Long before the new school year started, teachers, school and district leaders and Ministry staff were trying to plan for a safe and productive return to school. Or perhaps a partial return to school, supplemented with online learning. Or perhaps some other model. From wrestling with the logistics of keeping students physically distanced from each other in buildings designed and staffed for large groups, to seeking kid-friendly online learning approaches, it’s been an uncertain path toward a moving target. Parents and students, of course, also have new worries and challenges.
So everyone in the education system is feeling an additional layer of stress. We are also finding new ways to connect with and support each other, experiencing satisfaction when we find effective ways to meet new challenges and taking pride in the successes that have been achieved so far.
This issue of Education Canada is focused on you and your well-being at work, regardless of your role in the education system. Before we’d even heard of COVID-19, staff stress and burn-out was already a significant problem in education. Staff well-being is an issue that all school boards should be concerned about – and now more than ever.
The authors in this issue offer thoughtful, evidence-based analysis of the stress educators experience and how this impacts the whole school community. Rohan Thompson and André Grace address the burden of stress that BIPOC and LGBTQ2+ staff and students endure due to systemic and explicit racism and homo/transphobia. Darcy Santor and Chris Bruckert report on the worrying increase in violence and harassment teachers are experiencing. Melanie Janzen and Anne Phelan examine how over-emphasizing self-help as the “cure” for teachers’ stress can actually increase anxiety and feelings of inadequacy, while overlooking both the systemic factors that create relentless stress and the inherent nature of the job for teachers who care.
There is plenty of good news, too. Our authors also share initiatives, programs and policies that have strengthened educator well-being in their districts, and new ways of thinking about and addressing stress among teachers and students alike.
I hope you find validation, useful information, and inspiring ideas in this issue to support you and help you stay well – both as we find our way through the pandemic, and in the future.
First published in Education Canada, September 2020
We want to know what you think. Send your comments and article proposals to editor@edcan.ca – or join the conversation by using #EdCan on Twitter and Facebook.
Joanne was a Grade 3 teacher in a high-need rural school. She was an incredibly conscientious person and she worried a lot. She worried about how good a teacher she was, how her colleagues perceived her, and what her principal was thinking, as well as being concerned about each student and how she could help them progress. This worry led to her doubting herself and working even harder, and over time she became emotionally exhausted. This, in turn, affected her family life and her health. Then a new principal arrived and set social and emotional learning as a central goal of their school.
Joanne was mentored in the use of an evidence-based Social emotional learning (SEL) curriculum and the staff created a reading group on SEL. They then began to work on their own social and emotional awareness, which included some short and practical mindfulness practices. The staff also worked to create a more compassionate, caring culture for their school, children, and parents. Joanne found a new reserve of inner strength, loosened the grip of her worry, and celebrated the new sense of partnership with teachers and other staff. She developed closer relationships with her students and parents and she slowly gained back the joy of teaching.
This story illustrates the power of community, leadership, and self-inquiry in supporting a teacher’s own journey as a professional. All three components supported Joanne and nurtured her abilities as a teacher. Over the past few decades, research has shown that teachers who develop and compassionately nurture their own social and emotional competencies are those who create caring classrooms and support their students’ SEL. Further, when children’s social and emotional competence is facilitated and the school nurtures healthy relationships with colleagues, students, and families, students become more engaged as learners and increase their school success.
In the time of COVID-19, there are important lessons for us to remember. First, we need to nurture ourselves and make realistic plans for self-care. Second, we need to nurture our relationships with our colleagues, and especially reach out to our students and families. Third, secure and caring relationships are the base for learning and success and the more secure and confident we all feel, the more learning and growth will happen.
First published in Education Canada, September 2020
Well-being and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) have become increasingly top priorities in Canadian schools as concerns rise about the mental health and well-being of both staff and students. However, the vast majority of education leaders have not been trained to lead efforts that would integrate well-being and SEL across entire school districts through programs, policies, and practices that transform school cultures for the long term. This means that SEL initiatives are often one-off and unsustainable, and are restrained from becoming a reality across schools in every province and territory. On the flipside, emerging practice demonstrates that a Compassionate Systems Leadership approach – which combines mindfulness, compassion system-wide thinking and action – can strengthen the capacity of education leaders to effectively embed well-being at all levels of the education system.
Developing self-awareness, mindfulness, and compassion for self and others.
Building one’s awareness through intentional listening as well as clear and respectful communication, which can lead to more effective problem-solving among teams.
Understanding the underlying elements that shape a school’s organizational culture (i.e. its system of beliefs, values, behaviours, ways of communicating, etc.) as a way to determine levers for change.
The first step in building leadership capacity is to increase awareness of yourself – your own values and biases.
Everyone has the potential to create or support change regardless of their position within the school and district. More impact can be achieved when school leaders and staff learn and act together.
Developing skills and knowledge is an ongoing effort of practicing what you’ve learned, reflecting on what’s working and not working, and being open to adapting.
A Compassionate Systems Leadership approach guides education leaders in developing their own SEL skills as they grow in their ability to implement system-wide change in support of staff and student well-being. When education leaders cultivate compassion through SEL skills including empathy, sound decision-making, and self-regulation, they are better able to create educational cultures that emphasize well-being, understand barriers to change, and encourage other staff to contribute towards the change process.
Schroeder, J. & Rowcliffe, P. (2019). Growing Compassionate Systems Leadership: A toolkit. Retrieved from: http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/media/systems_toolkit_2019_final.pdf
This webinar is primarily for governments, education professional organizations, school and school district leaders, teachers and education support workers, and anyone interested in understanding current issues for changes to K-12 schooling for the education sector across Canada in the COVID-19 era.
In March of 2020, Canadian education systems first began to close schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As well as the emergency response shift to remote learning from home, we must also begin to turn our attention to the inevitable task of planning for the future of schooling over the short and medium term. As school reopenings internationally are showing, this is not simply a return to schooling as normal. Moreover, since education in Canada is a provincial responsibility, responses to COVID-19 have been diverse and we would expect plans for the future to be appropriately varied. Fundamentally, what we will need to ask ourselves is: “What conditions need to be in place for students to learn and for teachers to teach, and how will leaders across the system adapt to support these conditions?”
This one-hour webinar panel discussion originally broadcasted on June 11th, 2020 explored how we will understand effective leadership across the education sector for the coming months and years by considering implications for governments, teacher organizations, and school leaders.
This webinar is primarily for school district leadership, principals, vice-principals, professional associations, policymakers, aspiring school leaders, and anyone interested in the well-being of school leaders.
Canadian school leaders are grappling with longer hours, increasing demands, and higher workloads than ever before, which is threatening principal recruitment, retention, and job performance. Work intensification involves managing condensed timelines and a simultaneous increase in the volume and complexity of tasks, activities, and other work demands. As effective school leaders are key to high-performing schools and healthy school environments, work intensification not only threatens school leader recruitment and retention, but also the well-being and performance of both staff and students.
This one-hour webinar originally broadcasted on June 8th, 2020 explored the results of recent studies conducted in Ontario and British Columbia on how principal wellness and the role of school leaders is changing, including strategies that professional associations, school districts, policymakers, and school leaders themselves can take to improve principals’ and vice-principals’ well-being.
Watch the webinar below:
What can we learn from British Columbia’s system-wide educational transformation efforts to shift from a centralized standards-based curriculum toward flexible learning paths? Leyton Schnellert identifies the factors that have supported success.
British Columbia is undergoing large-scale change within its K-12 education system, with a commitment to transform education to better meet the needs of all learners. To be successful within and contribute to an evolving global context, B.C. is currently implementing a new curriculum designed for 21st century learners. Twenty-first century learners need to be flexible, creative and able to learn from and within a variety of real and virtual environments.1 B.C.’s new curriculum offers an opportunity for innovation and significant shifts in teaching practice.
B.C.’s current system-wide educational transformation efforts position the province as a global pioneer in the shift from a centralized standards-based curriculum toward flexible learning paths. Worldwide, the real challenge in education is not to reform systems but to transform them; not to fix them through a collection of disjointed efforts but to change systems through collaborative partnerships among the public, educational professionals, and governments. B.C.’s efforts aim to evolve an already successful educational system into one that takes into account current research on teaching and learning to prepare learners to succeed and lead in a changing world. In particular, the aim is for learners to develop the skills of “creative thinking, problem solving, initiative, curiosity, and the ability to lead and work well in groups.”2 To achieve this goal, notions of what needs to be learned, how, and where have changed significantly; these transformational changes require all stakeholders to take risks, develop innovative practices, and work together.
