Chapter 3
Creating a Culture Supportive of Teaching and Learning
What I love most about being a principal is being able to shape the culture to what we all want it to be.
— A suburban high school principal
It's easy to tell when you've entered a school with great leaders. You don't see students congregating on the street or loitering in the hallway, yet you hear their voices drifting from classrooms. Signs in the entranceway welcome you to the school and proclaim the principal's vision for the school community. Perhaps a first floor bulletin board contains the principal's goals for herself and for the students, has a message from the head of the parents' association, and displays honors achieved by the school in the past.
There might be a countdown clock that displays the number of books read by the school's students so far this year toward the goal of twenty-five each, with covers of those finished artistically displayed.
Other bulletin boards are filled with the work of students arrayed by projects done in their class, with descriptions by their teacher of the lesson that resulted in these products. As you sign in, the security guard volunteers, “Oh, you're here to see Ms. Smith. You're going to love her. We all do; she's made such a difference here.”
As you walk to the main office, many teachers have their classroom doors open (hence the audibility of student voices). Bulletin boards near the main office display data on student attendance: attendance rates by grade level, by class, and the names of those students with perfect attendance.
Once you get to the main office, you are greeted by the principal's assistant, who invites you to have a seat. The principal is not in the office and probably will not return for a while. She is visiting the classrooms of teachers and having discussions with them about their lessons. Of course you understand. This principal has a laser focus on instruction that is evident throughout the school.
You also know when you've entered a district office where teaching children is the pervasive value. In fact, you get that point even before you've set foot into the building. Take the offices of Gwinnett County Public Schools, for example. This district office is called the “Instructional Support Center,” which is proclaimed not only on the building itself but also on the highway and traffic signs that lead to this destination. The naming of the building and the signs along the way reflect the district culture as led by the superintendent. He repeats the message in all he does.
Great schools and districts have highly held shared values; they have common expectations for adults and students that are observable through artifacts, language, ceremonies, rituals, shared history, and symbols. In other words—culture. In fact, there are several cultures operating at any given time. There is a district culture, a school culture, a department culture, a community culture—even a different culture in every classroom. This forms the backdrop of everything that happens.
Culture represents a shared-meaning perspective or way of interpreting events. It is the way things are done around here, a cocoon that makes everyone feel safe and belonging. This is why culture can be comforting and used for stability when other changes are contemplated. People are reassured that the bottom line, their values, is not threatened even though other changes may be afoot. It is both bottom-up and leader-influenced.
Use of Symbols
Symbols are important when understanding culture. There is meaning in what you can see. Everything discussed at the beginning of this chapter is a symbol—student work on the bulletin boards, open classroom doors, and attendance data. This tells quite a lot about the way things are done.
Use of symbols is, therefore, not only a good way to see the culture but also for leaders to change the culture. One principal, who wanted to encourage teachers to use data more frequently, set up a data room with data maps. Not only was this a useful resource but also it was a strong symbol of the importance of data. And, as it was used more and more, data became a way of life in the school.
Of course, the principal is a symbol of the culture by nature of the position. What image does the principal want to portray? This should be a conscious choice.
Shared Values
There are certain values that are found in high-achieving schools and districts. We'll call them instruction-centered values. Effective leaders know and build on the values of the members, but they also lead the organization to elevate certain values to prominence.
But all culture isn't observable. It is also what people believe—both what they say, but more important, how they behave (which may be different and is always more real). Culture also includes common assumptions that are just there for everyone in the group—beliefs so deeply held that they are below the surface and taken as fact or reality by group members—unless and until they are challenged or explored.
The keen observer of culture will recognize behaviors as indicative of shared values, that is, what people believe is reflected in their day-to-day actions. Even though people don't often talk about their values, these can be seen in their actions.
Of course, each group has its own culture. Each school, each district, and each professional association—even each classroom has its own culture. People belong to several groups with distinctive cultures, but in education organizations there are usually values that are common across the board. The effective leader identifies these and builds on them. High-functioning schools and districts develop cultures that support the learning of all involved with the education of the community members.
The friendly warning here is that culture is always in play. As one middle school principal put it, “We didn't seek improvement in culture. Culture sought us out. It found us.” So ignore culture at your peril. Take charge of leading culture change and you will set the stage for everything else needed to achieve the vision.
