Written by Eric Ziel

Every journey begins with one small step. This is true for principals who want to strengthen their school’s culture. According to Kruse and Seashore Louis, “Lasting change in school culture takes time” (2009, p. 12). There are no shortcuts on this journey that calls for effective communication and shared leadership. The journey begins with an important first step: listening.

The principal divides his faculty into small groups and asks, “What does ‘excellent instruction’ look like?” The groups discuss, then reconvene to share their answers. This leads to a second, more important question: “How can our school be more excellent?” The principal listens as his staff openly discuss several aspects of the school. He leads them to settle on one aspect of the school that could be improved.

This wasn’t a difficult process, but it took more time than simply telling the staff, “Here’s a problem area I think we need to fix.” Together the staff highlighted an area of need, and because the principal listened and used a collegial approach, rather than a paternal one (Gilbert, 2012), the process moving forward will likely be more successful. Listening was an important first step in strengthening the school and building a culture of continual improvement. By listening, effective and honest communication occurred, laying the groundwork for trust (Kruse and Seashore Louis, 2009) and for his whole staff taking “collective responsibility” (p. 8) to improve learning in the school.

To underscore the importance of effective communication through listening, let’s use a specific example. Imagine that the staff has identified their language arts curriculum as the area of weakness. Achievement scores in language arts have consistently been low, and local high schools remark that the students they get are unprepared for freshman language courses.

Now that the staff has taken collective responsibility to be more excellent in the area of language arts, more listening and effective communication can occur with the rest of the stakeholders, namely, parents and students. Some ideas:

• Ask parents with language or writing backgrounds to analyze student writing and give thoughts about what can be improved.
• Ask parents who use writing in their jobs to share their thoughts on skills needed in the workplace.
• Survey students about what they find easy or difficult in language arts. What do they like? Dislike? Why?
• Form a committee of school parents and teachers (possibly students, too) that recommends improvement goals based on the data collected.
• Get input on the improvement goals from the entire teaching staff. What would they add to these goals? Can a Christian motivation flavor the list of goals?

Finalize and share the improvement goals with all of the stakeholders. Make plans to continue this process through curriculum updating or writing, daily schedule updating, equipment purchases, and textbook purchases.

This kind of process uses a “power-with” approach to leadership (Brunner, 2002). The principal is not giving up power, but others are given power to add their collective ideas and energies to solve a problem.  By taking this approach, leadership becomes more powerful, or, to use terminology from Kruse and Seashore Louis (2009), the leadership intensifies.

The benefits of this collective leadership model are that everyone pulls together toward a common goal. There is a feeling of trust among the parents, teachers, students, and school leadership because the principal set the tone early on by seeking “first to understand, then to be understood” (Gilbert, 2012, p. 7). Teachers are more accountable to implement changes and initiatives because the school parents are all counting on them to do their part. Students are more apt to strive to learn because they were given the opportunity to work on the project. Parents are more engaged and supportive of the educational goals as well.

This example seems to focus only one aspect of the school: language arts. But actually, the process serves to help create a culture of common purpose, a unified striving for excellence. Just imagine how a school’s culture would improve if this type of approach was taken in all areas that directly or indirectly affect student learning! And how did it all start? The principal listened, which is the first and most important step in changing a school’s culture.

Eric Ziel (DMLC ’83) serves as principal and teaches eighth grade at St. Matthew-Oconomowoc WI. Eric is also studying for his master’s in education degree with an emphasis in instruction.

References

Gilbert, M. (2012). Communicating effectively: Tools for educational leaders. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.

Kruse, S. & Seashore Louis, K. (2009). Building strong school cultures. California: Corwin Press.

Brunner, C. (2002). Professing educational leadership: Conceptions of power. Journal of school leadership, 12, 693-706.