Every school has a palpable climate and culture. In some schools, you can feel an energy that invites students, staff, family members, and visitors to engage in learning. In these schools, there isn't one leader, but many—and every leader understands his or her role in maintaining this culture. Sadly, because school culture is fragile, a positive school feel can change rapidly if people don't understand the school's vision.
Five Pillars
With our colleague Ian Pumpian, we recently identified five pillars that ground leaders' efforts to establish, improve, and maintain a growth-producing school climate and culture.
- Welcome everyone. From the front office to the classrooms, all interactions should make everyone who enters feel their presence is expected—and valued. A math teacher we know was worried that more than 50 percent of his students were failing. He discovered his students were telling others they didn't really like him—because he didn't seem to care about them. He began standing in the doorway before every class period, greeting students by name and offering a high-five or handshake. Within weeks, these students began opening up more to this teacher. By the semester's end, less than 10 percent were failing, and students noted how welcomed they felt in his classroom.
- Do no harm. This sums up our classroom management policy as well as our expectation for how adults should interact. When harm is done—because, realistically, this will happen sometimes—schools with healthy cultures work to repair the harm rather than simply punish the offender.
- Use "choice words." We borrow this term from Johnston (2004) as a reminder that the language of adults can either build students' agency or compromise it. When a teacher tells a student, "I noticed you used some of the strategies we've been talking about. They seem to be working for you," the student has the opportunity to reflect on her progress. She'll be more likely to acquire a growth mindset, which contributes positively to her school's overall climate.
- Make it never too late to learn. There's a phrase in education: "Failure is not an option." But in practice, that's often not the case. Syllabi and grading policies tell students that they might well fail. Kids see peers fail. Schools with a learning-focused culture develop policies that focus on mastery and competency rather than sorting kids into "succeeding" and "failing."
- Strive to be the "Best School in the Universe." We selected this phrase because it's unattainable but aspirational. Some might see this attitude as boastful; we see it as an opportunity for all stakeholders to ask themselves: Did we live up to the best we could imagine? Is this the school we would send our own children to?
And One Tool: Branding
This last pillar led us to think about branding. We'd been cynical about branding in education because we saw it as a tool of big business and worried that it could feed competition between schools. Sinanis and Sanfelippo's 2014 book The Power of Branding: Telling Your School's Story (Corwin, 2014) changed our thinking. We realized that others were telling the story of the school where we teach—and focusing mainly on test scores and demographics (we're a high-poverty school). Health Sciences High has had test-score success, but we also have amazing internship experiences, fantastic parent events, and more. We wanted our voices to be the ones narrating Health Science High's story.
Branding a school isn't about selling the school or the kids who go there. It's about sharing the amazing things happening at that site. Organizations, like people, develop their identity based on the stories they tell about themselves to themselves, and culture is lifted when we collect and share positive stories. Health Sciences High uses these branding tools:
- Creating informational videos. Each year, we create a school highlights video to share with visitors, family members, new students, and potential students. The informational video for our 2017–2018 school year accompanies this column. It focuses on things we're proud of and showcases Health Science High's culture and climate, which reinforces our expectations for maintaining that atmosphere.
- Communicating with technology about kids' learning. A daily email to all staff mentions students' successes in their internships, providing openings for discussion. One recent email mentioned a student on track to become a registered nurse: "Today in the ER, Tamara was present [when] a 21-year-old patient died from an overdose. … She got some real-life experience with … intense nursing circumstances, and serious health consequences." Knowing this had happened, teachers were able to talk with Tamara about how this event affected her.
- Sharing community experiences through Twitter, Snapchat, and the like. The school livestreams our graduation ceremonies. When we had family haircut night, we snapped photos to share with the world.
Shaping Perceptions
Every institution's climate and culture can be shaped to contribute to learning—or that culture can be neglected. Branding allows people within a school to positively shape the way the community thinks about itself; this in turn makes it easier to maintain a healthy culture. Why not use branding to create an environment where everyone wants to spend time?
