Culture eats strategy for breakfast

We can have all the best plans and ideas in the world, but unless the culture of your school is in the right place, nothing is going to work for the long term. So what is at the heart of culture?

People and relationships working together.

As the word ‘culture’ implies, it requires ‘cultivating’, just like a garden, regular and specialised work that is daily, weekly, seasonally, annually. It requires weeding, fertilizing and pruning and sometimes even a complete makeover, then more weeding, fertilizing and pruning. Cultivating a beautiful or purposeful garden never stops and ensuring the right school culture is just the same.

High quality relationships are essential in a great school that supports today’s learning paradigm, one that engages young, passionate learners and at the same time motivates and inspires committed educators.

Over the past few weeks I have co-hosted a study tour of UK and Europe, that takes leaders on a literal and professional journey. We visited creative learning and play spaces, and study innovative pedagogical approaches.

From my observation the effectiveness of each element is strengthened or diminished when deliberate attention is paid to the quality of relationships within the school, which includes:

• Student to adult
• Adult to adult
• School to stakeholder
• Leadership to the entire community

‘All will Succeed’

This is the mission statement of a Essa Academy, new 11-16 school in the Greater Manchester area. Located in a demographic of extreme social need, generational unemployment and a multi-racial community, with 46 different languages.

The school is united by the mission ‘All will succeed’ – the overarching statement that guides practice and culture. This academy is a reinvention of a so-called ‘failing school’, now in a new building, with new leadership, governance and culture.

On arrival the atmosphere of warmth and friendliness pervaded. Relationships matter at this school. In the car park we were met, greeted and welcomed. The reception area leads to an open common space, this is everybody’s space, anytime it’s needed, not just the dinner room.

At the start we were having coffee and a chat in a large communal space. In the same locale a small class gathered around some tables with their teacher, nearby a couple of teachers were planning and a young student was having a serious meeting with a couple of adults. No one felt they needed to hide away for any of these meetings, it was a communal space, for the activities of the community.

As we heard from Abdul Chohan (@abdulchohan), one of the school’s directors and then talked with teachers and students, the pervading culture shouted out loud:

High quality relationships are a significant value at this school.

 
Our tour group finished the morning with a one-on-one with students, freedom to ask about the school and learning, their hopes and dreams. I took this opportunity to take a couple of photos, then started talking to Sandy, the teacher accompanying them. As we talked about the students and the school, the amazing culture, and as I watched these well-presented students articulately and confidently communicate with members of our group, Sandy said to me,

“I just love these kids, I love them to bits.”

How do we develop the culture that supports strategy? Put people first:

• Articulate an inclusive and bold purpose – ‘All will succeed’
• Technology used creatively supports the learning and working – Not the other way around
• Share spaces – remove the barriers that support a ‘territorialist’ mindset
• Enable ‘planned coincidences’ – places where people can connect

Just like gardening, developing this culture takes time and work, it is modeled and reinforced from the leadership:

• Daily – observing, admiring and appreciating: attention to formal and informal interactions and use of the spaces
• Weekly – weeding: following through on structures that reinforce the vision and mission
• Seasonally – pruning and fertilising: watching for shifts and making adjustments
• Annually – assessing and observing the landscape: taking a health check, restating the vision and mission of the school

@anneknock

Essa Academy in the media:

The school where every teacher has an ipad and every student an ipod

Eton Masters visit Manchester for lesson in teaching by ipod

The deputy head, Sandy Reid, was mostly bothered about damage to the school reputation. She wasn’t bothered about me, my safety, my story, my losses. She was bothered about the good kids getting tarred with the same brush. Not that that’s true. The story will be page 7 or so, with a small little column. It’s local news in a local paper. It’s got a small readership of people who mostly are elderly. But at least it’s public. I don’t care about the phone or camera any more. I just want justice. And if that’s justice-by-media, so be it. In many ways, that’s way more damning than actual justice. I don’t agree with it. But if the law won’t help, then what’s the way forward? If the school don’t take some responsibility, fair enough, but it’s not a good sign. I don’t know why communications failed so badly. I do know the school didn’t contact me between the 8th and the 17th June. That’s not good enough for me. It’s a month since it happened and they were just dragging their feet even more.

It did make me realise I’m a total flouncer. I like to flounce out of jobs. I’ve flounced out of three so far. I didn’t use to flounce in my early life. I flounced out of a Topshop job on behalf of my sister. I can’t remember why, but it involved me going into Topshop in Bury and throwing a dress back at them and saying my sister wouldn’t be working there any more. I gave up each of my jobs with a little sadness: greengrocers, milk-rounds, kitchen jobs, waiting on, pub jobs. I even gave up my first teaching job with sadness. Not so much after that.

My second teaching post, when the deputy asked me if I was jealous of a newly qualified teacher, after a stand-up row for 4 hours, I laughed. I told her she’d have my notice on Monday. She did. I had a new job three weeks later.

