Leader 2 Leader Blog

By Delaney Rosenberg 

How can leaders establish a positive, community-oriented culture for the educators on their team? There is a gaping hole in research literature on this topic, despite the fact that our educators’ perceptions of their work have a direct effect on students’ experiences at school, according to Visible Learning by John Hattie and Klaus Zierer. Additionally, we, as leaders, are faced with a challenging, anti-public school societal culture that is affecting our staff members each and every day, leading to a sense of isolation for them; this has devastating effects, including educators leaving the field entirely.

Thus, it is essential for us to devote our efforts to promoting mindsets of collective efficacy and community among our staff. Research shows that educator culture, collective efficacy, and sense of community are interconnected, and that this combination can produce positive results, like increased teacher engagement and job satisfaction. Our work as administrators is very human. It involves coaching, fostering trust, and valuing two-way communication. We are stronger together, and we must inspire this mindset in our staff if we hope to make change. What steps do I take?

1. Diagnose: Obtain Your Baseline Measure and Use This to Set a Goal

Just as you would when providing interventions for students, you must collect your diagnostic, or baseline data before delving into your interventions with educators. Rick Stiggins explains this as assessment for learning. In this effort, we can create our own assessments for learning about our educator community’s baseline mindset when it comes to their educator culture, and specifically, their mindsets on collective efficacy and sense of community, such as:

• Educator Surveys;
• Exit Interviews and Stay Interviews; and
• Professional learning community protocols and analysis tools in relation to the educator culture, such as Solution Tree’s SWOT Analysis.

After you collect your data, take the time to analyze it with an open mind; focus on the trends that you see. Are there instances when educators cite feeling a sense of shared purpose in relation to student achievement? In what ways do they describe their interactions with leadership and with each other? From there, create one or two S.M.A.R.T. goals, or goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

For example: By June of 2027, I will complete one informal observation in every classroom. This will increase educators’ perception of support from leadership, and by extension, their sense of community, by 20 percent.

2. Intervene: Put a Strategy in Place to Meet Your Goal

In the example above, my intervention is the informal observation. However, the amount and the types of interventions that you can implement to promote collective efficacy and a sense of community are endless. To give you several examples, I have separated interventions into three themes, or areas of need, that are related to educator culture, collective efficacy and community.

Interventions for Shifting Educator Mindset

• Endorse resource exchange and sharing: To share is to grow, and as leaders, we need to foster opportunities for teachers to exchange ideas and strategies; this is a fantastic way for them to reflect and progress. Some of this sharing can happen organically, but some of it needs to occur with the support of leadership through opportunities like staff learning showcases or specific meeting goals and agendas.
• Embed change systemically; no one-off programming: A major frustration for educators is being made to sit through a training or a workshop that feels like a one-time learning opportunity they will never hear about again. Fiona Seaton, in “Empowering Teachers to Implement a Growth Mindset,” discusses how, to shift educators’ mindsets about a topic, approach, or belief, educators must experience cognitive dissonance; she makes it clear that this will not happen if the intervention is not embedded at a systemic level. This takes time and consistent, sustained change, not annual training to check a box.
• Promote mistakes and a culture of growth: Without endorsing and supporting a culture in which making mistakes is part of the learning process, it is difficult for educators to change their beliefs. As we see with students, learning something new can involve a lot of failures and errors before learners are proficient in a skill. We need to give this same grace to our educators. Although it can be scary for us as leaders, it is essential for us to talk about and celebrate our teachers’ and our own mistakes. I cannot tell you how many times I admit to forgetting to complete a task or not knowing how to do something (yet). There is no pinnacle of success where you stop making mistakes. Let’s model this for our educators.

