EdTechTeam

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Thought Leadership

From the Ground Up: Building a New Classroom Culture

No matter where you teach and learn, two things are true about education:

  1. Change is constant
  2. Change is difficult

If you have been an educator for more than two decades as I have been, then you remember school before changes like the paperless classroom and the global classroom, when the most accessible content resource was a textbook, and essays were to be written in blue or black ink. If you became an educator in the last five years, you have likely experienced a shift from computer labs to 1:1 devices, the debates over blocking access to certain websites and social media platforms. And let’s not forget the endless discussions about the role of cell phones in schools.

As new tools and platforms are developed and promoted as education innovations, I am prompted to consider what is different between change and innovation. Again, I see two distinctions:

  1. Innovation is about being better, not just different.
  2. Innovation is an attitude, not a mandate.

Our challenge is to be innovative and nurture the development of innovative habits of mind in our students. To do that we have to build a culture of innovation in our schools and our classrooms. To do that we have to remember that innovation is not a competition. While the first thing that likely comes to mind when we think about innovators are tech giants, corporation founders, and the like, an examination of what makes them and their companies successful are the pillars of innovation that underpin all that they do.

Take Google, for instance. In their transformation center, they explore the importance of vision, learning, culture, technology, professional development, funding & sustainability, and community engagement to the success of an educational community. Similarly, Mark Wagner and EdTechTeam use a honeycomb metaphor to explain the elements of school change: courageous leaders, empowered teachers, inspiring spaces, engaged community, robust infrastructure, and student agency. Both of these frameworks require a systemic commitment to this constant and difficult work. That doesn’t mean that as an individual educator you are without agency. Any one of us can create a classroom culture of innovation that will inspire all who teach and learn in that space.

What is culture?

Culture, according to Google’s definition, lives in the structures, rituals, stories and symbols of your community. In this case, your learning space. To become an innovative space, those structures, rituals, stories, and symbols must promote and celebrate learner agency, risk-taking, collaboration, and curiosity.

When I look at the structures in my space I start to notice the furniture, wifi access points, doors, windows, hallways, lights, even the bell schedule. In many ways the ringing of bells to end a class and signal passing time is also a ritual. Other rituals include morning meetings, taking attendance, saying the pledge, homework checks, and warm-up activities. If you are a blogger you are used to telling stories. Maybe you listen to podcasts to hear other people’s stories. In the faculty room stories sometimes start this way: “Guess what so-and-so did today…” or “Just as we were getting started…” or “Back when so-and-so was principal…” What do the stories we tell indicate about what we value? What we prioritize? How we learn? Finally, classrooms and other school spaces are full of symbols such as motivational posters, school core values, badges, grades, and school mascots. These things are the collected products of our school’s culture.

Engage your students –the stakeholders in your learning space – in a culture autopsy. What are the structures, rituals, stories and symbols already in place in your space and how do they influence the mindset of those in the space? Students could crowdsource their ideas in a deck of Google Slides, or on whiteboards or paper. They could work in groups to brainstorm and jigsaw to share ideas. You could equip students with sticky notes in different colors and they could label the physical evidence of culture in the space: yellow for a symbol, green for a story artifact, blue for a ritual, etc.

Remember, innovation is an attitude, not a mandate. The more you involve students in examining culture the more agency they develop. Innovation isn’t something you are doing to them, it is a mindset you are helping them grow.

How do we build a new culture?

Intentionally. Publicly. Collaboratively.

A culture plan can start with a chart like this:

Again, invite your student stakeholders into the process and start by defining the terms. This is a great opportunity for student reflection.

  • What is agency? When is a time you had it? What could you do?
  • Describe a risk you have taken and what you learned from it.
  • When you are working with a team, how do you know when things are going well?
  • Why is curiosity a good thing?

They could blog in response to these questions or post to Flipgrid or create profile Slides in a class Google Slide deck or make infographics. When they are comfortable with the lingo, they will start to imagine what a learning space might be. Rather than being bound by the current structures, rituals, stories and symbols, what new ones could the class build together?

  • Instead of a bulletin board full of posters and motivational quotes, could there be a wonder wall where students can post the big questions they have about the about what you are learning together?
  • How might mindset shift if the learning space was called an incubator or a think tank?
  • Lead a design sprint for students to develop a class logo to represent your innovative culture.
  • Try different arrangements of classroom furniture to facilitate different types of interaction: speed-dating, fishbowls, small group discussions, large group discussions, stations work, etc.
  • Start a blog or a class social media account and tell the stories of empowered learners (yourself included), taking risks, pool talents and resources, driven by interest, passion and wonderment to know and create. This doesn’t have to be a big undertaking. One paragraph each week. One tweet, even. Get the word out there. Tell your stories. Let the students co-author with you so their voices are amplified as well.

