Plan Implementation and Observations

Culture Change at Environmental Charter School

By: Natalie Torti

The Problem

Our plan was based on a problem we saw in our school community. How could a school

based in environmentalism, have students who littered in the park? How could a school set up to

build strong community and relationships, have issues of disrespect for teachers? How could

co-teaching teams who loop together, feel isolated from the rest of the grade levels staff and

students? I was also trying to answer how do great leaders take on cultural shifts in their

organization?

We knew we had to shift the culture of our school back to what we inteded it to be. The

school culture had become diluted as we have expanded one grade each year for the past 9 years.

We started a small group of dedicated, like-minded, and passionate educators. Everyone felt

extremely connected to the schools mission, practices, and community. But as we grew new

staff was not fully trained, on-boarded, or initiated into the vision.

The way this discrepancy has been highlighted recently as we are expanding, to add an

additional K-8 program and a 9-12 program in the coming years. I am part of the team of school

leaders who hope to create a culture for staff and students that is unique to the Environmental

Charter School. I also hope to rectify the current growing pains happening in our school

community. During this class I worked directly with the school culture committee to change the

cultural dynamic with our staff and students.

 Figuring out the problem was easy, I feel that we really had a pulse on the school

community since we all were teachers, staff, and administrators working daily within our school.

We listened to what was going on around us and represented the feelings and reality of our

collegues so that everyone had a voice. I also think our next steps, gathering the stakeholders

voices was a great next step. In the future I would have also involved parents and community

members (such as those who neighbor our school) to add their voices to our data collection.

Gathering Data

We took a survey of all staff and students to identify the cultural issues we sensed. For both

surveys we used google forms and allowed the google forms program to generate data analysis

for us. The google form really makes gathering data easy. It allows us to link the form staight to

the students Schoology page or attach it to a teachers email. It logs the respondents email and

generates great data sheets that are easy to read and to formulate into charts and graphs.

Overwhelmingly, the staff reported feeling a negative attitude about school from the

students, that they felt the sense of respect for our school building and our educators had

diminished, and that the hallways were becoming loud and disruptive. Needless to say, this isnt

what we envision as our school culture. We hope to be inclusive, allow for dynamic learning

experiences, and to build relationships of mutual respect between all members of the community.

We also asked our educators to vote on which school wide initiatives they thought would best

address the behavior pattern. They identified a lot of the initiatives which our school started out

practicing, which have since been less emphasized or have completely been discontinued. This

was a real reality check for those of us who have been at the school for years. We let some of our
core practices go, and we were seeing the results of that.

Similarly, the students reported they felt the school culture would be improved by working on

respect. They also responded that uniforms, lunch, and class/instructional time needed worked

on. Students were also asked How would you rate the culture of our School? Only 18.3% of

our students gave us the highest rating.

During the data phase, what went well was the easy to use google forms program. We also

made sure to keep the survey simple so we would get clear results. Next time, I would definitely

expand the data collection to the groups I mentioned above. Overall, I learned that there are

simple ways to collect data as a leader and that people respond to being heard.

The Plan

During the plan creation phase, I think it was very valuable to have the data generated into

forms and graphs. We presented these graphs and outcomes at the first community meeting with

students and at the staff meeting where we introduced morning meeting routines to staff. It really

helped create by in that we used the suggested school wide initiatives suggested by the staff and

students.

We knew that community meetings, morning meetings, character based lesson plans, and

more community events would truly reinvigorate our culture. After all we had all of these

initiatives embedded in our culture in the past, but had sadly watched them fall out of use. Our

goal was to make it easy for the staff to re-establish these awesome community practices. I think

the staff appreciated the time and effort we had put into this reboot of our culture.
 We agreed that first morning and community meetings needed to be reinstated as part of our

daily and weekly culture. That was a great place to start redeveloping our community culture and

could be atime and space to fit a lot of other cultural pieces into. The team developed a schedule

for each grade level to hold a weekly community meeting with leadership and to blend with

another grade level. The team also provided the first months character based lesson plans to

get teachers started on morning meeting and to allow students to have a voice in our culture.

We wanted the community meetings to be dynamic and build a sense of community. We

thought these meetings would be a great place to invite community members in to speak with

students. We also were able to create chances for administrators to interact with students in a

way that could be fun, supportive, and show that they are human beings. Some of our guests so

far have included hip hop producers, artists, and a teacher who presented on the forgotten history

of black Americans.

Next, we set our sights on a daily morning meeting in each homebase. We wanted to ensure

that the morning meeting would be an asset to each homebase community. But we also knew we

had to ensure that this new responsibility did not become a burden on our teaching staff (myself

included.) Our solution was to collaborate. One instructional coach created character-based

lessons for the first few weeks. A school counselor bought copies of The Morning Meeting

Book for each grade level and trained the staff during team planning sessions. Then a special

education teachers created a suggested schedule to keep things fresh but low-maintenance.

What we really hoped to achieve with morning meeting was to reestablish a culture of respect

and an understanding of the rules and expectations in our school. We did this through a month
long series of morning meetings where students redeveloped our 3 B matrix which is the basis

of our school behavioral expectations.

Students recreated our 3 B matrix with some changes in language and rules, such as

changing silent hallways to a more realistic quiet hallways. This activity in particular really

seemed to shift culture to build more student ownership and pride. We have had less office

referrals for behaviors such as back talk or disrespect because all students are aware of why

the expectations are in place.

Outcome

Although we have not yet collected data from students and staff again on our change

initiative. We are ruling these first few implementations a success! Since our plan was created,

there have been 6 community meetings with 4 guest speakers. Teachers have run morning

meeting in their classroom everyday, with 90% adherence to the daily schedule. Teachers also

followed the month long reboot of character-based lesson plans during morning meetings for

the first month. During these meetings students reworked our 3 B behavior matrix.

We are very proud of the work we have done, and hope to continue to work on this cultural

change through the summer and into next school year. One thing that I liked about our approach

was that we included the larger community in our meetings. We also allowed students to have a

voice, teachers to feel heard, and time and space for that dialogue to continue in our schools

schedule.

Impact on me as a Leader
 As a leader in our school, I am already part of a grass-roots, bottom-up, approach to

leadership. I dont plan on leaving the classroom to develop my leadership capacities. This

project and this committee that I am part of really helps me see that it is possible to lead the

school from the classroom. I know that a lot of my ideas and innovation are fueled by my daily

work with students. I do not know how being in a more formal position of leadership will

affect me. I hope to retain the knowledge, experience, and practical common sense that I have

learned as a teacher. Through this project I saw the greatest successes come from teachers

sharing their voices. I hope to be the kind of leader that never forgets how important that is.