Fortunately, in B.C. there currently exist a number of promising professional development practices that support the above transformation. These include inquiry-based approaches which have been found to impact not only teachers’ learning, but also their practice in classrooms. When engaged in cycles of inquiry, teachers identify challenges and opportunities in relation to student learning, pose questions, develop criteria for monitoring success, draw on resources to enhance their own learning, and then embed new ideas in practice.3 In contrast to short-term, more fragmented professional development approaches such as one-shot workshops, inquiry-based professional development assists teachers to sustain attention to goals over time and to integrate new ideas into practice. Particularly impactful inquiry-based professional development approaches are collaborative in nature, and either develop or are based in collaborative networks of professionals that are generative and enduring over time.
In this article I outline some of the key scaffolds and lessons learned over the past seven years as B.C. shifted from piloting our K-9 renewed curriculum to full K-12 implementation. It is important to note that B.C.’s renewed curriculum significantly decreases content outcome requirements and instead emphasizes big ideas (concept-based learning), disciplinary competencies, and cross-curricular core competencies (critical, creative and reflective thinking; communication; collaboration; personal and social awareness and responsibility). This shift has required teachers to rethink what they teach and opened the door to thinking about how they teach.
In preparation for the Learning Forward Conference held in Vancouver in December 2016, I interviewed educational leaders, teachers, and government representatives about the key scaffolds that were already in place prior to our current education transformation agenda, and how these had helped us to embrace the renewed curriculum.
The most common response had to do with our province’s long-standing action research culture. A second key theme highlighted multi-partner initiatives that brought together the Ministry of Education, B.C. Teachers’ Federation, and university researchers. When these two factors combined, significant and sustained education change across rural and urban school districts occurred. (By contrast, some past change initiatives failed to build inquiry-oriented learning partnerships and were stymied.) A number of previous initiatives4 all contributed to B.C.’s collaborative inquiry culture through cross-institutional partnerships. Of note, in each of these initiatives, there was a critical thinking focus, voluntary professional development that brought educators together from across schools and school districts, and resources offered as fuel for inquiry and exploration. Teachers were situated as action researchers engaging in classroom investigations, bringing samples of student work to networking sessions and contributing to the development of shared provincial criteria using exemplars from their classrooms. The sense of agency and ownership that participating educators felt resulted in grassroots change. Countering top-down notions of implementation, educators were recognized as curriculum and pedagogy creators. This benefitted B.C. greatly as teachers, schools, and school districts used these criteria to pilot research-based approaches that made space for student voice, focused on critical thinking, and required responsive teaching.
As we began the 2010s, and draft revised curricula became available, various groups in B.C. built on the processes (action research/inquiry teams) and focuses (critical thinking, open-ended pedagogies, formative assessment) of these previous initiatives. Educators were invited to try out draft competency-based curriculum in their classrooms and offer feedback. Many school districts around the province created professional learning series where teams of teachers co-planned units of study that were competency-based and, in particular, aligned formative and summative assessment. Many educators embraced inquiry teaching and learning within these explorations, in part because with decreased content demands, they had time to explore big ideas and concepts over longer periods of time. Different conceptions of and approaches to inquiry (e.g. open inquiry, guided inquiry, project-based learning) were debated and explored. For example, I had the opportunity to work with a learning team in School District No. 43 (Coquitlam). Two teachers from each school in this large suburban district attended as inquiry partners. In each of our five sessions, I highlighted some aspects of the renewed curriculum:
While I introduced theoretical perspectives and research as part of these sessions, teacher researchers decided what fit for them in their classrooms and infused these ideas into their planning and teaching. The work was not without tensions, such as concerns expressed about a lack of pre-existing and/or grade-specific teaching and learning resources that aligned with the new curriculum. However, participants engaged in transformational work in their classrooms, designing classroom experiences and units that took into account the strengths, stretches, and interests of their students and opportunities for learning in their contexts.
Another key scaffold in our change efforts has been B.C.’s decades-long commitment to and extensive work in inclusive education, equity, and social justice. In the 1980s, B.C. embraced calls for inclusive education, dismantling segregated programs and classrooms and striving to develop classroom communities that welcome and celebrate diverse learners. Most recently, there has been important and significant attention regarding equity and access to learning for our Indigenous learners. For example, Laura Tait’s work in SD68 (Nanaimo-Ladysmith) focuses on collective ownership regarding Indigenous learners. Defining collective ownership as every person in the system embracing and taking responsibility for the success of our Indigenous students, she calls for us to shift our thinking away from “Indigenous education for Indigenous students” to “what’s good for Indigenous students is good for all students.”
B.C.’s renewed curriculum asks educators to teach “how Aboriginal perspectives and understandings help us learn about the world.” Due to this change, B.C. educators have been seeking ways to incorporate Indigenous voices and perspectives into curriculum, ensuring that Indigenous content is a part of the learning journey for all students and that the best information guides the work. This opportunity – and tension – has led to rich professional inquiry and learning.
Just previous to the development of B.C.’s renewed curriculum, the First Peoples Principles of Learning, a set of nine principles, were developed by the First Nations Education Steering Committee and the Ministry of Education to reflect some of the common Indigenous perspectives and understandings in B.C. However, it is important to note that these principles do not reflect the beliefs of any individual Nation. Teacher inquiry teams across the province have been exploring synergies between the renewed curriculum and Indigenous learning principles5, such as:
One example of equity-oriented collaborative inquiry is School District No. 67’s Through a Different Lens (TADL) initiative. SD67 had consistently achieved an 80-85 percent six-year school completion rate at the outset of the TADL initiative. But their two most at-risk populations, students of Indigenous ancestry and students with behavioural challenges, had, respectively, just 50 percent and 40 percent respective completion rates. Wanting to make a difference for students who were at risk of not completing school, a small inquiry group of interested middle and secondary teachers formed. They were committed to teaching and assessing in more innovative ways and tracking the results of these shifts in their practice. TADL grew to include 75 educators who meet in collaborative inquiry groups of 10-15 teachers six times throughout the year. Teachers identify a student who is at risk of not completing school, and learn from this student as an expert (curriculum informant) throughout their inquiry. Following Universal Design for Learning principles, TADL teachers interview and observe their expert students and develop and offer pathways for learning based on this student’s strengths, interests, and passions. They then offer these pathways to all students in the class. In their inquiry team meetings, the educators use a common “four-square” graphic organizer where they reflect on their actions and successes. Finally, group members brainstorm next steps to learn from and with their students, and adjust their teaching accordingly.
B.C.’s curriculum renewal has offered a catalyst for change across B.C. I close with a few lessons we’ve learned about supporting innovation as educators respond to and implement curriculum change.
Educators’ role as inquirers, action researchers, and change-makers has been central. Other jurisdictions in Canada have introduced new 21st century learning-oriented curriculum. What makes B.C. unique is that it has made space for grassroots exploration, feedback, and ongoing interpretation of its concept- and competency-based curriculum. Previous initiatives in B.C. have faltered when educators were directed to implement approaches without opportunities for action research within the development process. Another tension that has repeatedly surfaced over the past 40 years is government and school district approaches to “accountability.” Instead of uniform evaluation of curriculum implementation based on notions of fidelity and reliability, our enduring approach has been one of contextualization and creative exploration. This culture has lived through many changes of government.
Studying one cross-province inquiry network that explored the implementation of the draft curriculum6, Paige Fisher, Kathy Sanford and I found that inquiry spaces that welcomed diverse educational perspectives and approaches were crucial in disrupting teachers’ pre-conceptions of education and allowed them to see new possibilities. Teachers whose practice embraced outside-of-the norm approaches (e.g. project-based learning, interdisciplinary teaching in secondary schools, etc.) were important catalysts in the professional learning network.
Despite a change in government during the implementation of B.C.’s new curriculum, progress was safeguarded through ongoing collaborative efforts. Key partners in B.C. have been the Ministry of Education, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, Faculties of Education, and school districts. When these groups have been engaged as learning partners with shared and reciprocal goals, change efforts have not only been sustained, but evolved. Past and current efforts are vulnerable when we do not take the time to revisit shared goals and the processes and activities that define and operationalize our collaborations. Earlier I mentioned a more relational and contextual approach to accountability. When partners identify indicators to assess how their initiatives are making a difference, they need to consider that innovation benefits from creativity, adaptability, and a sense of agency from those closest to the learning and practice. When we seek the voices of students and educators as key informants and co-creators of change, it distributes ownership and recognizes that teaching, learning, and education are emergent, contextualized, and relational.
