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CHAPTER 1

IMPROVING BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT THROUGH CULTURAL CHANGE

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

—Simon Sinek

Many of this book’s readers will have had a similar experience to mine—you’ve been in school for the bulk of your life! If I count my years at university as time being in school, I have more than five decades of familiarity with a place called school. This means that many aspects of school feel comfortable, even those that are not effective. Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey (2015) explain how this familiarity affects our classroom management decisions:

While our collective hearts as educators are in the right place, we tend to make decisions based on past experience. After all, we began our on-the-job training as teachers when we were five years old. Our beliefs about school, classroom management, and discipline have been shaped by decades of experience, starting in kindergarten. (p. 2)

If you were to list ineffective practices that you have seen during your time connected to schools, what would you put on that list? Would your list include management strategies that involve overt disciplinary routines, humiliation, or sarcasm; structural components such as a specific number or length of courses, start and stop times, or the structure of the school calendar; or grading practices that include zeros, consequential grading, or penalty points? Here is what I am certain about—anything you could identify as ineffective practice in our profession could be filed under a one-word heading: Easy. Educators don’t keep doing these things because they are effective; they do these things because they are easy, and oftentimes despite research that indicates otherwise and may even reveal the ineffectiveness of the practice. Consider education researcher and professor John Hattie’s (2009) research on effect sizes, and in particular those practices that have a low, or negative, effect size, for example.

Among many ineffective practices identified, Hattie’s (2009) research indicates that the practice of having students repeat a grade is one of a few common practices in education that has a negative impact, a loss of learning, on student outcomes. We don’t use this practice because it works; we use it because it’s an easier accounting practice. We really don’t know what to do with a student who was not successful in all the components of grade 4. It’s not wise to send him or her to grade 5, and we don’t have a grade 4½ program (but we could if we wanted to and were prepared to move beyond what is easy). As another example, consider the school calendar that is still in vogue in most jurisdictions, which was designed for the agrarian cycle. We still subject students to an extended break despite the decreasing percentage of students involved in the agriculture industry (“Shortage of Farmers,” 2014).

We have 21st century students being taught by 20th century adults using 19th century content on an 18th century calendar. This disconnect needs to be addressed well before we hit the midpoint of the 21st century. We need to push through the easy and get to the hard work in front of us. That’s where our collective success truly lies. We can start by examining how we approach managing learning in our organization.

Contrary to what some may think of when they hear the phrase managing learning, the idea of managing learning does not imply imposing a restrictive environment, nor does it mean focusing on a power imbalance. Rather, it suggests creating the optimal learning environment that allows every student to experience success regardless of his or her current status, approach, baggage, or disposition. It implies that educators are responsible for organizing a physical space that helps cultivate a supportive and positive emotional space. However, because the traditional model of classroom management is predicated on control, we should not blame teachers when an environment is not conducive to all students’ learning. Most veteran educators can recall a time when many believed that the most learning occurred in the quietest classrooms. Fisher and Frey (2015) recall this, suggesting, “Well-meaning teachers have been told to get their classrooms ‘under control’ by equally well-meaning principals” (p. 13) who believe that controlled classrooms where the adult is “in charge” will result in little misbehavior or disruptions due to students’ fear of consequences or punishment. In reality, if a student wants to be a distruptor or class clown, he or she may challenge this control. This often leads to escalations educators have come to know as power struggles. Let’s be clear; the educator holds the power in all these classroom situations. The only way the student can gain power is if the adult cedes it by engaging in the escalation (an escalation can’t occur with only one participant).

So how do educators build positive learning environments? The answer is simple—with intentionality, or, in other words, on purpose. My experience in classrooms has proven that having an effective classroom policy (expectations, not rules) and the opportunity for students to learn from their actions (consequence plus instruction) ensure the positive learning environments teachers desire. This often requires a culture shift in a school. In this chapter, we will examine the relationship between culture and structures in a school, reflect on the importance of collective commitments to changing culture, and consider how teams should assess their current reality to make the necessary cultural changes.

