10 minute read
School Spotlight
Lori Ratliff
Josh Nobilio
Intentional Moments That Transform School Culture
On the day before our winter break, we spent the morning driving around our school community in a minibus dressed as Santa and his elf. We weren’t delivering presents but rather chauffeuring teachers to student homes. These teachers had chosen to give up some of their planning time to make some special surprise visits recognizing students. At one house, a student was recognized for growth; at another, tenacity. As each teacher gave a heartfelt speech, the rest of the group clapped and cheered, even if they didn’t know the
student being recognized. It was a great example of a school community coming together to support students and a morning we won’t soon forget.
When we think about culture, we think of mornings like our minibus tour. As we have learned over the last five years, school culture is not built by any program, slogan, or new initiative. It is built by the compilation of tiny moments and individual interactions that build upon each other in waves until eventually, the sum of the moments creates a community. It’s those little moments, hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, that transform a school and allow students and staff to thrive.
It’s been a five-year journey for us as the principal and vice-principal of Crystal Lake South High School, a suburban school in northeast Illinois. Along our journey, we have learned a few principles about school culture that guide our efforts. Our journey is far from complete, and we have much room for growth, but we are excited to share with you what we have learned.
Be Intentional: Start With Your Why
As Simon Sinek notes in his “Golden Circle’’ model, it is important for leaders to start with their WHY. His model believes that if leaders know their WHY they can purposefully pursue organizational change that supports the WHY through the logistics of HOW and WHAT (Sinek, 2011). Our WHY—For ALL Students. For EACH Student—has not just been painted on our front entranceway, but it has been reiterated at every staff meeting, every parent meeting, and all interactions with our students. When we communicate our why, we help our community understand that we build programs and interventions that are responsive to the needs of ALL students, but most importantly, we personalize tiny moments and individual interactions so that EACH member of our community feels valued.
When we view every opportunity to build culture through the lens of our WHY, we capitalize on small opportunities to make each individual feel seen. Sometimes a simple change to an existing initiative can help us better fulfill our “for each”
mission. For example, we committed to writing EACH freshman a card welcoming them to Crystal Lake South, but to better fulfill our WHY, we decided to personalize each one, expressing our excitement at a class the student planned to take. We also often stand outside of our school greeting students, but we learned to make these interactions more personal by inviting
students to create
playlists and broadcasting their music choices
through a portable speaker. The idea of a school living out its mission is not new, but it is certainly challenging, particularly during these last few pandemic school years. The more we can be intentional with every decision we make, the more we will see our culture reflect our WHY.
Prioritize Your WHY Within Your Schedule
As educators, we all know that there is never enough time, and culture-building efforts can quickly get lost in the never-ending lists of logistics. To make sure we are intentional with our WHY, every Monday, we meet for at least 30 minutes to plan out our culture building efforts for the week. We have a standing agenda that includes identifying ways to celebrate upcoming staff
birthdays, soliciting positive parent comments to share with staff, and finding ways to support anyone who needs encouragement. As part of our “For Each Student” focus, we have a spreadsheet with every freshman’s name, and we have set a goal to make a personal connection with each student on the list before the
end of the year. During our Monday meetings, we make time to do this. Sometimes we look at grades and call students down to the office to recognize them for academic growth; on other days, we read recognition to students that their teachers have submitted to us through a Google form. These interactions with students are often a highlight of the week, but they might get lost if we didn’t set aside time for them. Without this time booked on our schedule, we would not be able to prioritize what matters most.
Remember All Members of Your School Community
A school is a community, and each member of the community is a part of its culture. Therefore, when focusing on building a positive culture, it’s important to make intentional efforts to recognize all members of your school community. This includes teachers, students, support staff, and parents. We also believe that our community is broader than just our school, so we focus on ways to connect with local organizations and to serve the residents of our town. For example, for Veterans Day, we brought members of our band and choir on a minibus tour to veterans’ homes, performing “The Armed Forces Medley” right on their driveways. We regularly reach out to our families with a Google form asking if they need any support, and then we find ways to help, whether it is hanging holiday lights, delivering groceries, or providing gifts for their children.