Finally, studies during this time of curriculum change in B.C. have highlighted how beneficial documenting and sharing innovations from different parts of the province have been. The Growing Innovation in Rural Sites of Learning study has surfaced visible and tangible examples of innovative practices derived in rural communities in response to a local need, but shared with other rural teams across the province. Time and again, the situated innovations shared by those who generated them with students, colleagues, and community partners have been referenced as key to inspiring divergent thinking, risk taking, and educator renewal.
INNOVATION and curriculum transformation are dependent on the knowledge and expertise of educators. When educators have opportunities to collaboratively inquire into innovative pedagogies and new curriculum and create and adapt practices to meet local needs, meaningful and sustainable change is possible. Fostering teachers’ creativity and recognizing them as knowledge creators nurtures morale, collective ownership, and investment in innovation.
1. OECD, Schooling Redesigned: Towards innovative learning systems (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2015).
2. British Columbia Ministry of Education, BC’s Education Plan (2015). www.bcedplan.ca/theplan.php
3. Schnellert, and D. L. Butler, “Collaborative Inquiry: Empowering teachers in their professional development,” Education Canada 54, No. 3, (2014): 18-22.
4. Specifically the Young Writers Project in the 1980s, the Reading/Writing/Thinking References Sets created in the 1990s, the Performance Standards for reading, writing, numeracy, and social responsibility developed in the 2000s, and Changing Results for Young Readers in the 2010s.
5. First Nations Education Steering Committee, First Peoples Principles of Learning (2015). http://www.fnesc.ca/learningfirstpeoples
6. L. Schnellert, P. Fisher, and K. Sanford. (2018). “Developing Communities of Pedagogical Inquiry in British Columbia,” in Networks for Learning: Effective collaboration for teacher, school and system improvement, C. Brown and C. Poortman (Eds.) (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2018), 56-74.
Photo: iStock
This webinar is primarily for governments, education professional organizations, school and school district leaders, teachers and education support workers, and anyone interested in understanding current issues for changes to K-12 schooling for the education sector across Canada in the COVID-19 era.
In March of 2020, Canadian education systems first began to close schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As well as the emergency response shift to remote learning from home, we must also begin to turn our attention to the inevitable task of planning for the future of schooling over the short and medium term. As school reopenings internationally are showing, this is not simply a return to schooling as normal. Moreover, since education in Canada is a provincial responsibility, responses to COVID-19 have been diverse and we would expect plans for the future to be appropriately varied. Fundamentally, what we will need to ask ourselves is: “What conditions need to be in place for students to learn and for teachers to teach, and how will leaders across the system adapt to support these conditions?”
This one-hour webinar panel discussion will explore how we will understand effective leadership across the education sector for the coming months and years by considering implications for governments, teacher organizations, and school leaders.
I begin the revised and expanded edition of my book, Creating Healthy Organizations: Taking Action to Improve Employee Well-Being with a basic question: how can we make organizations humanly sustainable so they can succeed in the future? This question takes on new urgency now that we’ve been blind-sided by a global pandemic. Human resources, workplace wellness, and occupational health and safety professionals are confronting what surely will be the greatest test of their career. Following the principles of a healthy organization can be helpful.
First, here’s the backdrop to what’s happening to workers and employers. Unlike the 2008-2009 financial crisis and Great Recession, which resulted from weaknesses in the financial system, the coronavirus pandemic generates anxiety and fear on two fronts: health and economic.
Evidence of this comes from EKOS Research Associates’ latest polling of Canadians (March 17-24, n=1,710, MOE +/- 2.4%, 19 times out of 20). Three-quarters of those surveyed believe the economy is already in recession and expect it to get worse in the next 6 months. Just over half think they will be worse off financially in 6 months. The typical respondent sees a 50% chance of them personally being infected by the coronavirus. Most (80%) are experiencing stress due to the pandemic. On an optimistic note, Canadians do grasp the severity of the crisis and understand what they need to do to stay safe. And they endorse governments’ responses so far.
Pre-pandemic, organizations in all industries operated in an environment rife with ever-greater risks and uncertainties, and sweeping transformations. More employers recognize that survival depends on getting the fullest commitment and energy from each and every employee. The goal of making the entire organization healthier moved into the mainstream of corporate wellness. Companies are striving to make workplaces psychologically healthier and safer. Expanded corporate sustainability frameworks have opened up discussions about the sustainability of a company’s human resource practices.
This solid progress – coupled with strong economies in Canada and the US leading up to the pandemic – will enable many of us to weather the storm.
Healthy organizations cultivate workforce resilience. Resilient people don’t bounce back; they bounce forward, finding new strength and equilibrium. They move to a new normal that enables them to keep progressing toward a better future. Resilient people don’t just adapt to change, they find opportunities and renewed strength as they confront it. In the language of positive psychology, the goal is to help organizations and their members flourish and thrive.
Workers need a supportive environment to be resilient. To do this, leaders must develop their own resilience. Resilient leaders skillfully and proactively respond to stressors, practice self-care, learn from failure, develop renewed strengths, and show others how it is possible to thrive when the going gets tough. In this way, they foster a resilient workforce that is prepared to deal with the unexpected.
Individual and team resilience is a hallmark of a psychologically healthy and safe workplace. The National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace highlights the key workplace features that contribute to resilience:
1. Supportive managers and coworkers
2. A culture that values individuals’ well-being
3. Skilled people leadership
4. Respectful working relationships
5. Support for employees’ personal growth and development
6. The resources needed to manage workloads and job demands
7. Employee involvement in decisions
8. Recognition for contributions
9. The flexibility needed to achieve work-life balance
Maintaining, and even strengthening, the above workplace features must be a priority. Building a healthy organization is a shared responsibility. While demonstrated support from senior leaders is a key enabling condition for change, equally important is the active participation of all the organization’s members, right down to the front lines. Ideally, all employees should feel motivated and encouraged to find ways to make their jobs and work environment healthier and safer. Now the bar is raised, because this has to happen virtually.
LESSONS FROM RECESSIONS PAST
The change process can be designed to be healthy. We can derive lessons from research on corporate downsizing and restructuring during the recessions of the ‘80s, 90s, and 2000s. Here’s what’s well documented: 1) downsizing increases stress and diminishes the health of those laid off and the ‘survivors’ (who suffer from what’s called ‘survivor syndrome’); 2) poorly executed downsizing or restructuring reduces organizational capabilities, ranging from learning, reduced tacit knowledge, social capital (relationships), collaboration, and innovation.
Survivor syndrome (the negative psychological and physical impact of remaining in a downsized organization, including guilt) can be avoided by empowering workers to redesign work tasks and processes to fit the renewed mission, responding to issues and concerns raised by employees, and supporting employees to individually and as teams actively manage the changes.
During the 2008-2009 Great Recession, some companies came out stronger because they used the downturn as an opportunity to engage all employees to reinvent the business strategy and find better ways of working. Leaders in these organizations built trust by openly communicating with employees, involving them in the changes, and supporting them at every step of the way. The big take-away for employees: this company cares about me so I am committed to its future success.
As the Economist recently observed: “Downturns are capitalism’s sorting mechanism, revealing weak business models and stretched balance-sheets.” But there’s more to the survival story. Beyond balance sheets and the type of business (pity the cruise lines), it comes down to people practices, reinforced by shared corporate values. Values are the essential guideposts when the going gets tough. And rarely has it been tougher.
Small businesses face more acute challenges. But from what I’ve seen locally, owners may be more inclined to treat their workers like family, knowing they will need them back as the pandemic threat recedes.
I see signs of this today in my own community. A restaurant quickly shifted to a reduced take out menu, turning waiters into delivery drivers, and offering customers the option of buying an inexpensive meal for a family in need. Gyms offer free daily on-line workouts. Musicians stream live performances. A craft distillery now is producing hand sanitizer. My friend Todd Ramsay and his wife Ashley, who run Kelowna-based Yeti Farm Creative, an animation studio, proactively set up their employees to work at home in early March. Their team feels virtually connected (Todd’s accompanying graphic captures this) and are committed to coming out of this ordeal even stronger. The common theme here is people pulling together and helping each other. And just as with fires, floods and other natural disasters, people are engaging in acts of kindness. Local TV news images of empty foodbank hampers quickly resulted in a $10,000 donation, plus lots of smaller ones.
