Raboteus de parquet, Gustave Caillebotte, Musée d’Orsay, Paris , France (2019)

Picture taken by Jonathan Acuña

The Working Atmosphere

Where are the heads and directors looking into?

         Where does one’s role as a head or director in an education institution lie? Some may say that one’s head and eyes are focused on the company’s mission, vision, and institutional values. Some others will say that it needs to be fixated on the company’s culture and working atmosphere. Regardless of the center of attraction for these individuals, part of one’s cogitation ought to be aiming at considering whether the company’s mission or its culture is practical, achievable, and shareable with everyone who is currently working and who can eventually take a position in the institution.

         Worker engagement needs to be experienced on a daily basis. Heads and directors should promote employee commitment but bearing in mind that as leaders they are in the human relations business. The unhappy teacher who is often taken out of his/her strength zone can become discouraged because, as explained by Lewin (2020), a worker’s engagement has to be kept and maintained alive through time, especially because it is the people who make the working place. Heads and directors, who are also part of a working place, must work, as put out by Lewin (2020), on having people aligned with the institution’s mission and vision from the very beginning; hiring people because they need a job implies that they can leave any moment when they can find more competitive perks in another company. “Even in a tight job market,” like the one that is being experienced today, “unhappy employees will leave the organization as soon as they can, even if it sometimes means taking a lower-paying or lower-status job” (Williams, n.d.).

         Lewin (2020) asks heads and directors in education institutions, if instead of working under pressure, are we all to work under passion?” A hostile environment, where workers feel as if they were under fire in a battlefield, is not what educators are looking for in a teaching job. Instructors can then opt to leave the company for greener and grassier meadows where they are treated differently. The working atmosphere in the teachers’ trenches can trascend this battle ditch into the classrooms. But if heads and directors do not listen to this willful but pesky noise, the institution can get stuck in its comfort cocoon for life and then discover the dire repercussions of their deafness. As Williams (n.d.) states, “Low morale can ‘”can quickly build or break company’s success.’”

Something needs to be done to always make instructors feel gratified by the school because one wants them to work under passion and help students achieve real learning. Heads and directors in an institution cannot simply shrug their shoulders and walk away from teachers’ needs of appreciation and recognition. It is no wonder teachers can be wroth with middle and high corporate executives because they do not feel appreciated by the work they perform for an institution. The only real thing teachers long to have sight of is being fairly treated with the institutional values to create the right work atmosphere for everyone. In the end, one’s words can tell a story, but one’s actions will tell the truth (Lewin, 2020).