You are passionate about something, and you want others to feel and live your enthusiasm. We have all had that “something” that has meant a lot to us, and we want others to embrace the same ideas. Yet, our enthusiasm and approach in helping shift the thinking of others can sometimes alienate others and can push them further away from when you started. What you believe may be a “no-brainer” idea or solution just doesn’t seem to connect with someone else and all of the convincing in the world doesn’t seem to shift someone’s thinking.
I have been guilty of this approach and have written things in the past that have reflected a “do this or become irrelevant” type nature. In 2011, I wrote a post called, “This Is Not Optional Anymore,” discussing why technology use needs to be the norm from school administrators. Here is a snippet:
There
can no longer be an “opt out” clause when dealing with technology in
our schools, especially from our administrators. We need to prepare our
kids to live in this world now and in the
future. Change may feel hard, but it is part of learning. We expect it
from our kids, we need to expect it from ourselves.
This is not optional anymore.
See how I bolded and italicized the word “now” to make you feel guilty if you weren’t ready to shift thinking in a few minutes? I actually remember when and where I wrote this post and how bad of a mood I was when putting it together (not a good time to write!). Did posts like this garner praise from people that already agreed with my position while pushing people that needed support to move further away from where I hope they would shift? I still believe a lot of what I say in the original post, and the delivery may have shifted the thinking of a few, but my approach has changed, and I am a lot of more cognizant of how I bring people together, not push them apart. I can still get better at this, but I am much more thoughtful of my delivery, not just in the ideas I want to share.
From my experience, here are three things that I have found that have been helpful in shifting the thinking of others.
Listen. Our gut tells us that the more we talk and have convincing arguments, the more we can help people shift their thinking. Of course, having a good argument in what you believe can make a difference, but if we truly listen and understand where others are in their journey, we might realize that we are closer in our viewpoints than when you originally started.
Ask Questions. If you want to understand what someone is thinking, ask them questions to further understand. Sometimes in those answers, you might learn something and shift your thinking, and realize that you have more in common than when you first started. This also helps the person you are having a conversation to articulate their ideas and why they think the way they do. Sometimes having someone state and articulate their position is more helpful to their own shift than only hearing the viewpoint of someone else. Which leads to the last point.
Find Common Ground. As I have matured in my approach and viewpoint on how to help others change their thinking, I have realized that many of the answers we are looking for exist somewhere in the middle than rather than rooted in extremes. If you think about your own positions and thought process, there are things you do today or believe that you may not have agreed with at one point in your life. Was your shift something that happened overnight, or did it happen over a long period of time? Find those middle spaces with those you are serving and having conversations with and see if there is agreement. Moving people one step forward is always better than one step back, and you might learn something about yourself in the process.
Reading books such as “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie have had an impact on my thinking. I love the quote, “You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.” Shifting the thinking of others goes beyond having a “good argument.” Of course, there are times when our approach can and should be different, but we also have to appreciate that people are all at different points in their journey and that honoring that process is much more likely to lead to growth for all parties involved.
https://www.williamdparker.com/2019/03/06/pmp144-building-and-maintaining-positive-school-culture/
PMP:144 Building and Maintaining Positive School Culture
Leave a reply
Audio Player
08:59
28:39
Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | RSS
Cultivating a positive school culture is a lot like tending a garden.
Photo by Gabriel Jimenez – Creative Commons No known copyright restrictions https://unsplash.com/@gabrielj_photography?utm_source=haikudeck&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=api-credit
When you have tilled the soil, pulled the weeds, and watered your plants, your work is not finished. You will need to take the same steps again soon in order to keep a healthy environment for growth.
School culture requires the same care. In order to build and maintain a positive school culture, you must identify challenges and promote positives.
In the book, You’re the Principal, Now What? Strategies and Solutions for New School Leaders, author Jen Schwanke shares three kinds of school cultures to keep in mind: two negatives to combat and one positive to promote:
A Culture of Isolation
A Culture of Distrust
A Culture of Confidence, Understanding, and Teamwork
This week, Jen Schwanke joins Principal Matters Podcast to co-host a new series on Strategies and Solutions for New School Leaders. During this episode, we discuss the following strategies:
1. Gauging the past: This includes researching your school’s history and staying impartial when gathering information.
2. Building from the ground up: This requires establishing trust, showing appreciation, staying positive, leading by example, asking the right questions, taking one step at a time, and not expecting perfection.
