Week 7 Discussion - Recognizing Staff Accomplishments

 I enjoyed reading this article because it gave me a chance to reflect on how great of an experience I have been lucky to have for the last 6 years of my career. Employee appreciation is an absolute strength of the principal and leadership team at the school I have spent the majority of my career working for. Many of the strategies and ideas listed in the article are things that I have seen in some way at my school and what I took away most from this article is how important it is to individualize recognition based on the person. One strategy that we have always used is the “teacher of the” strategy. Each year the teaching staff votes on a teacher of the year and the kids vote as well and teachers are awarded these at the conclusion of the year. I love this because it allows for teachers to be recognized for multiple reasons by multiple groups of people. 

Another strategy that I liked from this article was the “Coke and a smile” strategy. While the article mentions presenting the cokes at staff meetings, I would want to take this idea and use it to privately recognize a teacher for their hard work. As someone who does not always like to be publicly recognized, I think there is merit in privately recognizing staff members also. One year, at the end of the year, my principal gave me a children’s book with a personalized inscription in it explaining that she was proud of my growth as an educator. It is one of my most favorite gifts I have received and motivated me to keep growing and trying to improve.  My goals as a principal would be to recognize staff members regularly for their accomplishments. This would include private recognition as well as public recognition. Staff members need to feel appreciated and doing so can increase staff productivity and morale.