Work and social life have been transformed in a matter of weeks into virtual experiences. Video chat service Zoom has, well, zoomed into widespread use. The lines between work and home and family life have dissolved. What about those workers faced with school closures and kids at home needing constructive activities? It’s time for your team to talk about what adaptations are needed to support these members.
There are other groups of workers who desperately need help. Foremost are front-line healthcare workers. We’ve seen shocking videos of doctors and nurses working around the clock in Spain and Italy, risking their safety, tending to patients lying in hallway floors without proper equipment. How can we prevent that scenario from happening here? And as a New York Times editorial put it: “In this hour of crisis, those at the bottom of the economic pyramid are in the greatest need of help.” This includes low-paid workers and those in the gig economy. There’s an essential role for governments here.
Yes, the coronavirus pandemic will end. The Chinese city of Wuhan, the original epicenter of the coronavirus, has reduced the number of new infections to the point that people are returning to work and some semblance of normal daily life. All the more important to ensure that today’s responses to the pandemic will ready us to resume our social and economic lives. So think of where you want to be one year from now.
Schools can meet the challenge of climate change in different ways. Here are two outstanding – but very different – examples.
This federal election saw a not-so-subtle shift, as climate change and the environment became key priorities for Canadians. Faced with increasingly unpredictable weather, fears Canada will not meet its global commitments on carbon reduction, and a strong youth movement, public awareness and concern for climate has never been more palpable.
Youth have been at the centre of this shift, driven in part by Greta Thunberg’s climate strikes which have galvanized young and old around the world.
In Canada, schools are also part of the discussion. From curriculum and programming that explore climate change and human impact on the environment, to physical changes that promote energy efficiency, waste reduction and student health, Canadian schools are meeting the challenge of a changing climate in unique ways.
École Curé-Paquin elementary school in Saint-Eustache, Quebec will open its doors to more than 350 students this winter. The new facility was the first project in the province to receive the Zero Carbon Building – Design certification from the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC).
“Creative and bold initiatives are needed to counter the effects of climate change.”
The certification means that École Curé-Paquin is designed to achieve zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with building operations. The school was part of a pilot project for the Zero Carbon Building Standard, which puts significant focus on carbon emissions in building design and performance.
For the Commission scolaire de la Seigneurie-des-Mille-Îles (CSSMI), the pursuit of the Zero Carbon Building Standard1 aligns with its belief in investing in sustainable buildings and contributing to the reduction of GHGs. The school board saw the pilot project as a flagship initiative that will potentially inspire other schools across the province. “Creative and bold initiatives are needed to counter the effects of climate change,” said Paule Fortier, President of CSSMI. “I am happy that our organization is making this environmentally responsible gesture through the construction of this school for the generations of tomorrow.”
Several decisions were made to improve energy efficiency and the school environment. For example, École Curé-Paquin uses geothermal exchange using heat generated from the earth for 100 percent of its heating and cooling needs. The school also installed photovoltaic or solar panels on the gym roof with a capacity of 27 kilowatts and sensor-controlled LED lighting, which helps reduce total energy use and daytime energy demand.
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An enhanced building envelope limits hot or cool air loss, while the design optimizes natural daylight and ventilation for healthier (and more alert) students.
Research compiled by the U.S.-based Center for Green Schools has found that poor ventilation can result in more missed school days due to respiratory infections, increased incidence of sick building syndrome,2 and increased school nurse visits for respiratory problems. Further, a 2013 study found a direct link between classrooms that have more daylight and improved test scores.
The school board’s goal was to create a comfortable learning environment and to provide an exemplary building for students that could also be used as a learning tool. A screen in the school broadcasts the school’s daily energy consumption and production, including the energy produced via solar panels. In Science class, students learn how GHGs can be reduced using technologies found in the school.
While École Curé-Paquin’s zero-carbon design is a focus for their sustainability efforts, other schools are focusing on curriculum and programming to help students understand the importance of climate change, the environment, and their role in helping to protect the natural world.
W.D. Ferris Elementary is one such school. Through the curriculum, the 500 students of this Richmond B.C. K-7 school are exposed to environmentalism, with programs designed to help them save energy, decrease waste and water use, and improve transportation and indoor air quality.
Teacher and environmental steward Kevin Lyseng credits the students for many of the program ideas that form the basis for the school’s environmental focus. “Caring about self, others and the environment is what we do,” he explained. “We also benefit from the continued support of the Richmond School District.”
“To reduce food waste, the school reversed the lunch schedule, so students can play before eating, resulting in a 95 percent reduction in food waste.”
Depending on the class, students participate in various programs, from raising Coho salmon, growing grapes or participating in regular audits of energy use and waste levels. These audits help shape activities that have had a significant impact on the school. Switching to six-bin waste collection has helped divert waste by 80 percent since 2007 by separating general waste from organics, plastics, paper, glass and metals. Their seasonal energy-saving informational programs have also helped to reduce electricity use by two percent – despite adding to the school’s plug load.
To reduce food waste, the school reversed the lunch schedule, so students can play before eating. This made the students more likely to eat their lunch, contributing to a 95 percent reduction in food waste. They’ve even piloted a flexible packaging project for the city of Richmond and are working with their hot lunch provider to address single-use plastics.
The school encourages active transportation to and from the school with walk-to-school and learn-to-bike programs. These programs help with student fitness, reduce air pollution, and limit traffic around the school – resulting in improved safety.
In the school, they minimize carpet and chalk use and use Ph-neutral cleaners which are less likely to cause eye or skin irritation. Classrooms are scent-free, with low-VOC (low-odour) paints and furnishings to keep the air quality high. Classroom air filters are replaced monthly and for classes with students that have severe allergies, HEPA filters are used because they remove common allergens like dust or pet dander.
This small school’s big success in pursuing a path of sustainability in its programming and approach to learning was recognized with the title of “Greenest School in Canada 2019” by the CaGBC. Principal Diane Steele said the school was honoured to be have been chosen for this award, but was quick to highlight the efforts of all schools committing to sustainability.
“We also want to acknowledge the hard work done by students and staff daily in schools across Canada to educate their communities about environmental stewardship,” she said. “We encourage all schools to inspire green-minded change in their communities.”
W.D. Ferris continues to spread its message to its broader community. Students and teachers have been involved in the Great Canadian Shoreline cleanup since 2007 and they regularly host district-wide ECO-Cafés, where green leaders meet to share successes and challenges. In this way, Ferris Elementary gives back to the community by encouraging others to reduce their ecological footprint.
The Canada Green Building Council is a not-for-profit, national organization that has been working since 2002 to advance green building and sustainable community development practices in Canada.
CaGBC and the Canada Coalition for Green Schools host the “Greenest School in Canada” competition, which recognizes schools that are weaving sustainability education into their curriculum and bringing programs and activities to students that encourage awareness about the environment.
Learn more at www.cagbc.org/greenestschool
Photos : from Mark Hutchinson
First published in Education Canada, March 2020
Notes
1 The Zero Carbon Building Standard is a Canadian-made standard and certification that assesses the carbon balance of a building – when there are no carbon emissions associated with operations, it has achieved zero carbon.
2 Sick Building Syndrome is used to describe cases in which building occupants experience adverse health effects potentially linked to the time they spend in the building.
Principals and vice-principals are facing increased pressure, workload, and stress.1 But considering how pervasive stress and burnout seem to be across many professions in modern society, why should we care specifically about school leaders? The answer is actually so very clear: health, happiness, and success for everyone! Of course, work-related stress is normal and inevitable; however, excessive physical and emotional stress can interfere with school leaders’ well-being which can carry over to ultimately impact education systems as a whole.
Principals and vice-principals (VPs) are some of our most dedicated and passionate educators who have chosen to take on a role with significant responsibility and impact, which means that we need them to be at their best. One might say that handling difficult tasks and juggling many needs is simply the role of school principals and VPs. That is absolutely correct! This is exactly what our best leaders are good at and often thrive on. However, our bodies are not designed for the levels of constant and excessive stress that many of our school leaders are currently experiencing.
Chronic stress lowers levels of health, happiness, and success – and leaders aren’t immune from these innately human factors.2 If principals and VPs are working days, nights, and weekends (and they often are), then they are indeed experiencing chronic stress, which will take a toll on their social, emotional, and cognitive well-being,3 just like anyone else. Work-related stress can have damaging effects that inhibit school leaders’ ability to function effectively while lowering their job enthusiasm and motivation to perform well.4 Stress not only affects the ability of school leaders to improve their schools but also makes it difficult to retain and recruit new principals and VPs.