3. Keeping momentum: Throughout the year, you must relentlessly take stock, be visible, make a goal of “every kid, every teacher, every day”, get personal, and be personable.
Let’s Wrap This Up
No matter what time of the year, cultivating positive school culture involves promoting work within and outside the classroom, gathering people together, seeking ideas and input from others, building teams, and rewarding evidence of positive culture. As you do the consistent work of building a culture of confidence, understanding, and teamwork, you promote a healthy environment for student growth. Listen-in to this week’s podcast conversation to learn more!
Now It’s Your Turn
What is one step you can take today to engage “every student and every teacher” in a positive school experience? Whether you increasing visibility or sharing out student happenings on social media, keep cultivating the “good soil” of your school culture this week.
Sign-Up For Free Updates and Ebook
When you enter your email address below, you will automatically receive my newest posts and a free Ebook, 8 Hats: Essential Roles for School Leaders. Let’s keep learning together!
http://www.spencerauthor.com/seven-reasons-to-show-your-work/
When I was a kid, I loved watching reality TV. Okay, it wasn’t really reality TV. It was PBS. However, I would watch an entire season of This Old House, as Bob Vila walked viewers step-by-step through a cumbersome restoration process. This never included a “choose these three options” or “surprise ending.” Instead, the homeowners were part of the process; and, on some level, so were the viewers. Although the progress was slow, I felt like I actually learned how home improvements happen. True, you didn’t get the “big reveal” that you get on HGTV shows.
This was the same way I felt watching Bob Ross paint happy little trees. I knew there were better artists out there. My mom had taken us to museums with famous paintings. But I loved watching Bob Ross. The more I watched Bob Ross, the more I wanted to paint on my own.
The same goes with the segments on Wonderful World of Disney, where I got the chance to see how they animated the films. I loved seeing the painstakingly slow process of animation. I also loved watching the field trips with Mr. Rogers, when we would leave his neighborhood and visit a factory or a shop to learn about how they made crayons or built a table.
You would think this demystifying element would destroy the magic, but that’s not what happened. Instead, I realized that making is magic.
I felt inspired.
I remember as a child looking around my house at one point and realizing, “Holy crap, someone made this stuff. Someone started with an idea and made a design and now it’s in our house.” I wanted to learn more about how things were made. And, ultimately, that curiosity inspired my creativity.
On a much more shallow level, we watched the Tiger Tomato channel with pancake art:
We spent twenty minutes watching this together as a family before my son looked at me and said, “Dad, we’re going to do this, right?”
I nodded and grinned. An hour later, we were at the store buying pancake supplies and figuring out what kind of bottle we would need. Our pancakes were less than impressive. But that’s okay. For a week, we made pancake art and explored the best methods for getting the textures and colors right.
Showing Your Work
Austin Kleon describes this as “showing your work.” It’s the idea that we should share our creative journey with others. It’s what happens when you make videos showing your creative process or when you share snapshots of your work on social media. It’s what happens when you put yourself out there in a creative community. I love this quote from Kleon’s book Show Your Work:
You see this with kids who engage with an online community centered around their interests. I saw this when a girl in my eighth-grade class showed me the five novels she had already published on Wattpad and then shared her Tumblr where she asked for feedback in the characters and plots she developed. I noticed this when my kids started playing Minecraft and began watching and creating Minecraft videos.
Henry Jenkins describes these as “participatory cultures.” He includes the following elements:
Low barriers to participation
Strong support for sharing
Informal mentorship
Members who believe their contributions matter and value the participation of others
Social cohesion
Participatory cultures are often creative and open rather than consumer-oriented or closed. They are multi-age, interest-based, and centered on shared interests. They are, in many respects, the opposite of an industrial school model.