Interventions for Enhancing Community and Collaboration

• Implement community-building circles: Although we often hear about using community-building circles in our classrooms through a morning meeting format or advisory model, we can, and should, also use community-building circles with our staff to foster community. Kay Pranis details how community-building circles “draw on the ancient Native American tradition of using a talking piece…[and] combines this ancient tradition with contemporary concepts of democracy and inclusivity.” Therefore, people gather in a circle to discuss, bond, celebrate, and repair. The talking stick ensures that everyone has a chance to participate and that no one is talking more than or over anyone else. Show your staff that you are willing to be vulnerable and that you do not always have to be in control of the circle’s topics and process.
• Encourage colleague conversations: Teaching is an extremely difficult and taxing profession. Amber Howard recently conducted a study on the role of secondary trauma in the lives of pre-K-12 educators and uncovered how much emotional strain educators are truly taking home. In outlining strategies that educators find most helpful in coping with secondary trauma, she elaborates on the importance of teachers being able to talk with each other to vent and process emotions. As leaders, we need to provide these safe spaces and opportunities for conversation so that our educators know they are not alone.
• Organize professional learning communities (PLCs): Contrary to what many educators think, PLCs are not grade-level or subject-level teams but rather the ongoing process of the entire district community working toward a shared purpose through collective inquiry and action research, according to “The Importance of Professional Learning Communities for School Improvement.” Therefore, leaders should not only engage their educators in this work but be active participants and know when to step back and let teachers facilitate.
• Create peer-to-peer observation cycles: There are countless resources on how to do this and why to do this, but the main benefits are the same. Peer-to-peer observation cycles get educators out of their own classrooms and opens their minds and gives teachers the opportunity to get feedback that is not from an administrator or a supervisor. More important, “When teachers see their colleagues meet with success, it helps to build shared conceptions of progress and impact and it helps to build the individual and collective confidence needed to persist in the work of school improvement,” say John Hattie and Raymond Smith. Thus, these cycles promote collective efficacy.

Interventions for Increasing Leadership Presence and Support

• Engage in dialogue, not monologue: Hattie and Smith explain the importance of leaders avoiding monologue and emphasize that, instead, they should “listen and respond, share thinking, ask questions, and work to reach consensus.” I cannot echo their sentiments enough. This does not mean that you cannot disagree or that you should avoid delivering bad news. What it means is that all people want to feel as if they have flexibility or choice and that they are being treated with empathy. We need to prioritize this in the way that we communicate with our staff.
• Take time for informal, non-evaluative visits: As I mentioned before when elaborating on how to write SMART goals, informal classroom visits send a message to teachers and students that administrators are present. There are times when I simply bring my laptop or a stack of papers to a classroom just so that I can work somewhere outside of my office and be around children. One of my friends commented how these visits are nice but that leaving a small note on a post-it or on the whiteboard about something positive that I saw would be even better. Our educators want feedback—and they want to know that we see the hard work and love they dedicate to this field every day. We need to show them this by being there.
• Teach and be the principal: One of my biggest frustrations as a teacher was having supervisors who had no idea what it was like to walk a day in my shoes. Whether they had never taught a whole group of students before or they had taught so long ago that they could not fathom the realities of COVID teaching, I was full of resentment and anger. As a result, it was a huge priority for me to continue teaching when I become an educational leader. Debra Ann Berndt and Shireen Ann Fasciglione explain the results of being a teaching principal when they discuss how working alongside staff can enhance leaders’ credibility, creativity, and collaboration. There is something special about your staff and your students seeing you in a different capacity and role; it is also nice to take a break from being a principal and to remind myself why this career found me in the first place!

Remember, it is not enough to do the intervention. You must track the number of times that you do the intervention and progress monitor its effectiveness. How will you measure the impact of your intervention? Will you have educators take another survey? Will you have follow-up interviews with staff? Will you have them fill out professional learning or team meeting evaluations?

Often, we, as leaders, get a “sense” that something is working or is trending in a positive direction or that it is not. Gather data to support this feeling, and remember, your data does not have to be quantitative in nature; you can gather qualitative data from educators as well, just make sure to document it.

3. Evaluate: Reflect on the Effectiveness of Your Efforts

This is my favorite step in the process. Does your data indicate that your intervention had any effect? Was this effect positive or negative? Are there adjustments that you need to make when moving forward? It’s okay if you did not get the results that you were hoping for. The fact that you are trying shows that you are already a step ahead—you are demonstrating that educator culture matters and that it is a priority for you as a leader. Thank you for valuing your people and this work. They notice.

Delaney Rosenberg is principal of Ellis High School in Freemont, New Hampshire.

https://www.naesp.org/resource/foster-an-educator-culture-of-collective-efficacy/