How's your school culture? Positive, negative or totally toxic?

Stories by Sherry Posnick-Goodwin
Photos by Scott Buschman

The underlying culture influences everything that happens in a school and can serve either as a bridge or as a barrier to progress.

Studies show that school culture has an impact on the achievement and behavior of students, as well as the motivation, productivity and job satisfaction of teachers. It influences the willingness of teachers and administrators to go the extra mile. These things, in turn, influence how smoothly — or not — a school functions.

"Culture is important because it sets the tone for how we go about doing our jobs," says Joe Harvey, president of the Citrus College Faculty Association. "A positive tone enables us to interact with our students in a positive manner and accomplish our task of educating them. A negative tone detracts from our ability to interact in a positive manner with our students and accomplish the goals we set out to achieve."

In schools where the culture is negative, there may be lower test scores, more discipline problems, and higher turnover of administrators and teachers. It even influences some beginning teachers to flee the profession after a brief stint.

Teachers have to remember that they are not powerless in these instances, say CTA organizing specialists. If they band together and work through their local associations, they can take control of the situation and return a sense of civility to the workplace.

"When people are happy, they always do better," says Marie-Nathalie Beaudoin, co-author of Creating a Positive School Culture: How Principals and Teachers Can Solve Problems Together. "If someone is unhappy, the first thing that goes out the window is concentration and academic learning. If a teacher is unhappy, he or she is not going to be excited, enthusiastic or patient. This is why it's so important that people work together to create a positive culture at school."

A clinical psychologist who oversees mental health professionals working with children in Silicon Valley schools, Beaudoin sometimes conducts "interventions" to improve relationships among school staff. When she visits a school for the first time, she can tell very quickly whether staff members are happy, supportive and able to work well together — or whether they are unhappy, resentful and working in isolation.

"You can feel the pulse of the school by just walking around the campus," explains Beaudoin. "I can see if people are relaxed, smiling and being kind to each other and patient with students, compared with seeing people who are stressed out and have things on their minds."

What Beaudoin learns by osmosis and observation is the unique culture of a particular school site or district. It's an indication of how people feel about each other — whether they feel included and valued, whether they look forward to coming to work each day, or whether they feel a sense of dread when they pull into the school parking lot.

Schools with a positive culture exhibit honest and open communication, involve teachers in decision-making and demonstrate a willingness to experiment, says Dr. Kent D. Peterson, co-author of The Shaping School Culture Fieldbook. They support teacher learning and school improvement, and invite collaboration and trust.

"There are both formal and informal celebrations and ceremonies that reinforce the accomplishments and successes of staff and students," he adds. "A positive culture is hopeful, and people have goals about what can be accomplished — even in challenging and underperforming schools."

Toxic school environments exhibit a sense of hopelessness, says Peterson, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Staff relationships are often hostile or antagonistic, and there are few, if any, efforts to recognize the accomplishments of staff and students. They may lack a clear sense of purpose, discourage collaboration, and demonstrate hostile relationships and cliques among staff.

"In a toxic culture, people don't get support," explains Peterson. "If there is a tyrannical principal who makes all the decisions and doesn't nurture the natural leadership in teachers, then teachers back off from problem-solving and sharing ideas. They become isolated and fragmented. Rather than focusing on working together in a collaborative community, a teacher focuses only on the classroom. Then what you have is a 'hotel for teachers,' where everyone goes to the classroom and does his or her thing. Sometimes those are wonderful things, but they are done completely in isolation. And no one is sharing those great ideas."

A pressure cooker environment can increase levels of stress, which in turn can cause people to point fingers and even turn on one another.

Labeling schools as failing under No Child Left Behind is counterproductive, says Peterson. Instead of focusing on improving schools, it strips educators of any motivation. Teachers and administrators alike start to believe they're failures, especially in schools that may be facing reconstitution or reassignment of staff. "Rather than focusing on incremental improvement that is making a difference, they worry about the label of 'failing.'"

Beaudoin agrees that pressure to raise test scores may be having a toxic effect. "Year after year, more pressure is placed on educators. There is more in the way of expectations in performance and the number of things to be taught and accomplished. And schools are having their budgets decreased all the time. When educators are expected to do more with less, it breeds a lot of resentment."

Beaudoin's co-author, Maureen Taylor, says a principal's leadership style can be a "huge factor" — sometimes the determining factor — in whether a school is viewed positively or negatively by staff.

"We surveyed and interviewed 230 educators for this book," says Taylor, who was a member of the Moreland Teachers Association in San Jose before she left the classroom two years ago. "It seemed that, if there was a problem that started with the principal, and teachers did not feel their school had positive leadership, it was a large thing to overcome."

Making time for teachers to collaborate — with each other, with administrators, with students and even with community members — is one thing schools with a positive culture have in common. It can be hard work and time-consuming to sit through collaborative meetings, but in the long run it can save time and energy.

With collaboration, staff can focus on what truly matters — improving student learning and achievement — rather than dwelling on negativity and resentment.

At Fountain Valley High School in Huntington Beach, which includes teachers in the decision-making process, Principal Chris Herzfeld says, "It's a waste of time just issuing mandates, because you might not get the input you need to make a good decision.

"You need to have investment and teacher buy-in to get things implemented. Otherwise, you will have superficial implementation at best."

How would you describe your school?

The following characteristics are based on a system developed by the University of Texas at Austin to help schools determine the effectiveness of their culture for teaching and learning. It's part of an online program, Welcoming Interns and Novices with Guidance and Support (WINGS), developed collaboratively by the colleges of education, liberal arts and natural sciences.

Characteristics of a bureaucratic school culture

• Teachers are seen as followers of an administrator-dictated regimen.
• Standardization or following the book is strongly emphasized.
• Teachers work in isolation with little chance for interaction with colleagues.
• Policies are mandated from above, with little or no input from teachers.
• Teachers feel devalued.
• There's little incentive for growth, and growth may be seen as threatening to others.
• There's no incentive to share ideas about how the school could improve.
• Turf guarding is common.
• Teachers are expected to solve problems in their own classrooms, and administrators and parents are called in only when the teacher cannot resolve the problem on his or her own.
• A serious problem with a student is assumed to be due to that student's behavior or a problem at home.

Characteristics of a toxic school culture

• Students are viewed as problems rather than valued clients.
• Staff members feel swamped, believe they're doing the best they can under the circumstances and can't take on any more duties.
• Historical perspectives on the school are negative, discouraging and demoralizing.
• New ideas, approaches or suggestions for improvement bring complaints, criticism and distrust.
• Sharing ideas, materials or solutions to classroom problems is rare.
• Cliques are common.

Characteristics of a collegial school culture

• Collegiality is paramount, and input from all comers is welcomed.
• Teachers are involved in decision-making.
• Communication is open and honest.
• Trust and confidence are common.
• Staff develops information networks rather than trying to solve problems in isolation or assuming one person has all the answers.
• Experimentation is encouraged.
• Tangible support is available.
• There's an atmosphere of appreciation, recognition, caring and good humor.
• Student problems are seen as social rather than individual challenges.