STANDARD THREE: Cultural Leadership
School executives will understand and act on the understanding of the important role a school's culture contributes to the exemplary performance of the school. School executives must support and value traditions, artifacts, symbols and positive values and norms of the school and community that result in a sense of identity and pride upon which to build a positive future. A school executive must be able to "reculture" the school if needed to align with the school's goals of improving student and adult learning and to infuse the work of the adults and students with passion, meaning, and purpose. Cultural leadership implies understanding the school as the people in it each day, how they came to their current state, and how to connect with their traditions in order to move them forward to support the school's efforts to achieve individual and collective goals.
A. Focus on Collaborative Work Environment: The school executive understands and acts on the understanding of the positive role that a collaborative environment can play in the school’s culture.
- Administration noticed that it is difficult to find the time within the school day to meet for PLTs. Also, it was not expected that teachers consistently find time to meet and discuss data to better inform them of the next steps for individual students and whole classes. So, the administrative team created a schedule where teams meet before or after school to have this discussion. During this PLT time administrators and support staff is also included in the conversations and rotate every week to PLT meetings.
B. School Culture and Identity: The school executive develops and uses shared vision, values and goals to define the identity and culture of the school.
- During my time at Rogers Herr Middle School every month I was tasked with doing Character Counts. Character Counts is a school wide system of support that includes proactive strategies for defining, teaching, and supporting appropriate student behavior to create positive school environments. I was tasked with creating a google form for teams to use to identify students who exhibit that character trait for that month. We then would acknowledge those students and give them a prize.
- We also conducted grade level meetings with all the students. During this meeting we would address expectations, celebrate our students, and give updates. At the end of the meeting, I was tasked with finding a motivational video to use to generate excitement among the students for success.
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C. Acknowledges Failures; Celebrates Accomplishments and Rewards: The school executive acknowledges failures and celebrates accomplishments of the school in order to define the identity, culture and performance of the school.
- At Ligon we created a schedule for PBIS rewards to acknowledge the success of our students demonstrating positive character traits and other objectives to focus on weekly. One of the more important ones is updating the list of students with 3 zeros or more and discuss action steps. We identify the communication efforts that have been made and next steps. We encourage teachers to discuss successes and failures with these students and how we can best serve them.
- At Rogers Herr the administrative team places emphasis on celebrating the staff and building staff culture. At staff meetings we take time to thank members of our staff in a presentation called "Stars Among Us." We were also tasked with doing staff shout outs every other week and every month bringing in a gift for every teacher on our team.
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D. Efficacy and Empowerment: The school executive develops a sense of efficacy and empowerment among staff which influences the school’s identity, culture and performance.
- During my time at Rogers Herr I would create these tables with the Teacher Working Conditions trends. During our staff meetings I would present a Google form to the staff that allowed for input from the staff as to what they believe would be best action items to improve the conditions. We would take these recommendations, review them, and choose actions steps.