Dialogue 1: Creating School Culture
Do you want to create a school culture where professionalism, collegiality and good teaching are the norm?
YES! Everyone wants a supportive work environment and virtually all teachers want to meet the goals of good teaching. To achieve this, however, we have to overcome a number of barriers. One of the biggest blocks to creating collegiality is the fact that people come to the workplace with different philosophies of education and different types of experiences on their road to becoming educators.
When we talk about the goals of education, it’s apparent that not everybody’s
on the same page. Some people teach to liberate; some teach to empower.
Some teach to make students employable. With a range of views of what
the content of education should be, and with teachers drawing on different
perspectives and approaches, trying to bring people together becomes a
real challenge. At most schools, there is no real focal point for reaching
consensus or for developing team spirit. It’s no wonder that in today’s
school environment, teachers find themselves spread thin, with many merely
surviving, rather than thriving.
The culture described here is deeply ingrained in our public school system.
When teachers or administrators try to introduce new ideas and ways of
doing things, they find that school culture is difficult to change. The
key is to pause for a moment and ask ourselves what it is we want to accomplish.
What does collegiality in our schools look like? What are the barriers
to getting there? How can we agree on a middle ground that we can all
strive for?
CEP uses Leadership Team Development
to improve and revitalize school culture.