Research shows that most principals burn out and leave the profession in four years or less, although it takes five-to-seven years for a principal to have a significant impact on a school community.5 Yes, we need principals to do their job now, but we also need them to stick around long enough to yield the greatest results possible for students. What’s more, despite the fact that we’re increasingly more aware of the importance of social emotional skills like self-awareness and the need to practice self-care, many school leaders have not been taught these essential skills. More importantly, leaders often assume that they can’t possibly worry about themselves since they’re tasked with taking care of everyone else. However, it’s good to be reminded of the simple truth that we’ve learned from air travel, which is that it’s not only important – but essential – to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.
If you are a parent, student, or school staff member, then this is one of the most compelling arguments for why you should care about your principals’ or vice-principals’ stress levels. It takes a community – if not a village – to raise a child. The most productive and successful work teams are made up of people who care about each other. People on successful and productive teams use the words family, support, and trust to describe their work together. It isn’t enough to have great individuals. Principals and VPs aren’t superheroes, nor should they be the sole go-to people who are expected to triumph against all odds. They are regular people whose health and well-being should be of equal concern, not an afterthought. For schools to function well, all staff need to work as a team towards a common goal. To do our best work, we need to have strong, connected teams built on relationships and trust.
What we know about workplace well-being is that the best teams are those that understand the importance of social connection and creating a workplace where people feel safe and valued. If school leaders don’t feel connected or supported by their team, then they’re not only less effective but so is everyone else. If leaders are connected and have strong, authentic relationships then the people that work for them will go out of their way to make their leaders’ and the organization’s vision come true.6 When we work for someone who we care about and who we feel cares about us as employees, then we will work with passion, dedication, and creativity. What’s more, when we hold this sense of care as a group, the results are amazing!
Fundamentally, work and life aren’t things we can ever do alone – nor are we meant to.7 We’re at our best when we work together and, just as we know that stress can actually spread and be contagious towards those around us,8 we also know that the “good stuff” is contagious, too. For instance, it has been scientifically proven that when we show gratitude and compassion towards other people, they feel better, perform better, and are more likely to reciprocate acts of compassion and belonging.9 So, no matter who we are and what role we may find ourselves in, we can always make the choice to act first by showing compassion, assuming good intention, and being kind. It’s important for leaders to both show and receive these positive actions. Above all, we need leaders who feel safe, valued, and connected in order for them to do their best work and to inspire and support their staff – and ultimately their students – to do the same.
Surveys of principals demonstrate that education systems are overloading our leaders.10 A rapid flow of policies, initiatives, and programs leads to loss of focus, overwork, frustration, and demotivation11 – and these are impacting school leaders’ health and well-being while increasing their levels of stress. As this makes it more difficult to recruit and retain the best school leaders, school districts are faced with high costs in terms of both time and money, which further inject stress into the system.
It’s important to name this tension while also being very clear that this isn’t a criticism towards – or the responsibility of – any one person or group of people. Rather, this tension indicates that education systems as a whole need to look at practices through the lens of workplace well-being. As such, looking at practices through a well-being lens can lead to large-scale change that, as the First Peoples’ Principles of Learning remind us, will take time and patience. However, rethinking system-level practices can also involve small changes that simply require a willingness to try – and we need both large and small changes.
While it’s encouraging that many associations, ministries of education, and partner groups are beginning to focus on the issue of workplace well-being in K-12 education, we still have a ways to go in acknowledging the importance of principals and vice-principals’ well-being – leaders of learning who have huge impacts on the health, happiness, and success of our schools. For school leaders reading this, remember that well-being has three interconnected components: you, your team, and the system as a whole. You were never meant to do this job alone.
1Alberta Teachers Association (ATA). (2017). The Canadian school leaders: Global forces and future prospects. A research report. Edmonton, AB.
Canadian Association of Principals (CAP). (2014). The future of the principalship in Canada: A national research study. Kanata, ON.
Pollock, K., Wang, F., & Hauseman, D. C. (2014). The changing nature of principals’ work: Final Report. Ontario Principals’ Council, Toronto, ON.
Pollock, K., Wang, F., & Hauseman, D. C. (2015). Complexity and volume: An inquiry into factors that drive principals’ work. Societies, 5(2), 537–565.
Pollock, K., Wang, F., & Hauseman, D. C. (2017). The changing nature of vice-principals’ work: Final report. Ontario Principals’ Council, Toronto, ON.
Poirel, E., & Yvon, F. (2014). School principals’ emotional coping process. Canadian Journal of Education/Revue Canadienne de L’éducation, 37(3), 1–23.
Riley, P. (2016). The Australian principal occupational health, safety and well-being survey. Institute for Positive Psychology & Education. Retrieved from: http://www.principalhealth.org/au/2016_Report_AU_FINAL.pdf
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2016). Occupational outlook handbook: Elementary, middle, and high school principals. U.S. Department of Labour. Retrieved from: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/elementary-middle-and-high-school-principals.htm
2Hallinger, P., & Murphy, J. F. (2013). Running on empty? finding the time and capacity to lead learning. NASSP Bulletin, 97(1), 5-21. doi:10.1177/0192636512469288
Nthebe, K., Barkhuizen, N., & Schutte, N. (2016). Rewards: A predictor of well-being and service quality of school principals in the north-west province. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 14(1), 1-e11. doi:10.4102/sajhrm.v14i1.71
Poirel, E., & Yvon, F. (2014). School principals’ emotional coping process. Canadian Journal of Education/Revue Canadienne de L’éducation, 37(3), 1–23.
3Wang, F., Pollock, K., & Hauseman, D. C. (2018b). Ontario principals’ and vice-principals’ well-being and coping strategies in the context of work intensification. In S. Cherkowski, & K. D. Walker (Eds.), Perspectives on flourishing in schools (pp. 287-303). Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4Devos, G., Bouckenooghe, D., Engels, N., Hotton, G., & Aelterman, A. (2007). An assessment of well-being of principals in flemish primary schools. Journal of Educational Administration, 45(1), 33-61. doi:10.1108/09578230710722449
5Leithwood, K. A., Louis, K. S., & Anderson, S. E. (2012). Linking leadership to student learning (1st ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
6Sinek, S. (2014). Leaders eat last: Why some teams pull together and others don’t. New York: Portfolio/Penguin.
Sinek, S. (2011). Start with why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action. New York: Portfolio / Penguin.
7Walton, G. M., Cohen, G. L., Cwir, D., & Spencer, S. J. (2012). Mere belonging: The power of social connections. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(3), 513-532. doi:10.1037/a0025731
8Sterley, T., Baimoukhametova, D., Füzesi, T., Zurek, A. A., Daviu, N., Rasiah, N. P., & Bains, J. S. (2018). Social transmission and buffering of synaptic changes after stress. Nature Neuroscience, 21(3), 393-403. doi:10.1038/s41593-017-0044-6
9Coyle, D. (2018). The culture code: The secrets of highly successful groups (1st ed.). New York: Bantam Books.
10Wang, F., Pollock, K., & Hauseman, C. (2018a). School principals’ job satisfaction: The effect of work intensification in Ontario. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, 185, 73-90.
Wang, F., Pollock, K., & Hauseman, D. C. (2018b). Ontario principals’ and vice-principals’ well-being and coping strategies in the context of work intensification. In S. Cherkowski, & K. D. Walker (Eds.), Perspectives on flourishing in schools (pp. 287-303). Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
11Fullan, M. (2008). What’s worth fighting for in the principalship? (2nd Ed.). New York: Teachers College Press.