These are just starter ideas… What will your students suggest? Make small changes and acknowledge out loud together when one of those changes contributes to a new way of learning, understanding, or communicating. Create a new routine of giving thanks to someone who challenges you to learn in a new way or a take a risk you might previously have avoided. At Google, they have G-thanks. How can your students adapt a similar ritual to your space? Tell your story as you build a culture of innovation and if you share it on Twitter, tag me @MsJwhiting so I can join your celebration!

With 26 years as a public educator behind her, Jacquelyn Whiting has experienced lots of different school cultures. She has been a social studies teacher and is currently a library media specialist. Her work with her students and colleagues around building culture is inspired by her experiences as a Google Certified Innovator and her work as a local activator for Future Design School.

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The Power of Positive Climate and Culture

As a coach assisting teachers with technology integration and personalized learning, I notice patterns arising from teacher to teacher. One pattern that I have noticed is that a teacher, no matter how strong they are, hits a wall when it comes to progressing to the next level. In every situation I’ve encountered the reason is the same: absence of a positive climate and culture. Although I didn’t see it early on, I see it clearly now. The importance of climate and culture in a classroom and across a school are imperative to successful technology integration, personalized learning, and empowered learning. Here are some ideas on how to improve climate and culture both in the classroom and school-wide.

Climate & Culture at the Classroom Level

How a person feels is paramount to achievement. If a person does not feel safe, appreciated, or successful, they likely will not be motivated to work hard. They will not want to come to school at all let alone spend 6-8 hours there. On the flip side, a person who feels appreciated and feels success will work harder to continue feeling successful. It is a cycle that can be reset, and some schools are already trying to do that through PBIS and Capturing Kids’ Hearts. However, that is not enough. Students must feel that they are part of a classroom family and a larger school family. They need to feel responsible for the successes and failures in the classroom. One successful catalyst to changes in student behavior and empowerment is the Code of Cooperation as seen in the sample above. Self-control, organization, accountability, and respect are four powerful pillars to start from. Students are tasked with self-reflection and self-evaluation. Even the youngest learners can be successful doing this.

In addition to the Code of Cooperation, students often need to drill down and work on respecting one another. Often, they need to learn how to speak to one another politely and have civil discourse in a safe environment. Classroom teachers can help facilitate that through the introduction of sentence stems, blogging, and Socratic seminars.  With the opportunity to use positive sentence stems, students can change the climate and culture in their schools, and this should be celebrated! (More on that here.)

Goal Setting

In addition to treating one another with respect, each person should be celebrated at his own level with high expectations in place. Expectations is a generic term that encompasses so much: behavior, soft skills, achievement, etc.  How can we do that with so many different levels in our classes? The answer is by personalizing learning and allowing students to set goals for themselves. As with yoga, we all start in different places, and we grow at our own pace. For too long, students have been passive learners sitting and getting instead of digging in and getting their hands dirty. Making decisions is a skill of which we have deprived our students. Ownership in learning is key to academic and personal growth. This can be accomplished through student goal-setting, tracking, and reflection. Too often, students don’t know where they stand in a class because the teacher controls the grade. What if the student decides what his goals for the class are based on his long-term goals for his life? What if students are given time to reflect upon their learning, failures, and successes? Ownership provides students the opportunity to care about, get involved in, and be active in their own growth.

Ownership goes beyond the individual as well. There are rules in a school that contributes to culture. How schools deal with behavioral issues is changing. Research shows that many behavior problems are merely reactions to boredom or frustration. The former, boredom, arises when students are not being challenged. As a result, they act out. At the classroom level, personalized learning, which is not possible without a positive climate and culture, encourages a student to set his own goals for achievement and move at his own pace, thus mitigating boredom. The latter, at the other end of the spectrum, reflects the low-skilled student who feels so overwhelmed and frustrated because of skill gaps. At the classroom level, the incorporation of blended and personalized learning is key to filling these gaps. Students are allowed the time needed to master a skill with support during station rotation or targeted instruction. However, climate and culture within the classroom are not enough.

