Student learning grows in professional cultures

An article in a professional publication describes how a variety of schools have used study groups to explore topics of
interest to teachers. Two teachers reading the article react quite differently.

One says, "Great idea. The teachers in my school would love to try that. How would we get started?"

Another groans. "That might work in your school but it would never work in my school."

Each teacher has just identified an element of the culture in her school.

Culture is, simply, the way we do things around here. No teacher needs a handbook to know what's "right and what's rude" in the school in which she works. Students, teachers, and parents may not be able to define a school's culture but they know what is important and what is expected in that school.

In their upcoming book, Shaping Culture: The School Leader's Role, Terrence Deal and Kent Peterson describe culture this way: "Culture is the underground stream of norms, values, beliefs, traditions, and rituals that have been built up over time as people work together, solve problems, and confront challenges."

Every church, business, community, even every block in your neighborhood has its own culture. Schools are no different. A school's culture may support teachers who try to improve their teaching or it may ridicule anyone who tries to stand out from the crowd. It might encourage teachers to work on projects together or it might punish anyone who seeks such collegial support. The culture may encourage teachers to set high standards for students or it may send a message that "these kids can't be expected to do much better."

Why does culture matter? For that, Kent Peterson has a very simple answer. "In study after study, where culture did not support and encourage reform, it did not happen. It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of culture and its relationship to improved student learning. You have to have the structures, a curriculum, appropriate assessments - all of that. But if you don't have a strong and healthy school culture, none of the rest will matter," he said.

In their 1985 article, Jon Saphier and Matthew King identified 12 norms which they said affected school improvement. (See below.)

"If certain norms of school culture are strong, improvements in instruction will be significant, continuous, and widespread; if these norms are weak, improvements will be, at best, infrequent, random, and slow," they said.

Peterson believes schools must begin by identifying the norms and beliefs in the school. He suggests answering these questions:

What are the rituals, traditions, and ceremonies in your school?

Who are the heroes in your school?

What stories do you tell about your school?

What symbols, slogans, and images represent your school?

How do you recognize student achievement?

How do you recognize staff growth?

Next, identify norms and beliefs that the staff wants to reinforce or change.

Again, Peterson poses a series of questions to help a staff:

Do the daily actions of teachers and principals support your underlying core values?

Do the history and stories that are told about your school support your core values?

What rituals and ceremonies would reinforce the key values in your school?

EXEMPLARY SCHOOL CULTURES

Each of this year's winners of this year's U.S. Department of Education Model Professional Development Awards can point to a time when the school's culture began to shift. (See the fall issue of the JSD to learn more about these winning schools and districts.) Like other USDOE winners, Ganado (Arizona) Intermediate School principal Susan Stropko said she focused on cultural issues before trying to address issues of student learning. "I went in knowing the culture had to be changed. They were not feeling very heard or cared about. Nothing was going to change in that school until that changed," she said.

At Ganado, the process began by having grade level teams talk about their frustrations over lunch once a week, a step that Peterson endorses. "People need a chance to believe things can get better, they need a positive path, and they need hope," Peterson said.

"These conversations were basically about everything that was wrong. There was real unhappiness. They needed some time to vent," Stropko said.

Stropko joined in those conversations. "I did not go off on my own. I sat there and I listened. I was trying to establish my own credibility as a listener and as an administrator who would value what I heard and would work to get teachers what they said they needed."

These staff conversations continued until the Christmas break. "It was only after all of that that we could talk about the strengths and weaknesses of the school," she said.

"Their own changes were harder to talk about than the changes they wanted me to make. Once they laid out what they wanted to achieve, then we found out what we wanted to learn in order to do that," she said.

Peterson said a school needs to identify its own culture and saying openly that not everyone will like working in this school. "If you've been going along for years with established structures and an established culture, it's very hard to re-examine what you're about. There is pain in giving up things that are fun and being able to complain without responsibility is part of the fun for some people," he said.

"There are people who don't want to improve their practice. They just don't want to be helped all the time," Peterson said.

Schools that gain the reputation as a "work hard, play hard" school soon will be less attractive to staffers who don't share that attitude and, eventually, he said, the new culture will perpetuate itself.

The 12 Norms of a Healthy School Culture

1. Collegiality
2. Experimentation
3. High expectations
4. Trust and confidence
5. Tangible support
6. Reaching out to knowledge base
7. Appreciation and recognition
8. Caring, celebration, and humor
9. Involvement in decision making
10. Protection of what's important
11. Traditions
12. Honest, open communication
    

Source: "Good Seeds Grow in Strong Cultures'' by Jon Saphier and Mathew King (Educational Leadership, March 1985).