First Questions: On Teacher Recruitment

There is a question sitting beneath almost every strategic conversation I hear happening in Christian schools today. It surfaces in board meetings, in hiring cycles that stretch too long, in resignation letters that arrive too soon. It is the question of people—specifically, whether your school can find, form, and retain the kind of teachers who make everything else possible.

Ask any head of school what keeps them up at night, and the answer rarely starts with curriculum or facilities or even finances. It starts with people. The question has become more acute as Gen Z teachers bring a different set of expectations, a shorter default tenure, and a finely tuned instinct for whether an institution actually lives authentically in its mission.

In an earlier post, I proposed a question that might continually direct us to our true calling: What does faithfully forming students in the image of God require of us? Our challenge, one in the countless decisions we make daily, is to keep asking, “How will this decision help or hinder our students’ growth in the image of God?” It seems to me that this same question is essential as we work to attract and retain the very best faculty—the lifeblood of our schools.

To think through this challenge, I wanted to see what an ancient thinker might say about this complex, modern problem. It is, after all, the summer of Homer’s The Odyssey, right?

Aristotle, the fourth-century BC philosopher who gave us the concept of eudaimonia, or human flourishing, offers some timeless insight. I first encountered Aristotle as a freshman in college, having unknowingly enrolled at a liberal arts university. That providential step is a story for another time, but for now, suffice it to say that God was good to enroll me in a Philosophy 101 course. So much of how I think about my life, my faith, and my career traces back to the Gen Ed courses I would have never chosen on my own.

Aristotle’s central claim—that human beings flourish not in isolation but in communities ordered toward a genuine good—is a vision that Christian schools are, at their best, uniquely positioned to embody.

Throughout my 25 years in education, I’ve watched Aristotle’s ideas reverberate through Christian thought again and again. Relevant to this piece, his ancient ideas have a great deal to say about retention strategy, institutional culture, and what Gen Z is actually looking for in a career. Aristotle’s central claim—that human beings flourish not in isolation but in communities ordered toward a genuine good—is a vision that Christian schools are, at their best, uniquely positioned to embody, especially if we return to the right first question as we build such a place.

What follows is an invitation, in four parts, to think more deeply about the conditions your school creates for your teachers, and through them, for your students. Faithfully forming students in the image of God requires us to make sure the people carrying out that mission daily are thriving—personally, professionally, spiritually. When we nurture our faculty and staff well, key performance indicators tend to follow. So even if ancient philosophers aren’t your thing, stick with me as we consider how to embody the call we’ve been given.

Part One: On the purpose of the school itself

To shed light on our topic, Aristotle would insist we begin with telos, the end goal. He opens the Nicomachean Ethics with the claim that “every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.” Those of us called to Christian schools know we are not merely transmitting information: we are forming human beings toward a vision of the good life. The Westminster Shorter Catechism directly states, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” Aristotle might make this adjacent point: be clear about what kind of person you’re trying to produce because that determines what kind of teacher you need.

Contemporary researchers agree that clarity of purpose is critical. In Shaping School Culture, Terrence Deal and Kent Peterson argue that schools with a clearly articulated sense of purpose develop what they call a “sacred” institutional identity, one that draws mission-aligned educators and holds them together. In On Christian Teaching, Christian educator David Smith argues that clarity about formation (not just instruction) is what actually distinguishes genuinely Christian schooling. A school confused about its telos will attract confused teachers, and confused teachers will, in turn, produce confused students.

This clarity has always mattered, but it matters profoundly for the generation now entering the profession. Three-quarters of Gen Z scrutinize a potential employer’s societal impact before applying, making value alignment a practical hiring consideration rather than a nice-to-have. A survey of 11,250 Gen Z workers indicated that 81% prioritize transparency and honesty at work, and 44% say they’d turn down an employer over a perceived gap between stated and lived values. For Christian schools, that employee priority cuts both ways: a school with a genuinely coherent, lived mission has a real competitive advantage, but one that merely performs its values will be exposed immediately by a generation that can spot the difference.

Aristotle’s telos, Deal and Peterson’s institutional identity, and the experience of leaders in today’s schools all point to the same conclusion: Hiring goes far beyond an HR function; it is primarily, and vitally, a function of your mission.