Cultures develop in two simultaneous ways: they reflect the cumulative real values of community members and also show the clear instruction-centered values driven by the leaders. A culture needs to be built on high expectations for students and the adults. Learning is job one for everyone: the principal and other school leaders, parents and other partners, district leaders, teachers and students. Sometimes these values are one and the same—but often they are not. It is the leaders' job to build an instructionally focused culture. Learning organizations are not only for the students. The goal is continual improvement. Everyone is capable of high achievement.
Shared Values as Symbols
In addition to the foundational belief that all students are capable of high achievement, the culture values respect for everyone as demonstrated by openness, candor, and trust. Students and adults alike are acknowledged and recognized for their contributions as well as for their efforts, even if sometimes they are unsuccessful. Learning from mistakes is a goal and in this way risk taking is valued and leads to new ways of approaching issues that arise and to support constant learning and improving. And, of course, using data to inform decisions is important.
The following examples show how this can work.
Let's consider how the building blocks described in chapter 1 apply to the building of culture: getting buy-in, starting with an early win, and providing ongoing support.
Getting Buy-In: “We're All in This Together”
There is no better way to get people's buy-in to a shared culture than to find out about the individual values of each group member—preferably from each of them personally. People express those values in the context of their roles in the district or school, which is essential to their satisfaction and ability to function effectively. Personal values are important because people don't leave their values on the doorstep as they enter headquarters or the school. Getting this information is easy.
Talk with people; survey them, conduct focus groups, or, as advised in this book, conduct an exercise to measure the culture. It may seem daunting to try to get individual input from a large number of faculty members. It isn't. Conducting the measuring-the-culture exercise can be accomplished in thirty to forty minutes. All staff members will have a personal experience that helps them clarify their own values and see how their values mesh with those of the school's culture.
One problem is an unproductive, principal-driven culture. That is to say, if something does not come from the principal, it won't be done. The most effective cultures are shared. School community members will buy into the overall culture if they contribute to building it. Some if not most of each person's values will be shared by most community members. As buy-in is achieved by finding out about shared values, the leader can attempt to also get buy-in for instruction-centered values, which might not currently be apparent.
Starting with an Early Win
The commitment to putting highly held values into action can be a good early win. This could come as the publicizing of a values statement for the school that incorporates the shared values (now that you know what they are). Similar to the previously discussed elementary school's PRIDE motto, this is an important symbol of commitment—and also tests the assumption of whether the words chosen are indeed the values.
In that western district, they celebrated an early win once the educators had chosen the shared values. They called it “Values Day,” and everyone from the district came together (school leaders, central office staff, teachers, secretaries, bus drivers, parents, lunchroom workers, custodians) to celebrate and reflect on the shared core values and make a personal connection to the vision. It was a day dedicated to developing a common understanding of how to put the core values into action at all places in the school system. Having established this as an early win, it is now an annual occurrence.
A different type of early win is to choose one widely held value, develop a plan to get more of it into daily life, and report back on how it goes. For example, in several schools, teachers use the measuring-the-culture exercise with their students. This gives the students the same experience that their teachers had, providing data for teachers to use as motivation in lesson plans, and symbolizes the importance of learning for all community members. After that early win, do the same with other widely held values.
Providing Ongoing Support
Knowing members' values and aspiring to the instruction-centered values is necessary but not sufficient. There must be constant emphasis and support for these values so they are expressed in all facets of the organization's daily life. This means that members' values and the aspirational instruction-centered values must be on display and in use constantly. This isn't as hard as it might seem.
People's values are very important to them. They will flood you with ideas of how to incorporate them more into daily life. Just ask! You can even put parameters around the acceptable ideas, such as they can't involve additional funding. It doesn't matter. People who hold these values will have many ideas. Ongoing support involves putting those ideas into action.
See It in Action: Leading School Culture 
Two detailed examples of principals who have developed innovative ways to build the school's culture – or climate'' follow with have been developed by Public Broadcasting Service affiliate WNET. They may be found at http://bit.ly/highpayoff3.
In the video the two principals discuss the relationship between school culture and academic performance. They have led school culture in ways that create a supportive climate for teaching and learning—through systems and processes that are observable. They have aligned the culture experienced by the students with the larger school culture experienced by the adults. We also see the manifestation of the culture in the shared leadership the principals employ—in which the values of the school are seen in other leaders. Also observable is the importance of parental involvement in furthering the community culture of the school.