Participatory cultures remind us that creativity isn’t a solitary endeavor. It is nearly always to and from a community. Great ideas rarely happen in isolation. Instead, they are a part of the constant sharing back and forth of what we are learning, doing, and making. This is why it’s so valuable to show our work.
Seven Reasons to Show Your Work
I’ve been thinking about this idea of “showing your work.” A few weeks ago, I wrote a post describing how I refine my lessons. I almost didn’t post it, because, honestly, who wants to read a post describing how to modify a unit plan. To my surprise, it was one of the most read posts the entire month.
1. Showing your work encourages metacognition.
When you show your work, you are forced to communicate what you did and how you did it in a way that others understand. It becomes a chance to reflect on your work but also clarify misconceptions and catch any blind spots.
If you look at the entire metacognition cycle mentioned in the video, you’ll notice that the last part of metacognition is the reflection piece. When students are sharing their journey, they are more reflective on their process and better able to plan a new approach in the future.
2. Innovation skyrockets when people show their work.
I’ve written before about what Pixar can teach us about creativity. Edward Clapp, a researcher at Project Zero, reminds us to look at creative ideas as stories with their own biographies. Instead of focusing on a single founder, what you see is that great ideas are often the result of a network of information in a community of transparency. When you show your work, you are helping to build this type of community. In the process, you are sharing your mistakes and building trust through vulnerability.
3. They become mentors.
You see this when students share their process with the world. As they realize that others are watching and noticing, they internalize the idea that they are creative thinkers and problem-solvers. I’ve seen this with my pre-service teachers. When they work on their professional educator blogs, they often move from simply writing introspective posts to sharing ideas of what works in their classrooms. As this happens, they are able to help others in the larger educational community.
In other words, they begin to mentor other teachers.
Think of the last time you were stuck in how to do something. Where did you go for an answer? It’s possible you called someone on the phone, but there’s a higher likelihood you went to YouTube or you visited a website. When this happens, there’s an informal mentoring process going on. Too often, we think our work isn’t anything special, because it doesn’t seem new or impressive. But there’s a good chance it’s new and impressive to someone.
4. It can lead to collaborative partnerships.
When I think of my favorite collaborative projects, I notice a trend. They are nearly all people I met years ago on Twitter. What began as an exchange of ideas eventually became a chance to show our work and that morphed into a collaborative relationship. In some cases, these fellow educators have become close friends.
I saw the same thing two years ago when my son was encouraged to share his work and his process with his classroom peers. He not only began to view himself as an author, but he also saw his peers as fellow authors in a sort of author’s guild. That summer, he organized an online writer’s workshop, where they all shared their unfinished pieces with one another. Here, they also shared their journey, engaged in goal-setting, and talked about their frustrations. It was chaotic and informal but it was also powerful.
At one point, they began co-writing stories and persuasive posts together. The sharing of their craft led naturally to collaborative projects. In the following video, I share the distinction between collaboration and cooperation:
When students share their journey, they are engaging in meaningful cooperative learning. But often, this leads to more trust and ultimately collaborative learning.
5. You can change the narrative.
This is especially true of teachers. There are so many stories of how awful schools are and how out-of-touch teachers are. However, when students share their learning journeys with the community, it changes the narrative by showing evidence of the great things happening in your classroom. My friend Tim Lauer use to walk around taking snapshots of the creative work his students were doing. This affirmed the creative voice of the students but it also honored the creative work of the teachers who worked as architects of innovation in his school. It wasn’t self-promotion. Nor was it branding. It was simply storytelling at its core. And it was awesome.
There is a powerful narrative right now telling the world that our schools are all broken and teachers are merely powerless pawns in the system. Cogs in a wheel in a factory style education system. It’s a popular theme in articles and news stories and even keynotes. But I don’t buy it. I think there are amazing creative things happening all around us if we’re willing to look . . . and when we’re willing to share.
