Not everyone wants to become an administrator. But all employees, in every position, want to grow. This resource gives school leaders the research, tools, and templates to help teachers and staff set goals, chart career paths, and track growth, because when people grow, schools grow with them. When growth pathways are visible, valued, and discussed early, commitment strengthens.
Visible Growth Builds Retention
When career paths feel vague, employees can disengage. They don’t stop caring about their work, but they are not able to picture themselves doing it five years from now. When growth is visible and valued, commitment deepens. Teachers and staff members often ask what happens next for me here? Schools that answer that question early keep good people. Schools that wait until an exit interview usually get the answer too late to act on it.
The First Years Matter, SAIS’s early-career educator study conducted with Vanderbilt’s Dr. Carrie Grimes, and Designed to Last, our broader motivation and engagement research, both identify the same pattern. Employees who can identify a next step and envision their own growth report higher engagement than those who cannot.
Growth is not necessarily a promotion. A teacher who becomes a stronger mentor, a better collaborator, or a more skilled practitioner has grown, even if their title and classroom never change. The job of a division leader or department head is to make that kind of growth just as visible and just as celebrated as a move into administration.
Publishing career pathways allows educators to see how their current role connects to future opportunities. Career maps turn an abstract idea of growth into something concrete they can plan around. Educators should understand how someone moves from one stage to the next, and roughly what that next stage pays. Ambiguity here may push talented staff to look for opportunities somewhere else.
Track growth for everyone, not only teachers
Make growth a yearly habit and not a one-time event. An annual cycle keeps growth and goal setting conversations current for both teachers and staff. Professional learning for non-instructional staff deserves the same visibility, recognition, and follow-through as classroom teachers’. Before developing a goal setting protocol or PD tracking system, it may help to answer a few questions about current growth and development practices.
- Is there a visible connection between school-wide goals, individual goals, and the professional learning being offered?
- Do you evaluate professional learning activities, collect feedback to improve the offering, and then decide whether it should be modified, repeated, or replaced?
- Do you acknowledge and recognize faculty and staff who undertake professional learning opportunities?
- Do supervisors help employees reflect on whether they met their goals and where they now stand on their career pathway?
Resources & Tools
These ready-to-use templates help leaders establish career pathways and implement professional development tracking without starting from a blank page. Begin here and modify to fit your school’s mission and culture.