The middle school in Prince George's County, Maryland demonstrates how culture can be used to take a school from one with student behavior problems that are getting in the way of instruction to one where there is consistency of expectation across all the adults and students in the building. Culture change has led to cutting student suspensions by 90% and an openness and sharing among teachers and among teachers and administration. This culture change was brought about by having a Culture Responsiveness Task Force comprised of a cross-section of folks. Some practices it led to are the creation of a new position, Assistant Principal of Culture, celebration of student success, and student uniforms. Consistency was the goal. And it was achieved.
What Can Get in the Way?
Establishing a culture that is supportive of teaching and learning is essential but hard to do. Here are some reasons why.
Culture Is Often Invisible
Mistakes can be made if the culture is inadvertently upset. We know that happens all the time. Why? Because some of the most important aspects of the culture are assumptions that members carry with them. They are so ingrained that people just assume they are reality. And this refers not only to huge assumptions such as worldviews but also to small things that have resulted from shared history within the organization.
People Don't Know Their Own Values
Because people's values are so important to them, one would think that everyone would be aware of them all the time—in fact, they would live by them. If only this were so! It is true that those who are most fulfilled live a life in which they always act in accordance with their values; this is not usually the case. When we form our values, in our youth mostly, we give a lot of thought to this. However, once we enter the world, have chosen careers, and establish family life, for most of us, thinking about our values recedes into the background. Been there, done that.
However, our values often change as our life experience does. Seldom do we take the time to reflect on how our values have changed until there is some sort of dilemma or crisis that leads us to wonder if there is some gap between what we value and how we are living our lives. Often our values are more clearly observable to others than to ourselves. Others who interact with us and watch our behavior are often more aware than we are of what we think is important.
In reality, most people grow and change their values (or at least the order of their priority in their lives). As we become more satisfied with the presence of a value in our lives, we sometimes take it for granted, and achieving another value becomes a higher priority. We don't stop to recognize this, but we behave in different ways.
Valuing health is a good example. Most people take health for granted when they are healthy. If something happens to question their health (or the health of someone close to them), health as a value becomes a top priority.
The Leader Makes Assumptions
Leaders are human beings. They also have personal values and need to be reflective of those and how they may have changed. However, it is essential that leaders realize that their personal values are just that—their own personal values. Those values are not indicative of what is important to anyone else. We all tend to think that what we value is automatically shared by others. It's our way of interpreting the world. But this isn't the case. Not testing these assumptions leads to a misinterpretation of the culture. Therefore, once leaders reflect on their own values, they then must put those aside and objectively help others critically analyze theirs.
A similar obstacle is that leaders sometimes make untested assumptions about the values of others. This often comes about by the leader observing the behaviors of others and adding an interpretation rather than finding out what is really going on. For example, an elementary school principal lamented that the teachers “just didn't value professional development.” This was very disappointing to her and also disruptive of her plans to improve instruction in the school.
On what evidence did this principal base her view that teachers did not value professional development? During the sessions, many teachers were distracted, checked their watches often, and ran out immediately when the session concluded. The leader interpreted that they “clearly” weren't interested. However, this wasn't the case. Professional development was important to the teachers. However, the sessions were scheduled at the end of the day—when many teachers had to pick up their children from daycare or after-school programs. The priority value was their children. This didn't mean, however, that they didn't also value professional development. Values aren't absolute; they are relative. Something can be important, but something else can be more so.
Once the principal tested this assumption and found out what was really going on, she found a better time to schedule professional development. Once the conflict was resolved between the two values (learning and family), both were accommodated and professional development was well received.
People Misunderstand the Importance of Symbols
The symbolic aspect of culture is very important. It is a public display of mission, appreciation, and what is valued. This is the reason, for example, that salary, raises, and bonuses are often more important as symbols of achievement or appreciation than the actual purchasing power of the money. It is of great importance that, if something is a symbol of a larger message, it is not changed unless the leader means to send a message that what was represented by the symbol is no longer valued.
__________
Knowing what can get in the way helps to avoid the pitfalls. The measuring-the-culture tool that follows should help leaders develop the supportive culture and get the buy-in and needed data to develop the early win and ongoing support.