Elements of A Transforming School Culture: Creating the
Conditions for Learning and Citizenship
A transforming school culture of high expectations is an essential element of urban
charter school success. Properly conceived and executed, such a culture holds all
members of a school and its larger organization, from kindergartners to the Board Chair,
to the highest personal and professional standards. Effective implementation of such a
school culture creates a highly purposeful, aspirational environment. In turn, this creates
the conditions for learning and personal development at the highest levels for both
adults and children.
While each school has unique qualities, many of the best urban schools in the country
share most, if not all, of the following characteristics:
Guiding Principles
A powerful school culture embodies guiding principles designed to create conditions
where students feel safe, loved, and challenged to be at their best every day. This
culture enables staff to work in concert to transform students’ expectations – of
themselves, school and their future. Expectations encompass attitudes and behaviors
highly correlated with social, moral, intellectual and academic success, as elementary or
middle school students, and, eventually, as college graduates. Students are
encouraged to take pride in themselves, their classmates, and their school for coming to
school on time, in uniform, and prepared to learn, and for mastering their work and
managing themselves, including by treating themselves and others with respect at all
times.
Leading By Example
To make a school culture powerful, a school’s leaders must lead by example. Leaders
cannot expect students -- and staff -- to be willing to challenge themselves, make
mistakes, and learn from those mistakes unless their leaders exhibit all the honesty and
measured understanding required to fail openly, and the perseverance, respect, and
personal responsibility to work even harder to be virtuous and otherwise succeed in
service to the school’s mission.
High Expectations
Having high expectations is central to an effective school culture. Every member of a
school community should be expected to come to school each day committed to being
at their best. For staff, it means always being willing and ready to go the extra mile for
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their students. For students, it means staff expect nothing less than their best, from their
first day in the door until the day they graduate. "High expectations" does not mean that
everything will always go perfectly, but it does mean that when something doesn’t,
everyone will work together to address the issue to help ensure it doesn’t happen again.
Students held to low expectations often meet, but rarely exceed, them. Students held to
high expectations, especially in an encouraging environment, often meet and exceed
them. Having high expectations tells students and staff that they can perform at the
highest levels; holding them to those high expectations -- while supporting them along
the way -- ensures they will become successful, engaged citizens.
No Excuses
An essential complement to a school’s high expectations for students is its “No
Excuses” policy. Highly successful urban schools do not let their students or staff offer
excuses for why something did not go properly. Instead, all are required to take
ownership and responsibility for any failures or shortcomings, and work very hard -- with
each other’s encouragement and assistance -- to improve. Frankly, in the absence of a
no-excuses culture, schools, in effect, embody a “Give Me Your Best Excuse” policy.
Inadvertently, the staff of such schools help students get better at making excuses than
they are at helping students learn to become responsible citizens. The first excuse gives
way to the second, and soon a school is full of students -- and sometimes staff -making excuses for shortcomings and failures. With the full implementation of a “No
Excuses” policy, a school can effectively hold students and staff to the high
expectations required of staff, students, and parents, alike, to best fulfill the mission of
their school.
Focus on College Preparation
For students today to successfully compete and participate in our society, college
graduation or its career preparation equivalent has become a prerequisite. Therefore,
most highly effective urban charter schools’ missions and corresponding visions reflect
this. Many urban charter schools’ missions and visions, also, call on their students to
become productive and civically engaged citizens. From kindergarten on, a college
preparatory focus is essential to realizing such schools’ mission and vision for their
students. The goal of college graduation for each and every student reaffirms, in a
consistent and uniform way, the high expectation that is held for all students: to become
educated, virtuous, fair, honest, hard-working, civically engaged college graduates and
responsible citizens. To help make this goal tangible, teachers often proudly hang
banners from their alma maters, identify their grade’s students as the Class of (the year
they are on track to graduate from college), have advisory groups named after colleges,
actively discuss colleges, and go on field trips to local colleges and universities. This
powerful focus on college is the pivot of transformational school cultures.
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Virtues
The best way to a good life is through making a habit of being virtuous. Successful
schools recognize and embrace that there is more to a good education than a narrow
track record of academic success. A strong, good character is just as important to
becoming a responsible, fulfilled citizen as is mastering academics. Many exemplary
urban schools’ Way, therefore, identify key virtues, such as -- courage, honesty,
perseverance, responsibility, generosity, and respect. Conceptually, a school’s specific
and selected virtues are continuously articulated in manifold ways. Behaviorally,
everyone who is a part of such a school is expected to embody them on a daily basis.
Virtues are an essential foundation of a school’s Way. Being exposed to and
internalizing a school’s virtues affords students the courage and ability to respond to
challenging situations and decisions constructively. However, for this to consistently
occur, a deep appreciation and understanding of the virtues is required. But
understanding is not enough. Practicing certain attitudes, thought processes, and
behaviors until they become trusted habits lays the foundation for a strong character
and consistently virtuous action.
Central Importance of Relationships
All learning and development takes place within relationships: relationships between
adults, between students and adults, and between students. To create a platform on
which to build trust and respect, it is important for students to feel safe, respected, and
loved. Mutual respect and personal responsibility are paramount in building such
relationships.
