By Linda Dawson, Kris Mallory, and Khristel Johnson

Everyone knows young parents who enthusiastically engaged in conversations about their children’s accomplishments, and rightly so. How old was the child when she started walking? When did he say his first words? During these phases of a child’s development it is common to hear that all children progress at a different pace, and parents should not be overly concerned.

Tips for Making Shared Positions Work for Teachers, Students and Administrators

By Alex Kajitani with Megan Pincus Kajitani

Recently, the principal of a low-performing school filled with at-promise students told me that after her first year as principal, she abolished all job shares. 

According to this principal, job shares — or the agreement between two teachers to share one contracted teaching position by coming in on different days — were ineffective, confusing for the students, and did not promote the highest levels of student learning.  She stated that it is her duty to ensure the learning of all students, which includes making “tough decisions,” such as the one to disallow job shares at her site.  Job shares, she stated, are “great for the two teachers, but bad for their students.”

As I left the meeting, I couldn’t help thinking that while this decision might boost test scores for a year or two, overall, it hurts our society.  First, it forces working mothers (who occupy most job shares) into an “all-or-nothing” decision regarding choosing between mothering full-time or teaching full-time (same holds true for fathers).  Second, it stifles the kind of creative thinking, relationship-building and flexibility that we all need to learn (adults and youth) to thrive in the workplace of the future. 

I kept asking myself:  Isn’t there a way we can offer the flexibility of job shares to teachers and have students succeed at the same time?  Aren’t there job shares that work?  And, what will it take to find a win-win here?

So, I decided to do a little research, speaking with job-sharing teachers around our school district about what was working for them and what was not.  I also talked with principals about what they saw.  After identifying the pitfalls that “ineffective” job shares seem to fall victim to, I also pinpointed cases in which the job shares were “working,” as demonstrated by the quantitative data.  From these conversations, I came up with some concrete ideas for creating a win-win for teachers and students — and a win for administrators as well.

Making Job Shares Work for Everyone

Below are five strategies for creating and maintaining effective job shares that will allow teachers the work-life balance they deserve, students the high level of achievement that they are entitled to, and administrators a smoother ride in managing job share teams: