Creating Culture in a New School

One of the workshops that I am the most proud of was the one I did the first year at Smiling Creek.  Because I was really wrapped up in my work with Landscapes of Injustice, I had not done much to contribute to my new school, and in the first year of any school, everyone should pitch in something.  We had so many strong teachers that I was not so sure what I had to offer.  For the January school professional development day, the Pro D committee was thinking of doing something about building our new school culture.  So I volunteered to facilitate this process.

To be honest, I didn't have a clue about how to do this.  Sure, I had been to goal-setting sessions before and I had been in new schools before, but I didn't think what I seen in those situations would apply here.  As I mentioned before about the principal Remi, he was really about collaboration and sustainability, so anything we did to build a school culture was going to be done together as a staff and would have to be doable over a long time.  

Our process was clear:

1. Build a shared vision, together.
2. Overthrow the (educational) world.
3. Have recess.

The collaborative part was the key to everything.  We needed a vision we thought was: worth doing,  doable, and something everyone on staff could see their way in to doing that vision.

The repeating method was:

1. Do an individual task.
2. Each person shares their ideas, thoughts, and feelings to a group of 4.  The rest of the group listens without interrupting.
3. Once everyone has shared, the group discusses what they noticed: patterns, similarities, BIG IDEAS and what is important to the group.

We did this method several times for different tasks that built on each other.

Step 1: Individual Bio Maps

  The first task was the Bio Map, an individual Value and Biographical Map of each group member.  According to Parker Palmer, we teach who we are and because we were a new school, it was important to get a better sense of each other.  The Bio Map got teachers to share what they thought about, what they cared about, what they liked to do or create, and the kinds of experiences, they had.

[I collected these individual maps and still have them.  We were all over the map in terms of thinking, doing, and experiences, but we all prioritized family and belonging.].

Step 2: Smeek, the group map

The second time was a Smeek (for Smiling Creek), a group map of shared team values.  Each group filled this in collaboratively as a team, now that we knew each other better from the individual Bio Maps.  As we filled in the team Smeek, we thought about our composite Smiling Creek students, and asked what is important, what do we want our students to know or think about, to do or make, and to experience?

After working through this Smeek, each team came back and shared with the whole staff.  While each team shared, the other teams listened, without interruption, for patterns, similarities, and priorities.  After all teams shared, we had a full group discussion.  

[Yup, still have these too.  Looking at them now, they are incredibly detailed.  This says a lot about the staff.  I think the sharing that day increased the level of trust and understanding, so much so that the ideas and collaboration started to flow.  Because of the detail I can't believe we were able to come up with anything so succinct and focused in Step 3].

Step 3: Synthesis and Consensus

The third step was the hardest and best part.  We took what we discussed and then synthesized what we knew about our school and what was important to us into a manifestation of our shared vision.  It could be in the form of a T-shirt mock up, a slogan, a motto, a mission statement, a song, a poem, a rap, etc.  Whatever each group came up with had to sum up what we wanted Smiling Creek's culture to be, it had to be short and memorable, and it had to be simple enough for the students and the public to understand (no teacher speak).  The big thing to remember for the statement was: "Our statement is for and about kids.

(I created this example to set the bar low.)

It is important to note in this retelling that I ran out of time at this point in my workshop.  I didn't think we'd even get this far, but everyone was so driven.  I started to wrap things up in my presentation, when Taryn stopped me and said we needed to finish this, now.  Everyone agreed.  Awesome.  It was no longer my workshop, but a staff mission.

After a quick break and a little more work time, groups shared.  There was a symbolic T-shirt logos, an acrostic poem spelling out SMILE, mission statements, clusters of post-it notes grouped together in clusters, etc.  I was blown away with the work, heart, and creativity the groups put into these manifestations.  

As a staff we came to consensus with one group's mission statement because it seemed to include bits of everything the other groups had.  It was:

• be CARING
• think BIG
• feel INSPIRED

Everyone loved it.  It was clear, inclusive, and something students could do and remember.  It felt like the right order, too.  By the next day, we included another line to be more action oriented:

• be CARING
• think BIG
• feel INSPIRED
• make a DIFFERENCE

A couple of years later and this is still our guiding motto.  It is on shirts, bracelets, letterhead, classroom signs, etc.  I try to refer to the motto when appropriate and embed it in lessons that same way I embed the Core Competencies.  I noticed that our new principal, Ross, also refers to it every day on the announcements so it continues to be part of the Smiling Creek philosophy even with so many changes happening to the school over the years.  

For me, the biggest highlight was the watching the staff.  We really came together to work on something together to do work that mattered.  The shared vision came from a shared purpose.  I felt that it was a big step forward for us.  I look forward to post COVID when we can do something like this again.