them a 45–90 minute lecture. And now they might do the same, hoping that their own students process and retain the information and ultimately pass an exam. Doesn’t work that way, as you know.
I say to administrators, probably every day, if your strategy for your teachers is solely based on who you were in the classroom—and this new teacher’s personality is nothing like yours—then you are very limited in what you can offer that teacher.
Now take that teacher you just described, who came in through an alternate route, and you have no strategy. Unless their personality is like yours or you are twins, then you’re not going to be able to help that teacher. So that’s key for a principal or an AP: Hold up a mirror and ask yourself, Do I have strategy beyond who I was as a teacher? That matters.
Classroom management can be the bane of new teachers’ existence. How can school leaders provide the right balance of support in this area?
The one thing I would say is: Don’t limit the conversation to classroom management. Because if you limit the conversation, you will probably forget or leave “culture” out of it. Rules and consequences are not where it’s at. Where it’s at is the culture of the environment, the culture of the school, the culture of the classroom. The culture becomes the mouthpiece. So as a teacher, you don’t have to say, “Do this, do that. Don’t do this, don’t do that,” because the culture dictates the expectations of that room.
I’m always reminding leaders: Make sure you’re not just giving teachers some book that’s all about classroom management. Make sure you’re also giving them materials and engaging them in conversation about this abstract thing called culture.
Culture is everything. Culture is a reflection of the teacher in the classroom, but it’s also a reflection of the leadership of the building.
Culture dictates all our behaviors. I’m not expecting that students per se are going to come into a classroom and understand culturally who they should be. But when we put emphasis on how we mold and shape a culture that is conducive to young people having a willingness to soar and conducive to young people behaving in a way that’s compatible with expectations, then we don’t have to keep reminding young people of rules and consequences.
As a principal, make sure culture is an ongoing conversation with new teachers. For a lot of schools, it’s not that they’re not achieving benchmarks because they don’t have the right instructional practices. A lot of times they’re not achieving those benchmarks because the culture is not conducive to achieving those benchmarks. Culture is everything. Culture is a reflection of the teacher in the classroom, but it’s also a reflection of the leadership of the building.
Is there anything you want to add?
I know I mentioned it before, but it’s critical to pair new teachers with a mentor. But not just a random mentor. A lot of times, we’ll just find a teacher that is effective or a teacher that shows interest in being a mentor. But as a leader, you have to look at personalities. You have to ensure that you have matched this teacher with a mentor that works for them personality-wise. That they will mesh. Because, although you’ve got a superstar, it doesn’t mean they’re going to be a good coach. It doesn’t mean they’re going to be a good mentor. It doesn’t mean their personality is going to correspond with the personality of this teacher. So that’s important, not just having a body to say, “OK, I want you to work with this teacher.”
It kind of bugs me when I see the wrong fit.
It’s critical to pair new teachers with a mentor. But not just a random mentor.
Are you talking about having more informal mentors check in on the new teacher? Or about an established mentoring program?
A mentoring program in the formal sense, which will hopefully evolve into a more organic informal relationship. One where the teacher is so comfortable with their mentor, that they know they can reach out to them and ask them to come to their classroom anytime. But when it remains at the formal stage, it’s almost as if this person is the teacher’s evaluator.
You want it to become so informal that the mentor becomes the new teacher’s accountability partner. They become their thought partner. That’s when the relationship becomes most productive.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length.