On November 22, 2019, ministry and faculty of education representatives, Directors of Education/CEOs, and other K-12 leaders from across Canada attended our EXCLUSIVE professional learning session, where they:
Learned the fundamental principles and evidence behind workplace well-being in K-12 education
Found out how investing in educator well-being can heighten student achievement and save precious resources
Discussed ways to go beyond one-off unsustainable programs to a long-term, system-wide approach
Led by Edcan Network and the McConnell Foundation
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION
1. The Business Case for Workplace Well-Being: Rationale for an Upstream Approach
Led by Leanne Keyko, Health Strategies Liaison & Trudy Lakusta, School Jurisdiction Liaison, Alberta School Employee Benefit Plan (ASEBP)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION
2. The Legal Case for Workplace Well-Being: How Health and Safety Legislation Can Help You Achieve the Best Return-on-Investment
Led by Anna V. Karimian, Associate – Labour and Employment Group, Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG) LLP
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION
3. The Student Achievement Case for Workplace Well-Being: Raising Student Outcomes through a Whole-System Approach to Well-Being
Led by Dr. Bill Morrison, Professor of Educational Psychology & Co-Executive Director, Health and Education Research Group (HERG), University of New Brunswick; President, WMA Wellness
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION
Led by Dr. Charlie Naylor, Affiliated Scholar – Simon Fraser University; District Well-Being Coach; former Senior Researcher – British Columbia Teachers’ Federation (BCTF)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PRESENTATION
Small group facilitated discussions supported participants to consider and share “Where they’re at,” “What they learned,” and “What they need to do to move forward” to lead greater investments into workplace well-being in their own school communities.
Couldn’t make it?
Stay tuned for our Pan-Canadian Summit on K-12 Workplace Well-Being!
Learn more about the summit here
Resilience is a basic psychological health and safety skill that can be developed by individuals and teams. Resilience is a person’s capacity to bounce back from adversity and to find a new and healthy “normal.” Positively oriented psychological strengths and capacities, including resilience, can be developed and measured in a workforce. Doing so will help organizations and their members to flourish and thrive.
Team resilience is more than the combined personal resilience of individual team members. A resilient team performs well when faced with adversity, perhaps undergoing a small decline in performance, and then becomes stronger in the process. A resilient team takes stock of workplace pressures, assesses the risks of stress and burnout, and identifies actions to proactively address these. In resilient teams, members are mutually supportive, have a clear sense of purpose, and collectively adapt to changing circumstances. And taking a cue from positive psychology, teams also need to identify sources of positive energy and do what they can to strengthen and cultivate these.
Team resilience can be developed and strengthened. Research has identified unique team-based features of resilience that contribute to higher team performance. Practically, this emphasizes the need to focus on group – as well as individual – resilience. Psychologist Monique Crane offers advice for managers on how they can support their employees – and teams – to be more resilient.
This boils down to four actions managers can take:
This advice focuses on developing individuals’ psychological resilience. However, it also is clear that drains on resilience include many organizational features, such as unnecessary bureaucracy or administrative requirements, that in themselves are a source of stress for employees.
With this background on resilience, I would now like to share relevant insights from an action-research project that examined how resilience, leadership and well-being are interconnected. I was the research consultant on the Resilience in Leadership Project, which the Alberta School Employee Benefit Plan (ASEBP) conducted in collaboration with educational system leaders across the province. ASEBP administers a province-wide group insurance program offering a variety of health benefits, employee and family assistance, and loss of life and disability insurance to employees and their dependents in the educational sector.
The project’s starting point was the recognition that educational leaders face heightened risks to their well-being, given the demands of their role in an educational system defined by rapid change, rising expectations and resource constraints.
Leaders are expected to support school system improvements, most notably aimed at making education more inclusive and promoting healthy school communities. Indeed, the project’s survey of educational leaders confirmed that resilience and leadership are interrelated, and in turn influence both educational leaders’ well-being and school system performance.
The study concluded that today’s educational leaders need more than just resilience. That’s why psychologists have developed the broader concept of “psychological capital” (PsyCap) to encompass not only a person’s capacity to be resilient, but also to be hopeful, confident and optimistic. When combined, these positive psychological traits are better predictors of well-being and performance than each attribute on its own.
PsyCap is similar to what educational experts Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan call “professional capital,” which combines individual talent, collaboration and sound educational decision-making. Studies link PsyCap to a range of individual well-being and workplace performance outcomes, such as absenteeism, intentions to quit, job satisfaction, commitment, and organizational citizenship behaviours. The latter attribute is central to inclusive leadership (i.e. encouraging everyone to be a leader), because it refers to employees going beyond their job descriptions to help co-workers or benefit the organization and all of its stakeholders.
An effective way to develop resilience in a workforce is through leadership styles that promote the capacities captured in PsyCap. This requires managers to connect on a personal level with the employees who report to them. Leaders who are positive and authentic, thoughtful and transparent, and who build confidence and commitment among their staff will be actively cultivating PsyCap in others. PsyCap is positively contagious; as described by experts, it “trickles down and ripples out,”1 leading to positive behaviours by others in the organization.
Among the educational leaders we studied, PsyCap had a significant and positive relationship with their health, well-being and stress. Respondents with greater PsyCap – in other words, who feel optimistic, confident, resilient and hopeful – were far more likely than their colleagues with low PsyCap to report very good or excellent general and mental health and high life satisfaction. They also experienced less stress and reported fewer symptoms of burnout.
One of the project’s objectives was to illuminate the relationship between educational leadership, well-being and resilience. So the survey also measured transformational leadership (TL) behaviours based on a widely used and validated leadership assessment tool, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire.
Transformational leaders contribute to the future success of their organization by encouraging their colleagues to see opportunities and challenges in new ways. They also motivate others to strive for higher levels of performance, are admired and trusted, stimulate creative thinking, and are attuned to individuals’ growth needs by acting as a coach or mentor. In short, transformational leaders go far beyond a “transactional” or goal-oriented management style by enabling individuals to achieve their potential, find innovative solutions to challenges, and embrace change.
The practical implication is that psychological capital contributes to school system performance by supporting a transformational style of leadership and higher engagement among senior administrators.
The study and follow-up consultations were a catalyst for reflection and action. The results helped to raise awareness about the importance of connecting psychological skills, leadership style and well-being. The professional association representing educational leaders used the findings in its leadership development program, succession planning, and supporting its members’ health and wellness. Leaders themselves were better informed, having evidence-based insights to guide how they could involve other staff in promoting workplace well-being.
Teachers and educational leaders who possess strong psychological capital are transformational leaders.
If you and your organization are interested in developing the psychological capital and leadership skills just described, see Figures 1 and 2 for the key behaviours that must be your focus.
Figure 1:
Figure 2:
Above all, teachers and educational leaders who possess strong psychological capital are transformational leaders. We’ve now seen how strong psychological capital and a transformational leadership style set the stage for inclusive leadership, by inviting employees to take responsibility for making the workplace better. It certainly helps in this regard if senior managers signal to others in the organization that through dedicated collective effort, specific improvement goals will be achieved. Senior managers must regularly and consistently communicate the importance of employee well-being to the organization’s success, using language that resonates for all staff.
Training for managers is a vital component of a comprehensive strategy to promote overall well-being. That’s why the U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommends training supervisors on what they can do to reduce stressful working conditions for direct reports and enhancing workers’ stress reduction skills. Furthermore, pooled results from numerous studies show that training can improve managers’ mental health knowledge, promote non-stigmatizing attitudes towards mental health, and enable them to support employees experiencing mental health problems. These are all prerequisites for achieving higher levels of workforce well-being.
Borrowing successful practices from occupational health and safety (OHS), we know that mandatory safety training increases workers’ awareness of safety issues and reinforces safe work practices. The same no doubt would apply to basic workplace well-being training. Researchers are now recommending providing apprentices and students with broadly-based OHS education, which would include the promotion and protection of psychological as well as physical health. This surely is a worthy mission for schools.
Illustration: Diana Pham and Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, December 2019
1 C. M. Youssef-Morgan and J. L. Stratman, J. L. (2017). “Psychological Capital: Developing resilience by leveraging the HERO within leaders,” in M. F. Crane (Ed.), Managing for Resilience: A practical guide for employee wellbeing and organizational performance (New York: Routledge, 2017), 60.
Social emotional learning (SEL) is increasingly recognized as an integral component of education for students, but what about teachers, support staff, and principal? Here the focus is on principals: their own social and emotional well-being as well as their leadership for SEL in their schools.
“So much of our job as administrators is ensuring that we are showing care for our staff, our students, and our parent community. We do so much to put the social and emotional well-being of our primary stakeholders first, that we forget that first and foremost we need to care for ourselves.” – Canadian Principal
Social emotional learning (SEL) is increasingly recognized as an integral component of education (www.casel.org). Canadian educators have recognized the importance of promoting SEL in K-12 schools, and evidence-based SEL programs are used in schools throughout Canada. While these efforts demonstrate significant progress, there is a need for greater attention to supporting the social and emotional well-being of teachers, support staff, and principals. Here we focus on principals: their own social and emotional well-being as well as their leadership for SEL in their schools, with examples from an innovative British Columbia school district.
