In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, we invited our community of professional learning leaders to share how they acknowledge, promote, and celebrate the growth of teachers throughout the year. In the infographic below, we’ve included their approaches, along with a few from a Learning Forward cover story and free tool titled “Celebrate professional transitions and successes to drive and sustain implementation.” We understand that as a leader, you have many priorities and celebrations may not make it to the top of the list, but as stated in our cover story, celebrating individual and team growth is essential.
Why it’s important to celebrate teacher growth
- “To ensure success, short-term wins must be both visible and unambiguous….such wins provide evidence that the sacrifices that people are making are paying off. This increases the sense of urgency and the optimism of those who are making the effort to change.” (John Kotter)
- According to Kent Peterson, celebrations are an important component for high-quality learning communities. “Celebrations are critical to effective change. Celebrations bring people together at important times during the life of a school and reinforce the social fabric,” said Peterson, emeritus professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis for the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author with Terrence Deal of Shaping School Culture (2009).
- “Short-term wins have a way of building momentum that turns neutral people into supporters, and reluctant supporters into active helpers.” (Kotter)
- Celebrations can also help teams transition through times of anxiety, uncertainty, or loss, such as when a member of the team leaves the group. (Joellen Killion)
Below are simple ways for educators to celebrate the growth of their teammates, shared by our community of professional learning leaders.
Download the infographic.
We want to help you implement these approaches in your school, so we’ve created three free tools:
Do you celebrate the growth of teachers & their successes? Learn why it's important & how to do it throughout the school year. *Bonus: 3 free tools for easier implementation* Share on X