6. Sharing your journey can help build courage
When you share your journey, you are being courageous. You are saying to the world, “I’m not afraid to be known.” But you’re also modeling humility. You’re saying, “I know that my learning journey is filled with bumps and bruises and scraped knees, but I’m going to share that with you.” This begins with teachers choosing to share our own journeys. This can feel arrogant. You might be feeling like your work isn’t all that awesome. But I guarantee you it’s awesome to someone. When you choose to show your work, you are not only participating in the creative culture of education, but you are actually redefining it. You are helping other teachers become better at their craft. You are transforming education for students you don’t even know.
The same is true for students. When they share their process with other students, they learn how to give and receive peer feedback. This can feel scary but the critical feedback is how they improve their skills and grow as creative thinkers. We use the 20-minute peer feedback system.
You can check out the process below:
7. Students embrace the revision process.
When students only share their highly polished, finished work, they miss out on the opportunity to improve their work through multiple revisions. However, when they actively share their process and their progress, they begin to internalize the idea the idea that creative work is all about iterations.
Making This a Reality
While sharing your journey makes a lot of sense, we have tight schedules, rigid curriculum maps, and valid concerns about the issues of privacy / oversharing publicly. Here’s where it’s helpful to have conversations about where and when to share your journey. So much of this is dependent on age and human development. For example, older students might want to share globally or with peers but are less excited about sharing with parents while younger students might want to share with their parents but shouldn’t share too much to a global audience. Context and subject also make a difference. But you can think about audiences in layers: Level 1: Private
Students reflect alone. Even the teacher doesn’t get a chance to read their reflections and insights. Level 2: Semi-private
Students might share with their pairs, small groups, or teacher. In some cases, the students might share their work with their family at home. For the most part, the sharing stays within the confines of the classroom walls. Level 3: Semi-public
Students engage in multi-class collaboration (global projects), the whole school, or other classes within their school (other class periods). Although it’s not totally public, the audience is still bigger than the immediate classroom. Level 4: Public
Students share with the world.
The sharing varies from class to class and subject to subject. In a math class, students might share their problem-solving strategies or they might create tutorials showing people how they solved a problem. In a language arts class, it might involve a writer’s workshop or peer feedback on their process. For P.E., music, or art, it might involve documenting the skill development with a video montage and reflections. In a science course, it might involve a podcast documenting the stages of a scientific experiment, with students sharing insights during the experiment rather than just at the end. In social studies, you might have students share what they are discovering as they go through an ongoing blog. I’ve seen teachers use social media to have students document their journey as they go or, for a more private option, they send emails or SeeSaw links to their parents or guardians.
I’d love for you to share ideas of how students could share their journey. Please consider sharing your ideas in the comment section below.
Most principals have an instinctive awareness that organizational culture is a key element of school success. They might say their school has a “good culture” when teachers are expressing a shared vision and students are succeeding — or that they need to “work on school culture” when several teachers resign or student discipline rates rise.
But like many organizational leaders, principals may get stymied when they actually try to describe the elements that create a positive culture. It's tricky to define, and parsing its components can be challenging. Amid the push for tangible outcomes like higher test scores and graduation rates, it can be tempting to think that school culture is just too vague or “soft” to prioritize.
That would be a mistake, according to Ebony Bridwell-Mitchell, an expert in education leadership and management. As she explains, researchers who have studied culture have tracked and demonstrated a strong and significant correlation between organizational culture and an organization’s performance. Once principals understand what constitutes culture — once they learn to see it not as a hazy mass of intangibles, but as something that can be pinpointed and designed — they can start to execute a cultural vision.
At a recent session of the National Institute for Urban School Leaders at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Bridwell-Mitchell took a deep dive into “culture,” describing the building blocks of an organization’s character and fundamentally how it feels to work there. Culture Is Connections
A culture will be strong or weak depending on the interactions between the people in the organization, she said. In a strong culture, there are many, overlapping, and cohesive interactions among all members of the organization. As a result, knowledge about the organization’s distinctive character — and what it takes to thrive in it — is widely spread and reinforced. In a weak culture, sparse interactions make it difficult for people to learn the organization’s culture, so its character is barely noticeable and the commitment to it is scarce or sporadic.
Beliefs, values, and actions will spread the farthest and be tightly reinforced when everyone is communicating with everyone else. In a strong school culture, leaders communicate directly with teachers, administrators, counselors, and families, who also all communicate directly with each other.
