First Year of Teaching /Leadership

School Culture:  Who is responsible?

Most experts will agree that school culture plays a critical role in predicting and determining school success.  Who would argue that a collegial and collaborative school is more likely to yield high student achievement and a high level of both teacher and student satisfaction?  One could also argue that a healthier school culture will also produce a higher level of teacher effectiveness.

Even if we agree on the importance of school culture, there is a chance we will not agree on where the responsibility lies in the development and sustenance of a healthy school culture.  So who is responsible?  As a school principal for many years, I felt bombarded by the literature and expert opinions that the culture was the sole responsibility of the principal.  Many times, I felt that no matter what I did regarding this matter, I was “swimming upstream.”  It is now clear to me that the responsibility of developing a healthy school culture lies with every person in the school community.   As a new teacher, you cannot hide from this responsibility.  You cannot sit back and point fingers.  You are part of the system.  My time as an administrator could have been better spent in a more productive manner, working to develop a belief in a shared ownership of school culture and climate.

Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker in their book School Culture Rewired (2015) present one of the clearest and easy to understand messages on culture. They describe the culture as the school’s personality, based on values and beliefs that take years to evolve.  School climate is best defined as the group’s attitude that can be very changeable.  Climate is what you do, and culture is why you do it.

Each person in a school community must reflect and think about how the/she contributes to the school’s culture.  Each individual must also think about how he/she contributes to the climate in both a positive and negative way.  If this were an honest assessment, I would argue that many readily absolve themselves of any responsibility.  It is very easy to point fingers and place blame.  Please understand, this is not an anti teacher article.  I do not absolve school leaders and especially the principal, for allowing a deleterious culture and climate to continue.  The improvement of culture (personality) and climate (attitude) is impossible without an effective leader.  While trying to improve culture, one must think about it daily.  Thoughts must turn into collective positive actions.  If each individual became a personal caretaker for the culture, I believe that a positive culture and climate would be established first within the teacher, then within the classroom, then within a department or grade level, and so on.  The potential is limitless.  But it is hard work.

Gruenert and Whitaker (2015) go on to assert that one has three simple choices regarding culture. You can comply, you can work to change it, or you can leave it.  Staying to destroy the culture whether consciously or unconsciously hurts everyone.

Likewise, this message must be conveyed to parents and students.  School leadership has to include teacher leadership and the cultivation of teacher leaders.

In a school with a positive culture, teachers are motivated, teachers are collaborative, are heard and are evaluated fairly.

I will close this article by referring to a recent issue of Educational Leadership (Summer 2015) where the editors posed this question to teachers:  What one word best describes an excellent school you have worked in or observed? Teacher answers included: collaborative, community, family, trust, personalized, connected, awareness, professional, joy, collegial, innovative, and coherent.  Just think how exciting and productive it would be if you worked in a school that possessed these qualities.  How exciting would it be to be in an environment that made decisions based upon what was good for students and not what was best for the adults or local politics.  It would be a powerful and empowering place.

I remain convinced that by working together and by each person holding him/herself personally accountable anything is possible.  No one person can do it alone.

Good luck in your quest.

References

Gruenert, S. and Whitaker, T. (2015).  School Culture Rewired:  How to define, assess and transform it. Virginia: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Scherer, M., editor (2015). In a Word.  Educational Leadership, 72(9), 13.