Understanding Culture and Structure

Culture describes the assumptions, beliefs, values, and habits that guide the work of educators within a school. Structure, on the other hand, includes the policies, procedures, rules, and hierarchical relationships that exist within the school. Factors internal to the school may mostly drive culture, while factors external to the school influence structure. Great debate often ensues in schools and districts around which of these matters most for improving student learning outcomes. Some may argue that a strong, consistent structural approach will provide the stability that is a precursor to creating positive learning environments. Others may argue that the culture of the school, the way the adults treat each other and their students, and the consistency of instructional approach will lead to the desired learning environment.

What is clear is the notion that a school won’t have success implementing structural change if the culture doesn’t believe in change. Education researcher Phillip C. Schlechty (1997) states, “Structural change that is not supported by cultural change will eventually be overwhelmed by the culture, for it is in the culture that organizations find meaning and stability” (p. 136). If the existing culture does not have as an absolute that all students can learn at high levels, it is moot to have dialogue about some of the most effective teaching tools (formative assessment, response to intervention, and collaboration), as they won’t produce the desired results in such a culture. Educational consultant Anthony Muhammad (2018) offers an even starker reality when he suggests:

Terms like research-based and best practice have been no match for the deeply ingrained disbelief in student ability that cripples many struggling schools. In fact, I have had the opportunity to study several schools where pessimistic faculty members are eager to prove that new strategies or programs aimed at raising student performance do not work in order to justify and solidify their hypothesis that not all students are capable of achieving academic excellence. (p. 24)

If the prevailing culture devalues some students, clamping down on structure will do nothing to improve the outcomes for those students. This seems straightforward yet remains elusive in many jurisdictions. Muhammad (2018) provides some insight when he states:

Cultural change is a much more difficult form of change to accomplish…. It takes knowledge of where a school has been, and agreement about where the school should go. It requires an ability to deal with beliefs, policies, and institutions that have been established to buffer educators from change and accountability. It is a tightrope act of major proportion. (p. 25)

This might lead one to think that the school or district leader should just decide how things ought to be done in a school and enforce this cultural change. However, Bryan Walker, partner and managing director of IDEO, and Sarah A. Soule (2017), professor of organizational behavior, suggest the exact opposite is really what needs to occur:

Culture change can’t be achieved through top-down mandate. It lives in the collective hearts and habits of people and their shared perception of “how things are done around here.” Someone with authority can demand compliance, but they can’t dictate optimism, trust, conviction, or creativity.

Collective commitment driven by meaningful dialogue is the precursor to any effective conversation about culture as well as structure. For example, a school may need to contemplate adding some additional behavior intervention time to produce the desired results, as behavior may be the single biggest deterrent to a student learning in the school. Educators gaining clarity on the culture (beliefs) will allow for the structure (schedule) change to succeed. Effective leaders understand this and build the collective commitment with their team, not for their team. Researcher Carol S. Dweck (2006) states these leaders “surround themselves with the most able people they can find, [and] they look squarely at their own mistakes and deficiencies” (p. 110). These types of leaders are not concerned with being the smartest person in the room or with achieving compliant behavior. They are concerned with growing their team’s skills through a collective commitment, which impacts the growth of all students.

Ensuring that all staff members create and own the mission to serve all students is a critical component of the success in managing learning. Schools cannot address the needs of all students if there is misunderstanding, miscommunication, or misappropriation of the mission. It must be collectively established and reviewed annually in order to fully entrench the cultural changes required for successful, schoolwide ownership of managing learning.

Making a Collective Commitment to the Cultural Change

If we are going to change the culture, we have to understand this change doesn’t take place overnight. Real change is a process, not a declaration—and it requires a collective commitment. Educational consultant Kenneth C. Williams and Tom Hierck (2015) suggest:

Collective responsibility means much more than clichés, slogans, and catchphrases. It requires that the moral imperative (the why of your work) be embedded in every aspect of a school’s culture—through every decision, behavior, and action taken as a school. (p. 9)

We can’t think the culture has shifted just because we’ve created a fancy slogan that says we are about learning for all students, and posted it around the school. We need to focus on the space between posters and practice.