A culture is weaker when communications are limited and there are fewer connections. For example, if certain teachers never hear directly from their principal, an administrator is continually excluded from communications, or any groups of staff members are operating in isolation from others, it will be difficult for messages about shared beliefs and commitments to spread.
Culture Is Core Beliefs and Behaviors
Within that weak or strong structure, what exactly people believe and how they act depends on the messages — both direct and indirect — that the leaders and others in the organization send. A good culture arises from messages that promote traits like collaboration, honesty and hard work. Culture is shaped by five interwoven elements, each of which principals have the power to influence:
Fundamental beliefs and assumptions, or the things that people at your school consider to be true. For example: “All students have the potential to succeed,” or “Teaching is a team sport.”
Shared values, or the judgments people at your school make about those belief and assumptions — whether they are right or wrong, good or bad, just or unjust. For example: “It’s wrong that some of our kindergarteners may not receive the same opportunity to graduate from a four-year college,” or “The right thing is for our teachers to be collaborating with colleagues every step of the way.”
Norms, or how members believe they should act and behave, or what they think is expected of them. For example: “We should talk often and early to parents of young students about what it will take for their children to attend college.” “We all should be present and engaged at our weekly grade-level meetings.”
Patterns and behaviors, or the way people actually act and behave in your school. For example: There are regularly-scheduled parent engagement nights around college; there is active participation at weekly team curriculum meetings. (But in a weak culture, these patterns and behaviors can be different than the norms.)
Tangible evidence, or the physical, visual, auditory, or other sensory signs that demonstrate the behaviors of the people in your school. For example: Prominently displayed posters showcasing the district’s college enrollment, or a full parking lot an hour before school begins on the mornings when curriculum teams meet.
Each of these components influences and drives the others, forming a circle of reinforcing beliefs and actions, Bridwell-Mitchell says; strong connections among every member of the school community reinforce the circle at every point.
Leah Shafer is a staff writer for Usable Knowledge, which translates education research and well-tested practices so they're accessible to practitioners, policymakers, and parents. Usable Knowledge is based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
With all the attention on innovative learning environments (ILEs) at the moment it’s understandable that many people are seeking clear, empirical evidence that learning spaces positively impact on outcomes for learners. Teacher time is precious and resources are scarce; if we’re going to implement a new approach, we should be fairly certain that it’s going to make a difference for our learners before we embark on any kind of innovation. Helpfully, some key pieces of research are showing that learning environments can, and do, make a difference to outcomes for learners.
What’s very clear from the research is that ‘buildings alone are not enough; it is about relationships and changing cultures and practices’. No educator will be surprised to hear that bricks and mortar on their own won’t change outcomes for learners, we know that learning is a lot more sophisticated than that. Having acknowledged that though, what’s emerging from the research is how much impact a combination of skilled, reflective educators and complementary physical environments can have on learning.
Inclusive spaces
Recent advances in fields such as neuroscience have confirmed what many have suspected for a long time: that when it comes to learning ‘variability is the rule, not the exception’. We all have different needs and preferences when it comes to learning and when those needs and preferences are met, we learn faster and we learn more. One of the drivers behind much of the work taking place in learning environments at the moment is a desire to ensure the physical environment is inclusive and supports all learners as well as it can.
Approaches such as Universal Design for Learning help us to ensure that all learner needs are met: those who need to read and reflect can find quiet spaces to do this; those who need to draw diagrams, build models, think aloud, explain to others, or work closely with a teacher can do so. This thinking extends to the choice and arrangement of furniture in a learning environment as well.
A couple of recent studies have demonstrated that providing learners with the opportunity to work at standing tables improved their working memory and increased their level of on-task behaviour by 12 per cent or an extra seven minutes per hour. In a world where primary-aged children sit on average for around nine hours a day, providing the opportunity to stand up is good for their bodies as well as their learning.
Culturally responsive spaces
Another key driver in the design of learning environments at the moment is an acknowledgement that there is a strong link between wellbeing and achievement, and that students’ wellbeing is strongly influenced by “a clear sense of identity, and access and exposure to their own language and culture”.
