During a two year period in 2021–2023, Glen Urquhart School (MA) experienced the loss of several beloved faculty members who had long been pillars of our community. We not only lost talented educators, but also institutional memory, trusted mentors, and steady, caring relationships. This period, marked by heartbreak, touched the emotional core of our community.
At the same time, I was still adjusting to my role as I became the head of school in late 2019. Prior to that, I served as a director of student life and later as a division head. Creating strong, connected communities among students and faculty was a core responsibility of these roles; in many ways, it had been my professional “bread and butter.” Even with that background, I had not fully considered how my transition from peer to institutional leader would change dynamics within the community.
Layered onto my professional transition, over the course of just five months, I lost both of my parents unexpectedly. It shaped how I showed up—my capacity, my perspective, my emotional availability—and it undoubtedly influenced my leadership during that time. In hindsight, both my transition into the headship and my personal grief played a meaningful role in the culture shift our community was navigating.
Faculty culture can change in ways that are difficult to see until the evolution is already well underway. I started to notice a change in the Spring of 2023, but by the spring of 2024, the difference was stark. The tone was muted. The energy had diminished. Colleagues who cared deeply about their work no longer seemed to experience the same sense of professional satisfaction.
Tending to and sustaining faculty culture requires intentional, accountable leadership. We must look at problems with honest eyes, acknowledging our own role in them, and make the necessary changes. That is what we did starting in that spring once we realized where we were at.
Identifying the Problem
In spring 2024, we administered our first anonymous faculty climate survey. We had previously done a student climate survey, and so we decided to create one for faculty.
When my leadership team—which consists of the director of marketing and communications, assistant heads, director of instruction, director of advancement, and director of finance—examined the data, the feedback was difficult to read; it reflected significant faculty frustration and dissatisfaction. One teacher said directly, “I don’t want to return if it feels like this next year.” My immediate response was “Me either.”
It would have been easy, as it often is in difficult moments, to put our heads down and simply wait for a new school year. But I deeply wanted things to be better. So, instead, with a month still remaining in the year, I wrote to the faculty. I named what we were experiencing—low morale, disconnection, and my own absence—and asked them to begin again with me, to join me in showing up differently, rebuilding trust, and taking shared responsibility for the kind of community we wanted to be. I wanted to send a clear signal that we would face hard truths directly and begin the work of repair without delay.
Taking Accountability
I knew we needed to make changes across the institution, but I also needed to change as the school’s leader. I prioritized leading with clarity, transparency, and a willingness to address difficult issues early.
We approached the process of understanding our faculty culture in the same way we seek to understand students: through listening and data. We held conversations with faculty members and gathered anonymous survey data to reveal and understand patterns in their experiences. The annual faculty climate survey became both a diagnostic tool and a benchmark for measuring improvement over time. The goal was not to assign blame but to establish a clear understanding of where we were starting and what we could do to improve.
We focused on strengthening communication and trust while also attending to job satisfaction and the overall professional climate. Rather than addressing concerns in isolation, we focused on building institutional structures that could support these priorities in consistent, visible, and sustainable ways. And we knew we needed to do this in alignment with the school’s values of curiosity, respect, and joy.
Making Structural Changes
One of the most important things we learned from the survey: Faculty wanted a stronger sense of belonging alongside meaningful support for their professional growth. This and other similar insights became the foundation for the work that followed.
We created professional advisory teams (PATs), which are cross-divisional faculty groups designed to foster connection, increase voice, and provide smaller spaces for professional dialogue. Faculty members also joined committees aligned with institutional priorities, including assessment, diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging initiatives, professional expectations, and community conduct. These committees ensure that faculty participate in institutional decision-making in meaningful and consistent ways while increasing faculty buy-in and pride in our school.
To improve transparency, we introduced “Ask Admin,” a Google form for faculty questions with shared responses. In addition to communicating here, we also now share administrative agendas and decisions more openly, as well as weekly leadership notes provide context and clarity around ongoing work.
Predictability and fairness became central to our efforts to rebuild trust. We conducted a salary analysis, made targeted compensation adjustments, and clarified our compensation philosophy and benchmarking process. The work began in spring 2025 and unfolded over the course of a year. We implemented some adjustments before the analysis was complete, shared the findings with faculty in February before at-will agreements were issued, and made additional adjustments when this year’s agreement letters went out.
We strengthened our evaluation systems, ensuring that expectations were clear and feedback supported professional growth. We also aligned professional expectations, such as reliability, preparedness, mission-aligned teaching practices, and consistent treatment of students, with our school’s values.
And, knowing that a healthy professional culture requires accountability and that unresolved negativity—whatever its source—can affect the entire community if left unaddressed, we committed to addressing challenging dynamics earlier and more directly. One of the simplest and most powerful practices we adopted was, in our one-on-one meetings with staff, asking a direct question: “Are you happy here?” It opened the door to honest dialogue and helped us distinguish between someone who was struggling and needed support, and someone who was not aligned with the school. With that clarity, we could respond with both care and accountability to make decisions that strengthened the community as a whole.
It can be tempting to believe that if a few unhappy people leave, faculty dissatisfaction will resolve itself. Yet if the root issue is deeper, it will simply resurface in new ways. At the same time, not every individual is the right fit for every organization, and avoiding those conversations because they are uncomfortable ultimately serves no one.
Supporting Professional Growth and Connection
In addition to structural changes, we strengthened opportunities for professional collaboration by creating “critical friends groups,” which are small faculty cohorts of approximately five to nine members, assigned by general grade level or role, often interdisciplinary. These groups meet regularly throughout the year for reflective dialogue about teaching practice, problem-solving, feedback, and professional growth through structured protocols and collegial discussion.
We also introduced informal opportunities for connection, including faculty social gatherings, March Madness brackets, yoga sessions, book clubs, teacher-led craft classes, birthday recognition emails, and occasional coffee-cart breaks. These initiatives supported community-building in ways that complemented the larger institutional changes.
But we knew that culture cannot be rebuilt through perks alone. Dress-down days and special lunches, while appreciated, are not enough to repair trust or shift a professional climate. What matter more are the consistent, everyday gestures—school swag that creates a sense of belonging, a quick note of appreciation, a public acknowledgment of effort or excellence. These small, authentic moments, when paired with meaningful structural change, help build positive morale and reinforce a culture where people feel seen and valued.
A Lesson for School Leaders
Leadership transitions, loss of long-standing faculty members, institutional growth, and changing expectations can affect any school at any time––no school is immune to these challenges. And culture does not necessarily remain stable simply because it once felt strong—it must be consistently tended to with intention and care.
Today, our faculty climate survey provides a year-over-year measure of progress, and the structures we have implemented support a healthy professional culture. It has been—it is––challenging work. At times, it was downright painful.
Yet facing things honestly and openly was ultimately empowering. In doing so, we found a sense of freedom and even joy in rebuilding a school where educators genuinely love coming to work.