One district mentioned retention in a more general sense, noting that recent retention of bilingual teachers had lifted the burden of needing to hire new ones. Another district mentioned professional development as a tactic they were using to retain bilingual teachers saying:
“[Retention] is on us. It's professional development... The happier people are in their jobs, more likely they're going to stay.”
The last district mentioned improvements they were making to workplace culture – specifically around race – to retain their bilingual staff. They told us that:
“a corollary to recruiting teachers of color and bilingual teachers is retaining them, because you can recruit all the time. But if you're recruiting them into a culture that is basically, you know, a bastion of institutional racism... and we're not going to go anywhere. We're going to just lose as fast as we recruit.”
They then went on to tell us how they were implementing district policies that addressed micro-aggressions and implicit bias, as well as how they were beginning to introduce racial caucusing into their professional culture.
The fourth district had a unique strategy for retaining new teachers in their dual language program: coaching. This district reported to us that they had a staff member that acted as an instructional mentor, dedicated to the dual language program:
One of the key pieces to our success in retaining teachers, is having some experienced coaching from somebody who has been a dual language teacher. I think that piece of recruiting that workforce [is] an attractive spot when I can say to them... when we hire you, you’ve got this great person who’s going to give you some mentorship.
With four districts mentioning retention as a challenge, good retention tactics could be an integral part of a successful recruiting strategy in our state.