Literacy Coaches Must Address the School Culture

A school's culture can stop change dead in it’s tracks.  Why?  People can be irrational.  Decisions can be made poorly. Personalities can get in the way.  State, district, school, and/or classroom goals can be out of alignment. Schools can engage in self-destructive behavior.   Any change can be difficult to accept.  "Culture influences everything that goes on in schools: how staff dress, what they talk about, their willingness to change, the practice of instruction, and the emphasis given student and faculty learning (Deal & Peterson, 1994; Firestone & Wilson, 1985; Newmann & Associates, 1996).  

This is why being able to identify and support your school's culture is an important part of building your clinical eye as a literacy coach.  Sometimes, this is not an easy task when you are actually a part of a dysfunctional school environment.  The first thing an effective literacy coach does is assess the past and current condition of your school culture.  How do you recognize if your school culture is dysfunctional?
Dysfunctional School Culture is when:

• The school is teacher-centered, not student-centered

• Negative values and hopelessness is prevalent

• New ideas are criticized instead of embraced

• Faculty meetings have become battlegrounds

• Administration is rarely seen nor heard

• Negative staff sabotage new initiatives

• Literacy is not valued nor encouraged

• Parental involvement is minimal

Sometimes there are deeper meanings behind why certain attitudes are embedded in your own school.  Maybe teachers feel hopeless because there have been numerous administrator changes who have come in with a totally different agenda each time.  Dig a little before coming to conclusions.  Schools trapped in dysfunction, typically follow this pattern:

As you can see, any initiatives you try to implement will eventually be abandoned.  You will become frustrated and soon give up trying.  Instead of working against this trend, identify what areas are in need of improvement.   After, determine the core values of the school.  In the article, "How Leaders Influence the Cultures of Schools" by Kent D. Peterson and Terrence E. Deal, "...leaders uncover and articulate core values, looking for those that buttress what is best for students and that support student-centered professionalism. It is important to identify which aspects of the culture are destructive and which are constructive."  In other words, look for those values that better the learning environment for the students.  Highlight them and build them up.  Once you build trust and rapport, you will be able to slowly address those negative aspects of the culture.  Little by little, you will begin to see changes.  This does not happen overnight.  Once it begins to change, you will have much more success with your academic initiatives as well as other improvements.  Your school culture will now begin to look like this:

How can you start improving your school culture?  There are several ways:

• Communicate your vision and identified core values-Some schools plaster the vision statement all over the school.  This is a start, but start talking about them every time you address the faculty.  Highlight teachers and others who are demonstrating aspects of the vision.  The more you talk about them, the more they become a part of your school's "language."
• Celebrate your staff's accomplishments- Even if the accomplishments are baby steps, it is important for the entire school to start seeing that you are highlighting the positive instead of the negative.  
•  Keep you eye on the prize- Know your vision.  Know your goals.  Stay focused on the task at hand, which is to change the school culture.  Teachers will come to you with complaints about initiatives, other teachers, and students.  They may even be right with their assessments, but you cannot participate in the negative talk.  Try responding with your school's vision "language."  For example, If a teacher comes to you and says, "These kids are just so low."  You may respond, "Yes, but we are rising up, way up!"  Teachers will begin to understand that you will not participate in this kind of talk and will even begin to take on some of these phrases in their own conversations.  
• Be diligent, patient, and persistent-Changing your school culture is NOT an easy task.  Negative school culture did not happen overnight, and you can't expect to change it overnight either.  

I have been a part of and seen a school's culture change dramatically.  It has been one of the most challenging feats I have ever worked on.  I drove home crying on many occasions and complained to my husband many nights, but it was well worth it when I walk into the building now.  You can find information about this topic as well as the other areas for Building the Clinical Eye in this resource on Teachers Pay Teachers.  This resources is in presentation format to help you build your own clinical eye.