Close to fifty percent of new teachers will quit within their first five years on the job. Let that sink in for a moment. It’s a catastrophe that needs to be addressed on multiple levels: in teacher education programs, in school districts by the administration, and amongst the communities of teachers in schools themselves. It’s a crisis of culture that needs to be changed. How to accomplish this is the question that no one has been able to accurately solve.

Every teacher leaving the field has a unique set of reasons for doing so, but of course there is a common thread. For some it’s income, for others it’s simply the challenge of the working conditions, but the most common underlying factor in the decision to quit lies within the lack of support. “Administrative support is the factor most consistently associated with teachers’ decisions to stay in or leave a school. Authors’ analysis found that teachers who find their administrators to be unsupportive are more than twice as likely to leave as those who feel well-supported,” according to a recent report from The Learning Policy Institute.

So how can we help schools support their new teachers? At Swivl, we think we have a solution. With our video observation program, Swivl makes it easy for both administrators and coaches to provide meaningful feedback to teachers on their own schedule. You no longer have to physically be present in a classroom to provide skilled guidance from an unbiased perspective. With Swivl, not only is it incredibly easy to use, but we alone make it possible to always see and hear both the teacher and students, creating a holistic view of the classroom. With a more meaningful level of constructive feedback and support given to teachers, a success loop is created. And for administrators, Swivl is here to provide you with all the support that you need to thrive.

Swivl also helps teachers support each other with the ability to share videos in our library on Swivl cloud. Teacher mentorship is a proven method for reducing attrition rates. A culture of collaboration requires continual feedback and sharing. Only Swivl makes the process of capturing and sharing classroom data so seamless that the impact on teacher's time and energy is minimal.

Many teachers who leave the profession also cite inadequate preparation as a major reason behind their decision. We can expedite teacher experience by providing unparalleled examples of what defines a “best practice” in our shareable video libraries. Peer-to-peer learning is priceless, and Swivl is an essential tool for fostering that practice. When teachers engage with our product an enduring relationship is forged.