Before you start building out a school culture, it’s important to put some thought on the implementation behind it. During my time in education, I had the privilege of founding a high school culture from scratch and learned a lot of things the hard way. Here is a description of some challenges we faced when starting the new high school and lessons that were learned.
Building a School Culture: Brand New School
As soon as I became the HS Dean of Students at YES Prep Brays Oaks, I was intent on setting up a strong culture for our students. Even though our high school solely consisted of a ninth grade, I fought hard to think of the different ways that I could improve upon their middle school experience. We got them additional uniform options. We gave that one grade level their own “high school” bell schedule and even their own lunch time, separate from middle school. We tried hard to modify things so that they could get things as close to the high school experience as possible, even though all we had was one grade level.
The night before the first day of school, we were excited about everything we were about to unveil to our students. We felt as though all our work was about to bear fruit. Then the first week hit. Our students were disappointed and unhappy with their newly formed high school. Their first question, “where’s the vending machine?” We told them it wasn’t a priority and that we had to focus on more important aspects of the school. This didn’t satisfy them. It wasn’t until the vending machine arrived a few months later, that their attitudes started to shift.
Lessons Learned from Building a School Culture
I learned several important lessons those first few weeks.
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It’s all a matter of perspective
- What was important to us wasn’t necessarily important to our students. We couldn’t assume that what we thought was important to create that high school feeling was the same as what the students thought.
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Know your audience
- We didn’t try to get to know our students’ thoughts about the high school experience before trying to create it. We thought back to our own experiences as high school students and as school personnel, but we didn’t simply talk to our students to see what they thought.
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Remember the details
- While we are focusing on the big initiatives and the greater picture, we didn’t think enough about what the students would see at the end of the day. We have to remember that our students are the ones walking through the halls of the school every day, noticing every detail and remembering broken promises.
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Build a team
- Part of the reason that things were so stressful for everybody is that we had a solid number of people working together, but we didn’t have a team. We didn’t have a cohesive unit of individuals working toward a common goal. Everybody was working hard, but we weren’t aligned.
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Have a clear vision
- There needs to be a clear plan for how everything will look at the end of 1, 2, 3, and 4 years. Even though we just had a 9th grade, we couldn’t think of that grade level in isolation. We had to think of it as part of a greater whole and plan accordingly.
It’s never going to be a cakewalk, but hopefully these lessons can guide others who are building out school cultures to avoid putting in a ton of effort for little to no reward.