Administrators Supporting Climate & Culture

How do positive classroom changes extend into the rest of school? Sometimes students make bad choices and are not focused on their personal learning goals. Some student actions will warrant an office referral. How are they dealt with there? Are classroom teachers 100% responsible for climate and culture? The answer, obviously, is no. So how does an administrator contribute to climate and culture? What if student goals are reviewed during disciplinary discussions? What if someone takes the time to talk the student through how their actions are affecting their attainment, or lack thereof, of their goals? What if the student-owned their actions and tried to decide whether they wanted to avoid the situation in the future and work to develop a coping mechanism for future incidents? This would take goals to a whole new level and deal with a student more holistically and on a personalized level. There would still be consequences, and the student would be involved in a fair, transparent process.

Leading By Example

A vital factor to all-school change is the administration. In business, the people at the top sell the product by their enthusiasm and belief in the product, not by ordering everyone else to walk the walk. As a result, the administrative team must be trained and believe in the change and walk the walk. Training admins in climate and culture and having them set goals empowers them to lead by example.  

Initiating Change

As a leader interested in changing the climate and culture in your school, here are some steps you can consider trying out:

  1. Create a tool to measure success before you start, i.e. backward design. Get feedback from teachers and admin to identify the change you want to see.
  2. Present the WHY with examples behind building a school-wide climate and culture that promotes student ownership, agency, and empowerment to all schools.  WIIFM: What’s In It For Me is important to stress at this stage.
  3. Poll teachers and admin to measure interest and create a pilot or cohort group to support for the year.
  4. If you are a district leader, target schools that show interest in modifying school-wide climate and culture.  
  5. Create a focus group made up of the schools with the most interest.
  6. Create a Climate and Culture Team at each school made up of teachers AND administrators who are invested and passionate about creating change.
  7. Create school-wide initiatives with the Climate and Culture Team coupled with classroom initiatives to be shared with the faculty throughout the year.
  8. Use the train-the-trainer model and give intense training to building-level instructional coaches who will be available for support, too.
  9. Track data all year with celebrations and share-outs.  Recognition and healthy competition are true motivators.
    1. Digital Badging
    2. Professional Development Bingo boards for the freedom to jump in at your own level (see below)
    3. Incentives at each grade or building level

Providing Support

As society moves forward with technology, we in education need to lasso the opportunities available for support. Here are some ideas for how technology can help us help ourselves:

  1. Virtual trainings and webinars – you can create screencasts for asynchronous trainings that can be uploaded to EdPuzzle.com with multiple choice questions, comments, and thought questions embedded. EdPuzzle also allows us to track who has watched the video and evaluate their answers
  2. Teachers can videotape events in their room to share with support leaders or the Culture and Climate Team for analysis and debriefing
  3. Teachers can be coached virtually via Google Hangout or InMeetings.com
  4. Travel for teachers can be minimized by holding online meetings or webinars for teachers to share out their questions and successes
  5. Like students, teachers would set goals for themselves dealing with climate and culture and how they relate to achievement and behavior. The measurement tool will come in handy here, so teachers can measure their growth.

Scaling Out Positive Climate and Culture

As you try to scale out the positive changes you see, be aware of the business model dealing with adopters: Innovators, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards. Use this model to avoid getting discouraged. Figure out where each person in your school falls, and pull them onboard based on his/her category. Round one participants are the Innovators: not afraid of change, like to be first to try out new things, adaptable and open personalities. As they share their successes, the second level adopters will encompass the Early Majority: those who want to know it works and needs a purpose for a change. This group will be larger than the first, so additional support & resources will be needed. The third level/year will encompass the Late Majority: those who want the kinks ironed out for them and want to be absolutely sure this is not just another “flavor of the year” that will be gone in 2 years. The final group (year 4) consists of the Laggards who will either retire, leave education, or adopt only when forced.

Change is difficult for most people, and education seems to draw that personality; however, teachers historically will do anything it takes to help their students. If you can make this change about the students and not about referrals or school report cards, it will work. If you want your teachers to create a student-centered atmosphere in their classrooms, you need to revamp everything you do at your level. If you do that well, the rest will follow.

 

Eileen Fernandez-Parker is an Innovation and Digital Learning Coach in Charleston County School District, SC. She has over 28 years experience in public education spanning grades 4 through graduate level classes.  She has a BA in English and Secondary Ed, an Elementary Certificate, and a Master’s in Educational Technology. Eileen has been a technology mentor and technology specialist for 20 years, and she is passionate about helping revolutionize education through personalization, engagement, and empowerment. Recently, Eileen has been a presenter for local and state conferences including SC ED Tech and EdTechTeam Summits. You can connect with Eileen on Twitter at @EFPTech.