Change takes time. Sustainable change takes more time! I often suggest to schools that they should prepare for a three-year journey at a minimum. Year 1 is always about clarifying your purpose, your strengths, your journey, and your capacity. Schools must ask themselves if there is a collective commitment that all staff have created and own, or whether they have merely adopted a previous mission of the school that was handed down to them. It’s important that staff actions and commitments are reflected in the mission they create. All educators need to be a part of this review of the mission and surface all their beliefs during this process. Modeling the expectations is a vital part of the work.

Year 2 is about aligning your behavior with the commitments you’ve made. Staff reflect on whether their policies, procedures, and practices align with the behaviors they are exhibiting. In content- or subject-area collaborative teams, teachers should review all that is occurring in their classrooms to see if it aligns with what is being espoused. Leaders should review with the entire faculty before considering or making changes.

Year 3 is about monitoring and celebrating. Educators need to reflect on what is working and what is not, and themselves—whether they can defend the work they are doing without becoming defensive. There also is a need for celebrations to occur as recognition of growth toward achieving the desired goal of managing learning. Every time there is a move forward, teams should intentionally acknowledge what has occurred. Here, they can begin to see the benefits of their efforts and know that what they are doing is working. For more information on the different roles, responsibilities, and stages involved in this process, with specific actions and steps different stakeholders can take to plan, manage, and nurture the collective work toward cultural change, see Williams and Hierck (2015).

It’s important to acknowledge that lengthy and labor-intensive processes like implementing necessary cultural changes may not appeal to all school community members. Change can be daunting. The alternative—continuing to do the same things and get the same results—must be less desirable than the hard work ahead, or else schools won’t move forward. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith (2001) frames this challenge best when he says, “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof” (p. 241). Implicit in Galbraith’s statement is the common argument I often hear from educators facing change initiatives: “We don’t have the time.” Few would disagree with this understandable argument; educators’ time is stretched thin. Yet, if we are to achieve the necessary change, we must have the willingness to find a way. Unfortunately, the school community may always include those who will resist this work. Blank stares, foot dragging, and yeah-buts are the anchors that prevent any change in school. This is the behavior of the group Muhammad (2018) identifies as the Fundamentalists:

Fundamentalists are the vanguards of tradition and protect the status quo. They are relentless in their attempts to discourage change and protect a system that has allowed them to function and thrive, and they organize to protect this traditional way of practice…. They view change itself as an enemy; therefore, anyone who challenges the system is a threat to the system and a threat to the Fundamentalists. They are the most aggressive and vocal combatants in this war of ideology. (p. 77)

Convincing Fundamentalists to change may seem insurmountable, but don’t abandon hope. I do not believe anyone got into the education profession to be marginal or ineffective. If people have landed on those behaviors, it’s often because someone condoned their behavior. Although the change process may be lengthy, time is on our side when we behave as a collaborative team that owns its collective commitment.

It’s important to recognize how professional learning community (PLC) principles such as working in collaborative teams can support systems thinking elements and Unstoppable Learning principles. Collaboration enhances creation and analysis of these lists to ensure teachers share with each other what is working well with their students. As PLC architect Richard DuFour (2011) suggests:

[Team members] share their expertise with one another and make that expertise available to all of the students served by the team. They establish clear benchmarks and agreed-on measures to monitor progress. They gather and jointly examine information regarding student learning to make more informed decisions and to enhance their practice. (p. 59)

Mutual trust borne out of a collective commitment results in open dialogues and a desire to add whatever practices it might take to mange learning. This needs to occur across all departments and grade levels, as DuFour (2011) reminds us when he describes how, in a PLC, “The school creates a systematic process that ensures that students who are struggling receive additional time and support for learning” (p. 61). When educators do this, all students will grow in their behavioral dispositions as well as their academic content.