Mutual respect among teachers and students is critical to developing the positive
relationships required for effective teaching and learning. Taking personal responsibility
for one’s own actions -- both positive and negative -- becomes much easier in a culture
rooted in mutual respect. Without the most sincere and kind respect for the students -and the nurturing relationships which develop from that -- the ability to encourage and
enforce a set of high-expectations remains very difficult. However, with positive and
respectful relationships among staff and students, alike, staff are better able to
understand and address the needs of their students; and, students are able to trust that
the adults leading them truly have their best interests in mind. From public praises as
part of morning announcements, to honoring Citizens of the Month, to classroom and
school-wide community circles, and to lunches with school leaders, the school’s staff
works hard every day to develop positive relationships with students built on mutual
respect, high expectations, and appreciation.
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Safety
Safety is critical to establishing an effective school culture. Individually and collectively,
staff must do everything reasonably possible to keep children and others safe. Some
students when feeling unsafe need to test others; either to be reassured adults are in
control, or alternately, to see if they, in fact, are in charge. This testing of adults in an
environment perceived as unsafe tends to create additional anxiety among increasing
numbers of students. Then to the extent that such testing is not met with clear, uniform
rules consistently and effectively enforced, a self-perpetuating, downward spiral will
develop; one that, invariably, leads to more anxiety and various forms of conflict. For all
of these reasons, creating a consistently safe learning environment must be a staff’s
first priority. It is an essential component of any school’s Way.
Consistency and Uniformity
Consistency and uniformity are principles essential to creating a powerful school
culture. By “consistency” we refer to the lack of variation over time in the actions and
statements of a teacher, other program staff, or the school, in general. “Uniformity”
refers to the sameness or lack of variation across all staff and throughout the school. If
each adult has a different opinion about what is right and important, then what is to
prevent students from concluding, “If everyone has a different opinion, then why not go
with yet another different opinion, my own?”. When all school staff are fully uniform and
consistent in their statements and actions regarding expectations, rules, consequence,
and the reasons for each element, then the chances of convincing each child that the
adults know what they are doing and have the children’s best interests at heart are
exponentially greater. Also, in addition to removing doubt, the consistency within each
teacher’s realm and uniformity across all staff removes confusion and anxiety for
children. No one benefits from the absence of uniformity and consistency.
Sweat the Small Stuff
As discussed above, being consistent and uniform is crucial. More generally, everything
school leaders and staff say and do, including what they don’t say and don’t do, sends a
message to students, families, and other staff. This is why it is so important to always
“sweat the small stuff”, including by always being mindful of what messages you want to
convey and what messages you are conveying. From strictly enforcing the dress code
to picking up every little piece of paper on the ground, leaders and staff need to make
sure every aspect of their school is presented in neat, clean, and professional ways.
The message sent to students is clear: We take pride in our school and in ourselves,
and so should you, because you are wonderful and you’re going places. Attention to
detail is critical, and any slip up, however minor, if ignored, suggests that anything less
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than our personal best is acceptable. When enforced in a loving environment, “sweating
the small stuff” becomes a point of pride for everyone.
The Power of Explanation
By explanation, we mean thoughtfully and respectfully providing students with
meaningful reasons for what school staff ask of them, and helping them appreciate how
such things are -- or one day will be -- good for them and their classmates. By
thoughtfully providing students with compelling honest reasons for everything staff insist
they do, staff treat students with respect and dignity, and as rational individuals capable
of thinking about what is in their real interests. In time, students come to believe the
school’s Way is good for them. This greatly reduces the energy required of teachers to
gain students’ heartfelt cooperation. Also, the persuasive arts help build the foundation
for meaningful participation in a democratic society. Therefore, modeling them is
essential to prepare students to become responsible, engaged citizens. Helping
students understand the reasons for teachers’ expectations makes learning easier,
reducing resistance to rules, new ideas, and challenges.
Positive and Negative “Consequences”
In a positive school culture, students are taught that every day they have the opportunity
to make decisions governing their behavior, and that their choices have consequences - positive and negative. Generally, positive choices earn positive consequences and
negative choices bear negative results. Students receive positive and negative
consequences in fair, consistent, and nurturing ways to help them to learn. When done
properly, the clarity ad consistency of these messages help students know that the
adults in their school always support them and are willing to do whatever it takes to
ensure they succeed. This component of a school’s Way helps lay a strong foundation
for its students to succeed in their current school, future schools, including college, and
beyond.
Fairness
Being fair, including not showing favoritism to any student or staff member, is essential.
When leaders and staff are fair, consistent, and have others’ interests at heart, they can
earn students’, families’, and staff members’ trust and respect. When fairness is
practiced, staff are in are in a better position to insist on high expectations and personal
consequences, while preventing excuse-making. Not being fair and consistent breeds
distrust, which, in turn corrodes a school’s culture. Only with the fair and consistent
embodiment of the school’s virtues, enforcement of its rules, and support for its students
can a staff attain and maintain a powerful school culture.
This document is based on one Perry wrote a few years ago about the school culture at
Citizens Academy.
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