Tom Kerrigan

PLC 4
ED 73630-01
Reflection 2: Recruitment and Selection of Employees
While I realize that I still have much to learn about the nuances for recruiting and hiring
potential educators and support staff, I feel that I have a better grip on what it takes to retain employees. During my six-year tenure at Bishop Connolly High School, I have witnessed too many
highly-qualified teachers and administrators pack their bagsmostly voluntarilyfor greener
pastures in either the independent (boarding) school or public school sectors. I am certainly in
favor of my colleagues seeking opportunities for professional growth and development; however,
I would argue that our school leader and influential members of our administrative team (this includes me!) can be more intentional in the ways in which we pay attention to our staff retainment
efforts. In fact, as I consider the minimal efforts that we do to help our young teachers, in particular, buy into our mission and pedagogical approach, I am somewhat surprised that we have not
lost more competent and effective teachers over the years.
Mary Clements surprising comments that retention of new teachers starts before they
are hired (Clement, 2001) reverberated with me in thinking about my own capacity to be a catalyst for change in this critical dimension of human resources. Fortunately, I have been assigned
the privilege of mentoring all the first-year teachers in our school community this year. As a byproduct of our purposefully practical conversations at Notre Dame this past summer, my principal/mentor and I decided that our past mentoring program had to be overthrown and a new version needed to be implemented immediately, especially with three new PACT teachers (similar to
the ACE teaching fellows) joining our school community this year. It was all too easy for me to
recall how I could have used a much more structured form of mentoring from other veteran
teachers versus the unofficial training that I received occasionally. It was not long before I began
implementing various systems and touch points for my mentees. One of my prouder moments
was when I was given permission to invite all the first-year teachers to a orientation one afternoon before the school year started that resembled our Deep Practice experience. Based on the
feedback that I received from each of the new teachers, they appreciated the relevant conversations about lunchroom culture and one-on-one/group scenarios of real-life issues (i.e. mock parent/teacher meeting) that they could anticipate encountering in the coming weeks and months.
All things considered, it seems rather obvious to me that there is a systematic problem
with staff retention when one of the first questions that students or parents ask the new teacher is
will you be back next year? I have received that question on numerous occasions during my
career at BCHS and honestly, I do not always have a convincing response for those who ask me.
Nevertheless, I am trying to do my part in providing meaningful mentoring and effective guidance to the talented faculty and staff members who I hope will realize not only how much we
need them, but how much they may need us.