Culture Team Training

Statement of Need:
All departments within a school (academics, operations, special services etc.) must function for the school to “work”. For the school to be excellent, these departments need highly competent leaders with the ability to lead with little oversight from the school leader, to influence and drive adult actions, to be the model of excellence, and to coach and develop their teams. Far too often, culture leaders are asked to execute someone else’s systems or vision and / or can not be trusted (as in relied upon) to fully own their department.Often, culture teammates spike very high in some competencies of the role but struggle in others. While this is valuable to the school, the lack of development of the culture leader’s growth areas limit the development of a thriving school culture and ensures they will never become the true leader the school needs.While there are many things a Culture Leader must be able to do, there are core skills and competencies that fundamental prerequisites. Often, these are not clear and culture training is too diffuse, too reactive, or incorrectly sequenced resulting in sub-par development.

Program Goal:
This program seeks to change that – to name, train and practice getting the most important things right, first. We will focus on the key “Power Skills”:

Excellence in Execution
Building Trust through Reliability and Communication
Leading Initiatives and Influencing Adults
Ownership of Culture (the skills required to move from executor to leader)

Power Skills:

Excellence: In order to lead and inspire others, our culture leaders must hold themselves to an incredibly high standard and be a model for others in all that they do. They must set the bar through their every action.

Objectives:
Effectively and efficiently execute on key duties of role at level of excellence required of a leader. Specifically:

– Hold the highest of standards for students and self,
– Understand the bar for execution of a leader
– Execute at that bar for a given high leverage task
– Apply transferable skills to other tasks

Trust: Trust in our leaders and our culture team is paramount and foundational. In order to lead and inspire others, our culture leaders must be an example of reliability, develop strong relationships with all stakeholders, and operate from a deep sense of purpose at all times

Objectives:
Participants will be able to identify core responsibilities of the role and have the skills, systems and discipline to do them consistently. Specifically:

– Use tech fluently.
– Manage inbox and calendar reliably.
– Use personal effectiveness systems.
– Consistently deliver on daily commitments, tasks, and duties.
– Develop meaningful relationships or at least functional rapport
– And most importantly, convey purpose with words and actions; embody and champion
the schools core values and mindsets – living, demonstrating, celebrating, and eventually
coaching and correcting.

Leadership: Reliability and execution are necessary to be a leader, but a strong leader must also build the specific leadership skills, systems and practices required.

Objectives:
– Lead the culture team and influence teachers by using the systems and structures to lead and drive team
– Building leadership persona/presence among larger teams.
– Identify highest leverage growth areas and give effective feedback including real time feedback
Pushing initiatives, driving the conversation.
Pushing team to follow through on key commitments

Ownership: To truly be a leader, one must own all parts of their program – the who, the what, the why, the how. By carefully and thoughtfully (re) designing, documenting, and teaching our policies and practices, culture leaders will contemplate, evaluate and often improve our practices and can then truly own them.

Objectives:
Analyze, revise, create and own systems for upcoming school year
Lead the creation/revision of the value and narrative-aligned systems procedures and routines that will contribute to (or comprise) the schools culture manual
Develop / revise key culture training.

Program Structure:
In 2-3 week cycles, we will study, teach, practice and apply the skills necessary for foundational competence in the four power skills in order.

Our primary work day will be Wednesdays which will be structured as follows:

1-2 hrs asynchronous pre-work
1-2 hrs synchronous instruction/locking in key concepts
1-2 hours asynchronous follow up (practice and application planning),
1-2 hours synchronous practice and co-planning the application project of the week
0.5 hours synchronous presentation to and feedback from School Leader
1.0 hour synchronous revision and finalization of application project for week.

In between weeks, DoS will execute project with one formal touchpoint with Network Culture Lead (and on call as needed) and one formal touchpoint with School Leader

Deep Dive into Objectives

Excellence: Culture leaders will be able to:

Effectively and efficiently execute on key duties of role at level of excellence required by a leader. We will be building on the successes from quarter one and expanding our application of reliability to additional responsibilities that are specific to the participant, their school and their role.
This could include proactive actions such as “wolf walks” and push in, incentive planning or more reactive actions such as return to community meetings and process, behavior contracts, investigations, family meetings, mediations, supporting struggling scholars. While in quarter one we focused on doing actions reliably and consistently, here we will be focusing on doing things at a level of excellence. School leaders will help select key actions to drive.

