Best Practices
Teacher Retention Strategies to Keep Teaching Artists Happy
Want to grow your arts education program? You need quality instructors. Skilled teaching artists help create the best possible student experience. As a result, learners feel like they’ve gained something valuable, and are more likely to recommend your classes to others. They might even follow their favorite instructors to whichever class they happen to teach.
A CourseStorm customer shared that their popular watercolor classes attract some new students, but most seats are filled by returning students “who are absolutely in love with the teacher and will take any class that she teaches.” In short, when you retain teachers, you retain students and grow your program.
Of course, retaining teachers is easier said than done. That’s why we’re offering some powerful teacher retention strategies to help keep your teaching artists — and by extension, your students — happy.
5 Useful Teacher Retention Strategies
1. Promote Their Artistic Work
Your artist teachers are not just instructors, they’re also artists with their own creative practice and body of work. Promoting their artistic careers is a win-win strategy. As their prestige as artists grows, so does their desirability as teachers.
How to promote the artists who teach for you:
- Host a show or event featuring their work
- Sing their praises on your social media channels
- Send them to classes and conferences to support their development
- Bring in guest artists to run special workshops for your instructors
You probably have some valuable connections in your local arts community. Wherever possible, look for ways to help your teaching artists connect with people who can help their careers thrive. Happy instructors stay with your organization and help attract more students.
2. Listen to What Your Teachers Need
You might be great at listening for student feedback, but few programs are as tuned in to what teachers need. Too often, decisions about arts education programs are made from the top down. Just like your students, teachers appreciate being heard. They want a voice in the decisions that will affect them and their work.
How to learn what teachers want and need:
- Offer an email address or suggestion box where they can share ideas
- Find occasions for informal conversations with teaching artists
- Send out a yearly or quarterly survey to all instructors
- Provide them with a supervisor or mentor who can answer questions
This might take some time. Some instructors may worry that you don’t really want to hear what they have to say or that their feedback will be held against them. Assure them that you are looking to improve their experience and your program. Follow up with instructors to let them know if and how their input was used. The more responsive and transparent you are, the more likely they are to trust you with their great ideas.
3. Communicate About Changes Before They Happen
As a director or executive, you make decisions for the good of the organization based on the information you have available. Often, those decisions will affect instructors, both directly and indirectly.
Nobody likes feeling that their career is out of their control. Teaching artists are no exception. When you make changes that will affect them — especially if those changes affect workload or compensation — keep instructors informed.
How to involve instructors in change management:
- Invite teachers to attend planning meetings
- Ask for their opinion before making big changes
- Explain the reasoning behind decisions
- Provide training or guidance to facilitate change
This kind of change management shows teachers that you respect them and their work. It helps them feel more empowered, even if the change is ultimately out of their control. Teachers who feel empowered are more able to show up for their students.
4. Get Creative With Compensation
Compensation is a sticky problem for many nonprofits. You’re likely under pressure to keep payroll costs low. But you also want to keep teachers happy and support their wellbeing. If pay is an immovable point, you may be able some valuable non-monetary compensation in lieu of raises. Whatever you do, publish pay scales on your job postings so instructors know what they’re getting into.
How to creatively compensate teachers:
- Pay for prep and administrative time
- Offer free studio space
- Develop multi-year contracts
- Equip them with supplies (including snacks and coffee!)
Remember, teaching artists have at least two careers. They’re making art and they’re teaching students. Many also pick up other jobs to make ends meet. That can leave them fragmented and overwhelmed. When you increase a teacher’s wages, you’re not just giving them more money, you’re helping them stay focused on their art and their students.
5. Make Class Administration Simple With CourseStorm
Teaching artists have plenty to do already. They don’t want to waste time and energy using complicated class administration tools. When you choose CourseStorm for class registration and payment processing, you also get a set of valuable resources for instructors. They can view classes, print and export rosters, view individual student info, email students, and view cancellations or waiting lists.
How CourseStorm helps keep teachers happy:
- Empowers teaching artists to manage their own classes with administrative oversight
- Simplifies communication between teachers and students
- Helps instructors monitor enrollments in their classes
- Offers tools to help instructors promote classes on social media
Find out more about how CourseStorm empowers instructors.
With built-in mobile access, your teachers can manage classes anytime, anywhere. Whether they’re taking a break in the studio, or riding the bus home after a long day — mobile access connects them with their students.
Resources to Share With Teaching Artists
Sharing resources with your teaching artists helps them grow and shows them you care about both their artistic and instructional careers. Here are a few useful resources worth sharing with your instructors:
- 5 Ways Art Teachers Can Balance Teaching and Creating Art
- Keeping it Fresh: Career Sustainability for Veteran Teaching Artists
- 6 Places to Find Art Teacher Professional Development Opportunities
You can give instructors more time to focus on their students and their art. Start your free trial of CourseStorm to test out all of its time-saving features.
Abigail Green
Abby has overseen content development for higher education degree programs related to education, technology, business, and healthcare. One of her first jobs after college was working with children’s programs for the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She is an experienced and versatile writer and editor whose work has been published by Johns Hopkins, the University of Baltimore Alumni Magazine, and The Chicago Tribune.