Social media can be a great tool for connecting with the wider community and branding a
school’s mission. For example, each week, we go live on Facebook with
special broadcasts designed to build
community. Sometimes we feature a group of students that may not get as much recognition. At other times, we strategically go live in the evening to answer questions from families (a recent about them. Those results certainly did not fit our mission, so we set out to learn why our students didn’t feel connected and how those connections might be built. We needed to learn which students didn’t feel connected, so we devised regular in-house surveys that identified student names but protected their
...we strategically go live in the evening to answer questions from families (a recent example was a Facebook Live broadcast aimed at incoming 8th graders).
example was a Facebook Live broadcast aimed at incoming 8th graders). Sometimes we interview staff or read recognition. The live platform is a great way to open up lines of communication and use social media to feature various members of our community.
Follow the Data: Track Your Why
As educators, we understand that it is easy to become inundated with data, but we also understand the importance of tracking data to help us determine how to spend our time. Based on our mission, we strive to look at data holistically (for all students) and individually (for each student). In the winter of 2018, when our students took the Illinois Youth Survey (Illinois Department of Human Services, 2021), one in three students did not report feeling like an adult cared privacy through very limited access to the results. These surveys have allowed us to track the individual responses of students to certain questions over the years. Some of the questions on the survey are based on the research of Camille Farrington (2013) from the University of Chicago who identified the importance of academic mindsets, so we include questions about those mindsets that we can track. By breaking down our data to the individual student and tracking our progress over time, we can make strategic decisions that fit our mission.
From that spring of 2018 to today, we have built interventions that allow staff members to proactively build relationships with students, we have learned which student groups are less connected than others, and we have
spent our time differently as a result. Specifically, during the summer of 2022, we knew that a specific group of our incoming freshmen were more likely to feel disconnected than others. To increase the likelihood of the connections being built, we did targeted home visits during the summer months to welcome those students and their families to school. We also spent time going to neighborhood parks, bringing games and food trucks, all in an effort to connect with EACH of our families. Not only did we learn about the neighborhoods that we serve, but we also built connections with individual students and families. Through our regular surveys, we see the impact of these interactions both on a larger scale (a steady decrease in the number of students who don’t feel that an adult cares about them) and on an individual level. We also see continued room for growth. school community. Building in time to be intentional about these moments can give us the relationship collateral we need for difficult conversations, and intentional culture building can also help preserve trust when adversity hits. When we strive to connect with each student, each staff member, and each community member, we must be proactive and intentional. EACH moment matters.
References
Farrington, C. (2013). Academic mindsets as a critical component of deeper learning [White Paper]. William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation. http://
www.whatkidscando.org/new/pdf/
White_Paper_Academic_Mindsets_ as_a_Critical_Component_of_
Deeper_Learning_Camille_
Farrington_April_20_2013.pdf
Each Moment Matters
We build culture during every interaction we have with each member of our Illinois Department of Human Services (2021). Illinois youth survey.https://
iys.cprd.illinois.edu/about
Sinek, S. (2011). Start with why. Penguin
Books.
Lori Ratliff has been an educator for 20 years serving as an English teacher, a Humanities division leader, and an assistant principal of Student Services. Currently, she is in her 3rd year as the vice principal of Crystal Lake South High School. A teacher at heart, she loves presenting at local, state, and national conferences on topics of school culture and student support. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from Trinity International University, her master’s degree from Webster University, and her administrative certification from Northern Illinois University. Email: lratliff@d155.org Josh Nobilio has been the principal of Crystal Lake South High School for the last five years. He earned his Master’s degree in social work from Loyola University - Chicago and his administrative degree from Northern Illinois University. Josh has presented at state and national conferences on the topics of school culture, community building, proactive social emotional support for students and staff professional learning. When not at school, Josh can be found with his kids and wife at ball fields, in gymnasiums or in the great outdoors. Email: jnobilio@d155.org
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