Climate and Culture Teams: Establishing Positive and Effective Culture Through Community Building, Shared Leadership, and Responsibility

The organizational culture of a school, or district, has a direct impact on retention of effective staff, productive relationships with families, educator cohesion and mutual support, and student learning outcomes. Culture is often overlooked as a real lever for change. This workshop will develop skills to understand the current culture and intentionally move to build a more effective one, specifically creating a building-based climate and culture team. Topics will range from identifying current cultural norms and values and how they affect the school, creating a model of shared leadership and shared responsibility, honest and professional communication, and using evidence to connect norms, values, and vision to the daily life of the school. Workshop content and process is relevant for district and school leadership.

Participants will:

• Develop an understanding of school culture and its impact, specifically understanding their school culture
• Identify current norms and values of the school community
• Analyze how current culture affects all members of the school community and the effectiveness of the school
• Recognize and create opportunities to shift culture
• Purposefully establish plans for the creation of a school (or district) climate and culture team
• Explicitly articulate the expected outcomes of a more effective and “open” culture

This workshop will model several of the key components of culture, group dynamics, and team building. Participants will uncover the norms and values that currently are at work in their school. The work is done interactively, with time for processing and unpacking the information through guided discussion. There will be opportunities for participants to create a plan for establishing a climate and culture team that works for all - meaning student success and faculty and staff agency and responsibility.

The key takeaways: Culture has a direct influence on school, or district, effectiveness, culture can be purposefully established to be an integral component of improvement efforts.

Presenter: Bruce Michitson, Seaside Educational Consultants

PD Hours: 3 in Content Area Safe and Supportive Learning Environments

Fees: Member $150 / Non-Member $205

MSAA Contact: Ethel Kawesa, ekawesa@msaa.net

About the Presenter

Bruce Michitson | Seaside Educational Consultants

Bruce is a Fellow of the Lynch Leadership Academy, Boston College. He served as a trained literacy coach, lead math teacher, and primary evaluator as Principal of Golden Hill School. Bruce served with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Principals’ Advisory Council during 2014 and 2015, focused on teacher evaluation and effectiveness and teacher leadership. He was a lead author of the “Building a School Culture that Supports Teacher Leadership” DESE resource. Bruce offers experience and a depth of knowledge in creating effective building-based leadership and employing productive educator evaluation that supports effective teaching.