Not only do educators work collaboratively in a PLC, but one of the big ideas driving the PLC process is that educators must “take collective responsibility for the success of each student” (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, Many, & Mattos, 2016, p. 11). As educational consultant Jenni Donohoo (2017) states:

When teachers believe that together they and their colleagues can impact student achievement, they share a sense of collective teacher efficacy…. Collective efficacy is high when teachers believe that the staff is capable of helping students master complex content, fostering students’ creativity, and getting students to believe they can do well in school. (p. 3)

It’s essential that every educator bear the commitment to any change initiative. We can no longer operate (and probably never should have operated) as individuals, each giving our best while trying to move all students forward.

The familiarity that educators have with established school routines, procedures, and practices can present a challenge to working collaboratively in teams and embracing change. If an individual feels he or she is well-versed in these aspects, and his or her results are “good,” that person may find it difficult to accept that others have something else to offer. When I first started teaching, most teachers operated as independent contractors. They showed little desire to share best practice or to engage in cross-grade or cross-content conversations. I truly entered the profession being expected to figure things out for myself, and I suspect I am not alone in that experience. Unfortunately, this leads to a school of independent contractors whose only commonalities are the parking lot and the faculty lounge refrigerator. It creates districts of independent schools instead of coherent school districts, resulting in entirely different approaches to learning within the same jurisdiction.

It is simply impossible for any one staff member to be as smart, proficient, and effective as the collective staff. I can look back over my career and state unequivocally that anything we did was vastly superior to anything I did. Autonomy should reside in your method of delivery, not in what you deliver. Further, the strong desire to function as a team facilitates the move to talking about our students instead of my students. A strong, committed team will overcome challenges that a loose affiliation of individual talent will never surmount. Healthy and productive relationships among staff facilitate a positive school climate and learning environment and build healthy relationships among students and between students and staff. The strength of a team is that it becomes an unstoppable force, but an uncommitted individual can sink any team. All members of a team must buy into the analysis of the current reality and be part of the commitment to take the next step.

Assessing Your Current Reality

Clinical professor of educational leadership Marsha Speck (1996) has identified some key questions that I like to refer to as a test to see where schools would currently place themselves in terms of their collective commitments, especially those schools or individuals who have used the “lack of time” defense to stop progress. Following are some of the questions.

• What is the school vision?

• What are the skills or capacities needed to change?

• What are the incentives or motivations to change?

• What are the resources available to change?

• What is the action plan for change?

• What modifications need to be made during the change process or implementation of the action plan?

• How will the action plan for change be reviewed, evaluated, and revised?

These questions serve as a good assessment for educators to gauge their progress individually and collectively. If you ask the same questions and give the same answers as you did twenty years ago, it might be time to change how you assess your reality.

While beginning the change process will always require time, the adults in a school will realize that effort (and more) when they align their work in service of all students’ learning. Schools exist as learning centers for children, not employment centers for adults. We cannot spend our time on proving why students can’t learn or living on past glory. We must spend it on ensuring all students learn and we hold the keys to making that a reality.

Aligning the Classroom Culture

While every team member needs to be on board with the work ahead, it is equally important that every team member shares a common understanding of the team goals and aligns his or her practice to have consistency with all other team members. However, achieving consistency across your school or district seems to become a bigger challenge the larger a team is. It stands to reason that it is harder to get forty people to agree than it is to get four to. While this may be true, it should not deter schools or districts from pursuing this ultimate goal. What’s at risk if you don’t? Jennifer Medbery, founder and chief product officer for Kickboard, and Tom Hierck (2017) suggest that in the absence of a schoolwide commitment with individual classrooms aligned to a broader purpose, silos of excellence will emerge:

A consistent, student-centered, and restorative approach is essential for the effective implementation of a positive school culture initiative. Individual, classroom-based approaches are more likely to result in inconsistent expectations for students, a lack of teacher-to-teacher conversations about successful methods, and unnecessary escalation in student discipline, leading to silos of excellence rather than overall excellence. (p. 1)