For Māori learners this means an environment where reo and tikanga are supported and enhanced, but it also means being given the opportunity to learn in an environment that promotes approaches outlined in documents such as Tātaiako:
Ako: learning from and with each other. Peer tutoring, tuakana/teina, reciprocal teaching and collaborative learning spaces.
Manaakitanga: building on student strengths by providing spaces that allow learners to exercise those strengths: collaboration; reflection; digital media production; visual arts; physical movement and dance; performance.
Tangata whenuatanga: acknowledging and linking to the history of the land to create authentic, real-world context for understanding ourselves and our community. The learning that takes place outside the classroom is just as important as the learning that takes place within it.
Wānanga: spaces that allow larger groups to come together to collectively explore some big concept or to engage in problem-solving. The traditional classroom in schools works well for small and medium-sized groups but makes it very difficult to get diverse communities together to engage in learning.
What’s also clear from a lot of this research is that what works for Māori often works for others, particularly Pasifika learners: we can raise achievement for all students by designing and using spaces that promote these whakaaro.
Empirical evidence
Beyond these guiding principles, there is also a growing body of hard, concrete evidence connecting learning environments and increased student achievement. In particular, two crucial studies have been published over the last two years.
The first is a study from the University of Salford entitled ‘Clever Classrooms’ that found that “differences in the physical characteristics of classrooms explain 16 per cent of the variation in learning progress over a year”. This 16 per cent variation is significant; it’s the equivalent of the impact that a teacher has on learning over the course of a year. One question the study gives rise to is, “What are these ‘differences’ in environment?”
The study suggests that outside of getting right things like temperature, air quality and acoustics, one of the crucial areas of focus is what the researchers refer to as ‘individualisation’, or the learning environment’s ability to provide learners with what they need for their learning. In short, to accommodate our growing awareness that ‘variability is the rule, not the exception’.
Some features of the physical environment that help educators to accommodate this kind of variability include:
breakout zones or rooms: the study found that these impact positively on learning by ensuring that learners could find a quiet space to read or write or do something reflective; or a space where they could be noisy and excited without negatively impacting on other learners
learning zones: a variety of learning settings that can accommodate a range of different kinds of teaching and learning activities, such as writing, research, performance, collaboration, peer-tutoring, direct instruction or experimentation
varied floor plans: these support varied teaching and learning better than traditional ‘box’ classrooms, which often have a single ‘front’ to the room which is often occupied by the teacher.
A second study recently published by the University of Melbourne confirmed a connection between ILEs and student achievement in secondary schools.
The study compared two cohorts from the same school – one that learned in an ILE and one that learned in traditional classrooms. Factors such as curriculum, student ability, class construction, assessment and the teacher were controlled in order to focus solely on the impact of the learning environment.
The study found the ILEs led to increases in a range of outcomes for the students including increased behavioural and cognitive engagement, and increases in the range of active, collaborative, personalised, and student-centred learning experiences.
Perhaps the most crucial finding from this study was related to student achievement: the researchers found that overall student achievement for the ILE cohort increased by an average of 15 per cent across English, mathematics and humanities. That’s a significant improvement in outcomes for learners, facilitated by a change in the learning environment.
As these last two studies attest, there is a growing body of research that suggests that when teacher pedagogy and physical learning environments are matching, there are significant gains to be made in achievement.
In a system that appears to be increasingly focused on quantitative measures of progress, it’s important to remember that qualitative measures are also important. Metrics such as student (and teacher) wellbeing, sense of belonging, enjoyment (fun even!) directly impact on a learner’s academic success in both early childhood centres and schools.
What’s reassuring about the current crop of research into learning environments is that putting the needs of people first not only leads to positive affective results but positive gains in achievement too.
Mark Osborne is a senior advisor in Future-Focused Education at CORE Education, particularly in the areas of innovative learning environments, and change leadership. Mark’s personal mission is to turn all schools into awesomeness incubators, and he is currently completing his PhD on change leadership in innovative learning environments at the University of Melbourne.
For references to this article please contact editor@educationcentral.co.nz.
