Opening up the walls, sending forth ripples of energy, empowerment, and knowledge in an effort to break down the barriers of resistance and self-doubt can be a very daunting task for leaders and teachers. The walls of a classroom are wise. They hold the superpowers, the teaching methods, and the successes of the teachers, students, and educational assistants who grace that particular room each day. They also contain the struggles, the questions, and the teaching methods that are swelling with pressure that, if released, could impact a school’s climate in the most powerful way.
As a leader in my own school, my passion lies with empowering a village of teacher leaders and building a culture where everyone wants to be there and do the best work of their life. This passion grew and came to fruition through my own waves of experience and has now become a vocation. The first wave came in the tides of my first year as a struggling teacher who did not know what to do or where to go to get help. I spent the majority of my time, fumbling with curriculum and strategies and the ‘right’ thing to do. I felt so alone. I was sinking as the waves kept crashing over me until I took a walk through the halls of my own school. I listened to the voices that seeped through the open cracks of the doors and I was immediately inspired. I realized that I wasn’t actually alone. Someone was out there. It was then that I decided to take action. I needed to enter the walls of the classrooms within my own school and immerse myself in who was right in front of me the whole time, the classroom teacher. This changed my life. I went to a teacher who taught the grade above me. She gracefully allowed me to come in and I saw for the first time the power of collaboration and sharing. She did not just let me sit there, she encouraged me to team teach with her and from that I learned and started to swim. This continued throughout my teaching career where I made a point of going in to learn from others as well as share my own teaching style and strategies.
The second wave came from my administrational experience. I knew the power of collaboration and opening up the walls but how was I going to empower others to do this as a new administrator in a new school? It was a dual track school with French Immersion and English programs. Everyone knew each other and had worked together for years, not to mention, I was following in the footsteps of ‘giants’ who lead before me. It did not start out well. Walking into a classroom, I immediately felt the eye rolling and imagined the sighs of annoyance. Multiple teachers questioned why this was important and expressed their discomfort for my nosiness. They felt it was a ‘make work’ project and that my whole goal was to judge them and critique them. My idea of releasing the teacher’s superpowers was seen as exposure of their sins rather than their successes. Crash! Another wave was closing in on me and I could feel the anxiety and fear of perhaps another failed idea. I wanted to be a respected leader who encouraged multipliers not diminishers (Kouzes & Posner, 2017). Where would I find the answers to this? With time and grit, I uncovered layer by layer the inner workings of our teachers. I realized that the answers to building school culture were in fact the very place where I started, in the walls. I just had to connect them to the people.
As a new Vice Principal, I had a lot of work to do. I had to convince my colleagues that I was trustworthy and strong enough for them to believe in. I wanted to be different and come to them with a different lens. I wanted to approach their teaching from their own personal stories and habits in life. If I could improve their happiness through teaching them about habits then the teaching part would rise right along with it. I realized immediately where I just may be able to forge a path to their hearts. I needed to be in the classrooms not as an evaluator but as a team teacher. I needed to build relationships and connections first through being visible and then I could work with them on the wellness side. Searching for my teacher leaders who were willing to share and invite others in would be paramount. Through their passion and expertise, they would empower other lead teachers. Not only that, I wanted the students involved. Our goal was to get the students talking about what they were learning, as well as co-constructing criteria and realizing learning focuses.
I started out just going for it with no real plan in place. That crashed and burned very quickly! Digging deeper into the sand, I clung onto any rock I could find, only to find out it’s grip wasn’t strong enough to stick. My ideas and attempts to form relationships were futile. It wasn’t until I actually listened to the teacher’s concerns and questions that I realized it had to be a certain rock that was going to stick. Everything I did had to matter to every staff member. Teachers wanted the same things I did. They wanted to collaborate, share, struggle, celebrate, inspire, question, and be happier but they didn’t want to do it alone. They wanted to align forces yet still keep their autonomy. I needed to find that fixed point that we could all revolve around and develop a plan but still respect their autonomy and discretionary space.
After talking to each teacher individually and reflecting on their concerns, I had found my fixed point. It was the culture. We needed to build a culture of teachers who loved to learn, to teach, and who wanted to show up every single day. If we focused on building a growth minded culture than everything else just might fall into place. The culture we wanted to build was through wellness and building healthy habits. Through this lens, we would encompass connection through collaborative teaching and assessment, professional development and curricular alignment. Every staff member from the gym teacher to the math teacher could relate to these three topics, therefore, it mattered to everyone.
How could we create a school culture that enables each teacher to build off of one another so that each time a child walked into a new classroom, they felt happy, inspired and motivated? That baseline language and core belief was still there along with the sprinkling and infusion of a new teacher’s ideas? After many highs and discouraging lows, the waves started to sync into a more symphony-like flow. This had become the best professional development that evolved because the walls were releasing the superpowers and teachers were leading teachers.
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