Trust: Culture leaders will be able to:

Identify core responsibilities of role and have the skills, systems and discipline to do them consistently.
Use tech fluently, including school based systems such as Canvas, DeansList, School Runner
Navigate email, gcal, drive.
Manage inbox and calendar reliably: All participants will have and be held accountable for systems to respond to emails,
Setting a schedule, and using calendar as a leader
Use personal effectiveness systems to ensure follow through and reliabilityAll participants will create a daily worksheets with am/pm checklists, and conduct a daily and weekly round up.
Consistently deliver on daily tasks,
All participants will (with School Leader input) identify 1 key teacher/team facing commitment for their school and their role that MUST be executed with 100% reliability. School Leader will select things such as: daily culture email, ensuring accurate data in school runner and restorative room trackers, enforcing uniform / running uniform room, owning detention, restorative room and restorative systems, managing an incentive program, leading whole group culture building meetings.While there will be many things that must be done at 100%, our theory of change is that leaders must have exposure to the full breadth and benefit of perfect execution. Once they have felt and seen what this takes and what this produces, they will apply transferable lessons to other realms in their role.

Leadership: Culture leaders will be able to:

Lead the culture team and influence teachers.
We will learn and apply the systems and structures to lead and drive “their team” (which may be the culture team, a grade level team, or another formal or informal group of adults).
Participants will learn and apply structures such as weekly check in, dash boards, real time coaching etc.
Participants will build leadership persona/presence among the larger team by pushing an initiative that is tailored to their role, school, and the needs of the team (chosen with school leader).
Leaders will drive a change in adult practice that is relevant to their role: for deans of discipline, this may be out of classroom foundational culture where they will use the school culture rubric to assess quality, identifying highest leverage next steps, confidently real time coaching and delivering actionable feedback to teammates and holding them accountable to implementation.
For others, this may be around narrative building/proactive culture building in the realm of advisory or whole group meetings. Others may focus on close the loop conversations, positive parent communication etc. Leaders will launch, invest, train and manage the change, ensuring that the team to follow through on key commitments.

Systems Ownership:

Analyze, revise, create and own systems for 21-22 school year
Use an example culture manual and the culture manual writing tool to design/redesign and document school systems for SY 21-22.
Participants will use their leadership skills and team to assist in creating value and narrative-aligned systems procedures and routines. We will go through multiple rounds of feedback before and submit drafts for “slice checks” to school leaders along the way.
If adequate attention is paid by all parties to development, we can then focus on developing / revising key culture training to use with their teams in the summer.

Program Resources

School Culture Manual Resource Hub
Dean of Students – Get Better Faster SS
DoS Power Skills – Reflection and Restoration Process S +S and Resources
Leadership: Taking Action within your Locus of Control

Professional Development for Staff: Full Summer Program

We offer a school culture PD series of 40 hours of mindset-focused, practice-based training. Schools can either choose our full series, a strand, or create a custom offering from these sessions. Custom sessions also available.

Category	Sessions	Time (Hours)
Classroom Culture	Management Mindsets and the Importance of Trust	1.5
	Vision of Excellence and Global Baseline Expectations	1.5
	Strong Voice and the BMC Precise Directions, Narration, Art of Consequence	2
	Best Practices – Seating Charts, Tech, Group work…	1
	Key Management Moments – Behavior management and taxonomy integration	7
	Following Up: Family communication and close the loop	2
	Subtotal	16
Grade Level Culture and Investment	Narrative and College Going Identity	1.5
	Whole Group Messaging	1.5
	Orientation Planning and Practice	7
	Incentives and Initiatives	1
	Lunch	1
	Transitions and Hallways	2
	Detention	1
	Subtotal	16
School Wide Culture	Investment, Purpose, and Mindsets	1
	Routines: Arrival and Dismissal	1.5
	Procedures: Uniform, Tech, Gum, Passes etc.	1
	Restorative Practices and Backstops, Return to Community, Relationship Building and Repair	3
	RTI / MTSS	1.5
	Communication	1
	Subtotal	7
Total Time		40

Custom PD Sessions

We partner with schools do design and deliver custom PD sessions and packages to meet your needs, drawing from our deep well of resources and experience.