As we celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week this week, I am reflecting on the 2025 State of Teaching Report from EdWeek. This report highlights the importance of focusing on morale as a retention lever. Real morale—the kind that sticks—lives in the daily experiences of educators--it shows up in leadership decisions, hallway conversations, classroom dynamics, and Monday morning moods.
Although this year’s data demonstrates some progress in teacher morale, we still need to ask ourselves: What does it really take to build lasting morale? And how do system leaders ensure that today’s improvement isn’t temporary, but transformative?
In a recent episode of The K-12 Change Equation podcast, I had a candid conversation with Superintendent Joseph Hochreiter of Albany Public Schools, who offers rare insight into this question. His experience—leading a district that has experienced seven superintendents in seventeen years—echoes a deeper truth about the fragility of educational ecosystems and the centrality of teacher experience in building sustainable change.
The EdWeek Findings in Real Life
The EdWeek report identifies five key levers that educators say would improve their morale:
- More staffing support
- Stronger leadership
- Fairer compensation
- Better student discipline systems
- Improved wellness benefits
In Albany, Hochreiter’s leadership journey reflects many of these factors—but with a powerful twist: rather than seeing these levers as “central office initiatives,” he frames them as shared responsibilities, co-owned with union leaders, school staff, and even families.
When asked what would most improve teacher morale, his answer wasn’t a new program. It was a mindset: “Climate culture is everyone’s responsibility... it can't land with the superintendent, and similarly, it can't land with just a school principal." This struck me as a critical way we need to think about climate—it isn’t just feedback we collect in focus groups and surveys, but it is the sentiment and mood every day.
Leadership as the Tone-Setter, Not the Fixer
One of the findings that I really wanted to dig into from the report was how leadership influences teacher morale, and by extension, overall climate. The 2025 State of Teaching Report highlighted the importance of stability in leadership, and Albany’s experience is a great example of the current challenge across the country.
Source: Edweek Research Center, The State of Teaching 2025
Joe Hochreiter is the seventh superintendent in 17 years to serve Albany Public Schools—it was inevitable for him to unearth morale and culture as a high priority coming out of his entry planning. Although this is a high strategic priority, he is not treating it as a top-down mandate that the central office has to guide, instead, he has made a commitment to remain steadfast in his leadership and to leverage his years of experience to focus on root causes rather than chasing quick wins or sweeping reforms.
First, he began by asking school leaders and union representatives:
- What should we start doing?
- What should we stop doing?
- What should we keep doing?
This entry plan wasn’t symbolic. It was strategic. And it set the stage for something more powerful than new policies: trust. In a district where leadership turnover had created a “this too shall pass” culture, Hochreiter modeled a new kind of leadership: one that moves slow to go fast, prioritizes relationship over reaction, and builds morale through shared agency—not top-down mandates.
Culture is Not the Superintendent’s Job. It’s Everyone’s.
In the 2025 State of Teaching Report, teachers ranked pay as a top morale driver, but there is an abundance of research that shows how salary increases can provide a short-term bump to engagement and morale, but do not actually shift morale over the long-term. I am not suggesting that compensation is not a factor, but the current reality of district budgets makes it nearly impossible to provide significant enough pay increases to positively impact morale.
So, what can we focus on? Find ways to make connections. Joe and I discovered a mutual approach to building connections in our organizations—we start our meetings with a “check-in.” He recently described how he walked into the room to meet his new team and asked everyone, “What is your favorite music genre?” This type of question drives meaningful connections as his team discovered common interests and were able to share some laughter before diving into the heavy topics they needed to cover in that meeting.--Feeling seen, heard, and respected is the way we need to honor (and retain) our staff.
That’s where Albany’s work is quietly radical. Instead of limiting morale discussions to salary tables, Hochreiter brought union presidents into early and uncomfortable conversations about climate and culture. And he didn’t just consult them—he asked them to co-own it.
The result?
- Cross-role focus groups on staff experience.
- New leadership pipelines—not just for teachers, but for support staff.
- Honest discussion about how leadership behaviors shape working conditions.
This is what it looks like to move from contract negotiation to climate transformation. And while it’s tempting to separate policy from people, Hochreiter reminds us: “It's how we feel Sunday night about getting up to go to work Monday morning. That's climate and culture."
From National Data to Local Courage
The 2025 State of Teaching Report data gives us valuable national signals. But stories like Albany’s show us what change looks like when data meets vulnerability, and when morale becomes more than a trendline.
Teacher morale isn’t fixed with pay bumps or pizza parties. It’s rebuilt—day by day—through leadership that listens and partners with all relevant parties on key initiatives and driving strategy.
The real takeaway for Teacher Appreciation Week?
If we want more teachers to stay, we must stop talking at them and start building with them.
The Challenge for All of Us
As we mark this week of appreciation, it’s worth remembering that teachers don’t need a thank-you mug. They need to feel excited, on Sunday night, for what Monday brings. That’s the new measure of morale. That’s the real appreciation.
And it starts with leaders, at every level, asking one courageous question:
How does it feel to work here, and what are we willing to change to make it better?
For more insights into driving meaningful educational change, we invite you to listen to our podcast or explore additional resources on our website.
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Quotes shared in this blog have been edited for clarity and flow.