At Central Christian School in St. Louis, Missouri, Head of School Christan Perona knows that in a small school, mission fit is everything. Her faculty and staff know and live the mission daily, and it is the foundation of hiring new faculty. She shares—

Hiring mission-fit candidates begins with understanding our school accurately. Being honest with who we are and who we are not is critical, and conveying that identity is important—even in job posts. After listing desired qualifications and job responsibilities, we also share our mission and vision to clearly articulate who we are and where we’re going. It allows candidates to know—even before completing an application—if they hold similar convictions and want to join us in our pursuits.

Our Portrait of a Graduate identifies aspirations we have for Central students, but we want our teachers to reflect these traits, too. As we authentically lean into our school’s distinctives and desired outcomes for students in the interview process, we can discern if a candidate’s passions align with our school. Do they truly understand their need for Jesus? Do they want their teaching to influence the whole child—mind, body, and spirit? Do they think and act redemptively?

When hiring, I first look for culture fit, humility, and coachability.

At Grace Community School in Tyler, Texas, core values are lived out and deeply ingrained within the philosophy and practice of the school in most every way. Recruiting faculty relies on the hiring team’s belief in the school’s core values and their ability to discern if those values are modeled in applicants.

Grace’s Head of School Jay Ferguson explains that their hiring begins with their why:

What is the Christocentric reason for our existence, and what is it that we’re trying to accomplish? What is our vision, our direction, and where are we heading in this season?

Because our mission is to “assist, or come alongside, Christian parents in educating, equipping, and encouraging their children to influence the world for Christ,” we want people who first have a deep, abiding relationship in Jesus as well as being top-notch educators. We want people who have the mindset that their role is to help parents, perhaps even doing some equipping of parents themselves, and not replacing the parents. We want teachers who see parents as allies, friends, and partners, not as adversaries. We also want teachers who see their roles as disciple-makers, committed to forming the heart and hands of our students, as well as their heads. Those are some of the implications of our mission and core values.

What that means in practice at Grace is that the interview process really does focus on the candidate’s Christian character, who they are in Jesus, as much as it does on content mastery. Interview teams ask questions specifically designed around core values, such as “Tell me about a time you failed at something professionally, what you’ve learned from it, and how it’s formed your practice,” and “What do you think it means to “love all of God’s children” in the context of Christian education?

In a candidate’s final interview with Grace’s head of school, culture fit is the focus, with discussion surrounding the candidate’s faith history and their current philosophy of education. The head of school explains that Christian schooling is something completely different, perhaps from any past teaching experience candidates had (particularly if they haven’t taught in a Christian school before).

In this interview, the candidate experiences the whole process of helping a teacher educate Christianly—beginning with the metanarrative and fundamental doctrines of Scripture, then layering on a biblical philosophy of education, and finishing with the application to biblically integrated lesson plans, units, pedagogy, discipline, and relationships. At Grace, they want the candidate to have a basic understanding and assent to what may be a whole new approach.  

As we begin a new school year, remember that clarifying your telos, aligning your people around it, and building the systems that make the vision real is the essential, ongoing discipline of school leadership.

The Christian schools that thrive in this era will be the ones whose leadership did the internal work first, that is, naming, with precision and shared conviction, the kind of human being they are trying to form and then translating that vision into the actual language of hiring: job descriptions, interview questions, candidate discernment, onboarding. These schools will have built a culture coherent enough that the right people recognize themselves in it.

This coherence is important for so many reasons, and most of them are related to our foundational and Biblical integrity. Add to that the reality that Gen Z is watching. They’re looking for institutions that mean what they say, and they’re remarkably good at diagnosing hypocrisy. For Christian schools, that expectation is an invitation to be exactly what we’ve always claimed to be.

As we begin a new school year, remember that clarifying your telos, aligning your people around it, and building the systems that make the vision real is the essential, ongoing discipline of school leadership. Perhaps the most important thing a head of school can do is refuse to let hiring season arrive before that work is done.

In Part Two, we will explore how Aristotle might contribute to a discussion about the compensation and credentials of teachers.