“87 percent of principals feel like they never have enough time to complete their tasks, and more than 72 percent feel pressured to work long hours.”
Canadian principals have numerous leadership roles within a complex system that has experienced inconsistent changes in policy, the introduction of new technologies, and a growing emphasis on both accountability and on meeting the unique needs of students, including recent immigrants. All of these changes have compounded the stress experienced by Canadian principals, who are already overworked and overloaded. For example, Ontario principals spend approximately 59 hours per week at work, 14 hours more than managers in other occupations, professionals in the public sector, and corporate executives.1 According to a survey by Statistics Canada, despite the long hours spent at work, 87 percent of principals feel like they never have enough time to complete their tasks, and more than 72 percent feel pressured to work long hours.
Principals’ health and well-being have suffered as their jobs have become more demanding. Research has shown that principals’ work intensification can lead to excessive work-related stress, burnout, and mental health issues.2 As stress intensifies, principals’ self-efficacy can decrease; as burnout intensifies, principals may begin to doubt their ability to fulfill their duties and eventually leave their jobs. To be successful, principals must acquire effective skills and strategies to deal with stress and support their mental health and well-being. This can be accomplished by implementing programs designed to foster SEL and to help principals develop social emotional competencies (SECs).
We assert that by developing the ability to regulate their emotions and behaviour, increasing their social awareness, cultivating healthy relationships, and improving their decision-making skills, principals can increase their effectiveness and better develop the skills to lead the implementation of SEL programs, policies, and practices in their buildings.
While many have promoted the principal’s role as instructional leader, we believe it is most important that principals become prosocial leaders whose responsibility is to ensure that all staff, students, parents, and community members feel safe, cared for, respected and challenged. Principals’ well-being and leadership form the foundation that influences school climate, teacher functioning and well-being, family and community partnerships, and downstream student outcomes.
Extensive research evidence shows that fostering principals’ social and emotional competencies (SEC) is likely to yield benefits not only for school leaders themselves, but for all school stakeholders, including students. Principals’ social and emotional competencies should be an important component in systemic schoolwide SEL as it leads to the following four outcomes:
Principals with strong SECs tend to be effective leaders who manage their schools by adopting a positive, proactive style. Their self-awareness enables them to recognize inequities that may limit students’ potential and opportunities.
Principals who are more self-aware and reflective develop positive, caring school climates that support social, emotional, and academic outcomes for students. By learning how to listen with full attention and an open and accepting attitude, principals can support teachers to exhibit these same qualities with students.
Principals who develop strong SECs create a more welcoming atmosphere for parents and community agencies. They see parents as essential to children’s competence, thereby making families feel respected and valued. They also build stronger connections with out-of-school programs that serve families and youth.
Principals who develop strong SECs are better equipped to lead the implementation of SEL programs, policies, and practices in their schools. Such principals are more likely to naturally become SEL leaders.
For the past five years, the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows (MR-PM) School District (B.C.) has been exploring and developing an SEL Framework that embeds SEL in the teaching and learning communities. This framework was developed to include five areas of focus:
The following inquiry question is the guiding focus: “How might we collaboratively create a community that reflects care and belonging so that SEL is evident, explicitly taught, and practiced in the everyday interactions among all members of the community?”
The District SEL Planning Committee identified that SEL does not occur in isolation but is embedded and intertwined with all aspects of learning. With the redesign of the B.C. curriculum, teaching of the core and curricular competencies is directly linked to teaching SEL skills.
The benefits of principal engagement in SEL are clear, not only for school leaders themselves, but for all school stakeholders. What may be less clear is how to promote principals’ SEL. The following action steps can be taken to support principals.
Training in mindfulness practices may help principals develop SECs. We have been evaluating a mindfulness-based professional development program originally designed to support teachers that was modified to support principals. CARE (Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education) is designed to nurture educators’ self-awareness and reflectivity, and to help them understand and regulate their emotions with the goal of improving health and well-being (www.createforeducation.org). Our evaluation of CARE with principals in rural Pennsylvania showed that principals reported improvements in leadership skills, relationships, and self-care, and increased self-awareness, ability to regulate emotions, self-management and self-compassion.3 Although these findings are promising, experimental research is needed to further investigate the effects of mindfulness programs for principals.
As a result of this school district’s commitment to nurturing SEC in administrators, in the summer of 2016, they all received CARE Program training. One vice-principal commented, “It was awesome! I will be using these strategies moving forward.” Another vice-principal said that they appreciated having the time to practice the CARE skills, while another found “the training to be an excellent reminder of practices I need to incorporate.”
In November 2017, Michelle Davis (author) was trained as a trainer and in 2019, she facilitated the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows (MR-PM) School District CARE training for new administrators. She reflects, “One of the things I’ve learned about being a lone administrator in a school is balance and role modeling. I cannot ask staff to take care of themselves, if I’m not modeling the same. It’s important to have a work-life balance. This job can consume all of you. When we take the time to care for ourselves, it opens us up to being reflective learners. It opens us up to growing as leaders and educators. Some of my quietest moments are when self-reflecting. It helps me see the big picture and where I can have the most impact. If I don’t find those moments, I get caught up in the quick fixes and stay on that loop without making meaningful change. Implementing the CARE practices has helped my leadership skills in that I am more self-aware and can manage my emotions in high-stress situations, which then has a direct impact on the emotions of the staff and students.”
Almost all professional development programs for principals focus on improving school performance (i.e. curricula, initiatives, pedagogical strategies) rather than developing skills to support their own well-being or promote effective prosocial leadership. Just as in other industries, professional development programs are needed to: (a) cultivate principals’ own social emotional well-being, and (b) provide principals with the skills to lead SEL implementation effectively.
“Being ‘burned out’ and ‘busy’ seems to be equated with ‘productivity,’ when in fact principals who are stressed and overworked are less effective.”
Recently, Goleman and Senge proposed a Triple Focus Model for schools.4 This model focuses on emotional intelligence and developing compassion for self and others, with an added focus on systems-level thinking. Such an approach focuses not only on the mindful awareness of the individual, but also on using systems thinking and tools to understand the larger social field. In education, the larger social field is a school’s organizational culture, which includes its system of beliefs and values and the rituals and routines by which they are communicated. The great news is that B.C. has already begun an innovative program for supporting schools to use systems thinking.
In the current culture of education, being “burned out” and “busy” seems to be equated with “productivity,” when in fact principals who are stressed and overworked are less effective. Provincial governments, divisions, school boards, and professional associations must prioritize promoting a culture of self-care that does not make principals and staff feel guilty for taking time to attend to their own personal well-being.
As a Canadian principal noted: “We need to be OK with letting some things stay on the to-do list and accept that it will get done another day. Our staff is involved in many district initiatives and projects and as a school leader, I tell staff that we will concentrate on doing a few things well, rather than stretching ourselves and doing everything without deepening our learning.”
While shorter-term professional development programs may help principals learn how to cultivate their social and emotional well-being, the learning-application process requires sustained support over time. Creating local networks for school leaders could be a useful way to connect principals with other school leaders who face similar tasks and issues. Schools should provide principals with ongoing professional development opportunities and establish mentoring programs to cultivate SECs.
MR-PM realized that principals often feel isolated and are unable to find opportunities to reflect and to deconstruct events happening in their buildings with others. Principalship can be a very lonely job! So, MR-PM created a mentorship program for new and nearly new administrators to help them navigate their complex jobs and emotionally challenging days. It has proven to be welcomed by the administrators and considered as a great support for them.
Research clearly indicates that lower mobility among administrators, teachers and students promotes relational conditions that are conducive to caring. Turnover among principals is a great concern, given their critical role in leading long-term school improvement efforts. Moreover, principal turnover leads to teacher turnover, which increases dissatisfaction and “burnout,” and decreases the potential for satisfying, caring relationships. Principal stability is especially important in schools in impoverished communities where students have greater mobility. Overall, creating greater stability for principals through longer-term assignments would support the development of school environments that foster SEL for all school stakeholders.
Principals in Canada encounter highly stressful emotional situations on a daily basis. Unfortunately, many school leaders are still learning the skills necessary to respond effectively. Principals who develop their own SECs are better able to establish and sustain healthy relationships, exhibit effective leadership, build strong community partnerships, and implement SEL programs in schools. Based on this evidence, we have recommended several actions that can be taken by school boards, principal training programs, and professional associations to support school leaders’ well-being and the quality implementation of SEL programs in Canadian schools.