I moved then to a council job. When the shit hit the fan with an incompetent old bitch who tutted publicly in meetings when I spoke, cornered me in empty offices to give me ‘a piece of her mind’ and called me ‘young lady’, we were offered mediation. I accepted. She refused. Wigan did nothing to enforce better behaviour, so they had my notice a week later. I had a job two weeks after that. I move quickly!

Finally, when the third school I was in did not support me during some scandalous gossip and name-calling, I walked. I really flounced. I stormed off, giving the head of education in the local council a massive sounding-off about judging me a cheat when he was the one shagging a maths consultant on a pool table a few months before. I did the whole ‘How dare you judge me!’ speech. I told the deputy off for having no backbone and told them they’d have my resignation. They did.

At that point, I decided to work for myself. Why not? I’m reliable, efficient, honest, hard-working and loyal. I have done okay. I could have done better, but then I haven’t really been bothered. Plus, I’ve had 3 years of shit hanging over me which I needed to deal with. I needed a bit of early retirement and life and priority-adjusting.

Then, the council and the country start getting shirty with me, so I’m off-ski. Cue massive flounce, as LJ sticks out her tongue, puts a thumb to nose to ridicule Bolton and does a great big raspberry.

I’d been robbed on a Friday afternoon four weeks ago by a gang of 50-100 kids who swore at me, harassed me, shoved me, jostled me and then stole my phone and camera. The police were brilliant. I got a good view of the lad who stole my camera and the one who assaulted me most. The police got the lad who assaulted me straight away.

I went into Essa Academy on the Monday morning. No-one was available. Not the head. Not the deputies (who were allegedly both teaching – which in my school-leader opinion is a crock of shit. Deputies teach negligible time tables and the time-tabler who puts all the senior staff on time table first thing on a Monday morning is a moron. I can’t remember the last time I had a Monday morning without some incident to sort out from over the weekend.) Not a head of year. Not a junior member of staff. Nobody. I went home. I have no phone on which to be contacted, since they stole mine, so I left my email.

Apparently the deputy came down at 4:30 when I was working. Then next day, the school liaison officer from the police came. She was brilliant. I told her about it. She knew who the thief was and she went off to do her bit.

Nothing very much happened the week after – I’d tried to get in touch with the school, but it wasn’t happening. I exchanged a few emails with the deputy head, Sandy Reid, but I got the distinct impression she wasn’t convinced and that it was just a minor incident to them.

The week after was half term. I gave them the benefit of the doubt of not being in school. The police woman called me on the Wednesday on Jake’s phone, told me they’d caught the lad, he’d confessed and that the school would make restoration of the camera/phone. All was well. I agreed to drop the charges and go for restorative justice, knowing that a reprimand is neither here nor there and I’d not get any sort of punishment further than that.

I got an email on the Tuesday (8th June) to say the deputy would come down to see me and explain. I mailed back to say Wednesday or Thursday would be fine. I stayed in. Nothing. Not an email. Not a call. Not a note. Nothing. I mailed back on Friday to say I was not available on Mon-Weds because I was at a senior examiner meeting *trying to rustle up a little professional courtesy* and still nothing. I emailed the deputy again on Wednesday, having left my new number last Friday, and said she should contact me as soon as possible. I got a phone call mid-morning, but we were cut off. I tried back instantly. No answer. I left a message.

The police woman called me mid-afternoon to say she’d take the girl (I assume!) and the lad who’d stolen from me to the police station. He’d lost the camera, so I’d not get that back. Neither would I get the phone back that the school had agreed I’d get back.

After stewing over it for some time, I called the Bolton News. Surely a story about a woman being mugged by 50 kids was interesting to them, especially in light of a similar thing happening at the weekend. Garry Newlove sends a message to us all. Teen yobs rule the street and are ungovernable. They phoned me back, I told my story. Now I’m waiting for a photographer and hopefully it’ll be in tomorrow night’s paper. Who’s to say?

Either way, I know Essa Academy have got no reason to restore my phone/camera. I don’t mind that. What I do mind is the lack of communication, the lack of punishment for the kids, the lack of sense of community or respect. What I mind is waiting 10 days for  a response to an email. What I mind is being fobbed off as if it’s some unimportant issue. What I mind is the school not actually personally talking to me. What I mind is my next-door neighbour’s son having been mugged by teenagers who beyond a shadow of a doubt went to this school. What I mind is that a similar incident occurred two streets away. What I mind is that they give out ipods to their kids who have no respect for their community.

And what worries me most is that I could have been seriously injured by a group of kids. I could be dead. And that’s not being melodramatic. That Friday afternoon, anything could have happened. Now, they know where I live, they walk around brazenly, and I am too afraid to go to the shop when I think they might be there. I make no joke. I’m a feisty woman who walked the streets of Rio without fear, and yet here, in my own home, I am terrified.