 

 

 

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Making a Difference After ISTE

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Not being at ISTE far exceeded my expectations. The comradery between the #NotAtISTE group fervently sharing and notifying each other of all the amazing resources exponentially being shared at ISTE was inspiring. Not to mention the educator community at ISTE who went out of their way to share said resources. When all of the dust has settled, Google Drive folders and Keep Notes have been organized, I have been left with a sense of something I cannot name. The aftermath of not being at ISTE has produced something even more uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing than FOMO: an unwavering urge to, well, do something.

There’s something to be said in the power of educators getting together face-face for a noble cause: advocating for students. Not only is there power in educators getting together for students but even more can be said about the sense of purpose when educators get together for each other. While the fancy gadgets, updates, and the next best thing are awesome indicators of advance; I believe the true Easter Eggs lie in the conversations educators had online, in their little ISTE nooks, with presenters at sessions and playgrounds, at meals, pounding the pavement in Chicago and beyond. When we shift the conversation to how this can benefit students and amplify underrepresented voices that the true change begins. Technology is a catalyst for positive change and what better place to shout from the rooftops the benefit of intentional and meaningful technology integration than the annual ISTE conference?

So what next? What to do with all of these great resources, amazing conversations online and off and connections with educators across the world?

We are ambassadors of our schools and communities as educators. Taking back inspiration to your context is sometimes the most challenging thing to do. To continue to fire the flame of motivation and feeling of purpose and educational euphoria in your schools, classrooms, and district is a priority but cannot be done alone. Here are some tips for making a difference after ISTE.

Start Small

Ever heard of the Butterfly Effect? The one thing you try in your classroom or share with other educators after ISTE can make a difference. It can spread like a Fornite Frenzy from classroom to classroom and exponentially affect the learning experiences of hundreds of students or more. Think of one thing you were inspired about trying at ISTE. Now go do it. Please.

Red Rover It

Is there a practice that you are doing or is common practice in your school that does not benefit students? Steamroll it by implementing one new thing you learned at ISTE that can help solve this challenge in your classroom or school. Then, share with your team, school leaders and/or online learning community and highlight how this strategy impacted student learning and your teaching.

Follow the Leader

There is some truth in the Top-Down effect. School leaders can make it or break it. Make the culture of your school/district the priority and reflected in all conversations and experiences around students and teaching. How can you take the energy of educators at ISTE and bring that back to your school/district? How can you replicate the sharing of meaningful technology integration and self-motivated professional development both online and offline in your school or district? When students are the casualty in misguided policies it is never OK or the intended outcome. Take a look at the ISTE Standards for Education Leaders for a framework on how to get started.

YoLo Instead of Silo

Get your YoLo on and turn those Silos into Starbucks. There’s a reason why I pay almost $5 for a coffee at a coffee house. I can sit where I want, read and do what I want and meet up and share with people I want to. I often leave a good coffee house content that I have checked off my to-do list but also inspired by conversations with others. Sharing a conversation inevitably leads to change. Provide spaces and time in your school where you can easily share what you learned while at ISTE/NotAtISTE. Create “Campfire Zones” and flexible spaces where both students and educators can have great conversations and experiences. Read more about how to create inspiring spaces here.

Go Big or Go Home

It’s OK to stand out for going above and beyond. Celebrate others who do so. ‘Nuff said.

The Schoolhouse Does Not Rock

Our antiquated version of school needs to go. Now. Students sitting in rows, facing the teacher on the stage, finishing worksheet after worksheet while the teacher writes the answers on the chalkboard, white-board, overhead and/or projector is a hard, established myth of what school is defined to be. Turn the narrative of how students “are supposed to learn” upside down and give the classrooms, or, learning spaces a much need facelift. No, never mind that. Bulldoze them and build your own design and vision of technology integration and learning spaces with students.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

Look for opportunities to advocate for students and teachers. Look to your community, what it needs and what voices aren’t being heard or need to be amplified. Feel like there is an unbalance to students as consumers rather than creators in your school? Testing taking up too much time and not enough teacher-student feedback? Speak up and offer solutions and alternatives or share a tool /strategy that you learned at ISTE/NotAtISTE. Change up the weekly Staff Meeting and highlight a teacher or teacher team who was courageous enough to try something new with students and it worked! Challenging the way things “have always been done” is the only way we can transform the classroom for all learners. Going against the Status Quo can be hard but it is essential to leadership and school change.

 

Gail Moore
Google Certified Innovator
Instructional Technology Facilitator
Vancouver Public Schools
Washington State
@gailkmoore

 

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