Illustration: Diana Pham and Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, December 2019
1 Pollock et al., Statistics Canada (2015).
2 J. Mahfouz, M. T. Greenberg, and A. Rodriquez, (2019) Principal’s Social and Emotional Competence: A key factor for creating caring schools (Edna Bennet Pierce Prevention Research Center, Pennsylvania State University: 2019).
3 J. Mahfouz, “Mindfulness Training for School Administrators: Effects on well-being and leadership,” Journal of Educational Administration 56, no. 6 (2018): 602-619.
4 D. Goleman and P. Senge, The Triple Focus: A new approach to education (Florence, MA: More Than Sound: 2014).
Work being done by the College of Alberta School Superintendents (CASS), in partnership with WellAhead, aims to increase awareness of the importance of well-being at the highest leadership levels, and to bring systems-wide, comprehensive, collaborative practices for improved levels of wellness in an increasingly stressful job.
The old cliché, “It’s lonely at the top!” can be very true for school principals, superintendent/directors and other educational leaders. And while not all leadership personalities may present themselves as caregivers, in interviews that my colleague, Jim McLellan, and I conducted with more than 45 Superintendents and their teams in Alberta, they made it clear that they care much more about the wellness of their staff, students and communities than about their own personal wellness.
It’s common sense that leaders must be well in order for the organizations they lead to be well, whether that be schools or school systems. The metaphor of putting on the oxygen mask on oneself before others applies! Much work related to student wellness and mental well-being is underway in most Alberta school authorities (boards). What will it take to convince education leaders, school boards, politicians and society in general that education leader and staff wellness is worth making a priority?
As our many baby-boomer leaders near retirement, the supply of quality superintendents is decreasing, while the demand for such leaders, at a time when our schools are facing the highest levels of accountability and greatest standards, is increasing. The reality is that few education leaders are aspiring to principalship and superintendent/director positions. The work is too hard and too stressful. There are so many pressure points that the application pools for education leadership positions are now often very thin. So, what will it take to turn this around?
This is exactly what the College of Alberta School Superintendents (CASS) are hoping to learn. The three main goals of this initiative include:
I was indeed fortunate to be involved in school leadership early in my teaching experience. I certainly did not aspire to such leadership as I considered my career options, while dreaming of making a difference to kids. I suppose leadership came more naturally before I made a decision to learn more about it.
As I moved to division office in Superintendent–type roles, it became clear that leadership was more challenging than ever. Teaching as a noble profession seemed to be on the decline with our society in general. The explosion of the Internet and social media complicated the work rather than simplifying it. Increasing expectations of what services schools should provide further complicated leadership roles at school and at the school authority levels. And more recently, the polarization of perspectives has increasingly added to the stress in educational environments. I have found this to be true in conversations about all kinds of issues, including priorities, budgets, transportation, buildings and education programs.
It can be difficult, for many reasons, to seek help when you need it. There is 360-degree pressure and role overload. You can never keep everyone happy.
In short, while we strive for child-centered and solution-based conversations, high emotions can hijack the agenda. As I also saw friends and family struggle with their own mental health, I wanted to learn more about mental health and wellness, have the autonomy to learn and apply what I learned and to be clear in my purpose to make a positive difference in even a broader way than I could as Superintendent of Schools. Managing key leadership positions, including principals and superintendents, is by its very nature lonely work. It can be difficult, for many reasons, to seek help when you need it. There is 360-degree pressure and role overload. You can never keep everyone happy.
The good news is that we know lots about what works and does not work in improving and sustaining mental well-being. There are a number of well-researched frameworks that clearly indicate there is no silver bullet. Rather, systems-wide, comprehensive, collaborative practices are required in order to make a positive difference over time. Knowing this, where does one get started? Personal wellness? Student wellness? Staff wellness? Leadership wellness? Workplace wellness? Organizational wellness? YIKES! Leadership theory 101 makes it clear that those with the issues are in the best position to solve those issues. Thus the importance of systems-wide, comprehensive, collaborative practices, including those partners who can add to the research knowledge and skills-based practices that will lead to improved wellness within any organization.
Some of the strategies of our work include:
Alberta is ripe for such work. There are already many resources available to contribute to such practices. The issue is that these resources and supports are not so well aligned to the perceived needs of the members of the College of Alberta Superintendents. The volume of research and strategies related to student mental well-being can be overwhelming, and there is very little in the research literature related to specific mental well-being practice for leaders. Some very strong support material is not that well known. Another important context is the work related to the fairly new Professional Practice Standards for Superintendents and School System Education Leaders in Alberta. Where the standards come to life for education leaders in the province is in the Leadership Quality Standard Practice Profiles. This is where we hope to embed exemplars of how leaders might best weld wellness and mental well-being with the leadership standards that make up our professional practice.
There are so many storms that leaders and educators in general face in their work each day. In The Dark Side of Educational Leadership,1 Polka and Litchka speak about the storm metaphor as it relates to the Superintendent role. Many of the case studies presented could also be very true for any educational leadership position. Their storm survival guide includes:
As a result of their interviews of 25 education leaders in Canada and the U.S. related to dealing with adversity, Patterson and Kelleher advocate for six practices that their interview data suggest make a significant difference in the mental well-being of leaders.2 There is a good deal of congruency between their findings and Polka and Litchka’s:
Granted, these steps sound easy, but are actually more challenging to achieve. I remain very hopeful and optimistic that the pathway to mental well-being lies in the elements of positive psychology. We are well aware of the importance of social, economic and human capital. Although psychological capital3 may be less known, there is much potential in learning and applying practices related to the fairly simple concepts of hope, efficacy, resiliency and optimism.
We generally know what works in improving mental well-being in a context of wellness. Working Together to Support Mental Health in Alberta Schools4 is an important resource that includes a multiple-partner, well-researched framework complete with background information, an assessment tool, six essential conditions of sustainable implementation practices and a basic planning guide to support the work. We also know it takes a minimum of 28 days and a concentrated effort to change practices and habits. Although the issues creating the landscape in which we work each day may be very complex, the practices to improved mental well-being within a culture of wellness can start very simply. If nothing else, start with drinking more water!
In their research with education leaders across North America, Polka and Litchka identified many trends related to decreased wellness, including:
photo: iStock and Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, December 2019
Notes:
With wellness becoming so mainstream and direct links connecting employee wellness to productivity, why are so many educators experiencing chronic fatigue, stress-related illnesses, feeling overwhelmed or unwell – or even leaving the profession? Roth argues that we cannot expect teachers to implement health and wellness programs without support: everyone, at all levels in the education sector needs to buy in.
Every time I walk into a classroom, I find myself in absolute awe of the teacher. I’m amazed at how they accomplish their long list of daily tasks, manage 25-30 students, deal with student emotions and behaviours, and complete the math lesson they planned the night before. Educators today are faced with ever-expanding To-Do lists and frequently the expectation that they do more with fewer resources. No longer are teachers “just” responsible for instructing academic content. Educators are now required to teach emotional regulation and social skills, while managing the diverse learning needs in classrooms that exceed the optimal number for student achievement of 18 students per teacher. They also work with students from incredibly diverse backgrounds and those with challenges related to socio-economic status, physical challenges and mental health issues.
I can’t help but wonder: Who’s taking care of educators who do so much for others every day? Whose responsibility is it to care for teachers, nurture healthy schools and classrooms and ensure that everyone in the education sector is supported in their health and wellness endeavours?
Like most rewarding challenges in life, I would say it takes a village.
Workplace wellness has been part of the daily vernacular in every career sector for quite some time. Extensive research on employee health and wellness clearly demonstrates that a healthy workforce is a productive workforce. And honestly, it seems like a fairly simple premise. If we are feeling good and taking care of our own needs, then we’ll be able to provide a quality product or service. With wellness becoming so mainstream and direct links connecting employee wellness to productivity, why are so many educators experiencing chronic fatigue, stress-related illnesses, or lack of job satisfaction? Why are so many feeling overwhelmed or unwell?1 Why are many leaving the profession in search of new careers? It’s easy to find ideas on self-care in this information age, so why aren’t teachers doing a better job of wellness?
We simply cannot expect teachers to implement health and wellness programs without support. When I work with teachers, they easily list what to do in the classroom to meet the needs of their students, but figuring out what they need for their personal well-being is not as simple. Upon asking a teacher what she did for her own self-care routine, she became tearful on the realization that she’d been focused on the needs of others and had completely lost sight of what she needed. Without encouragement and permission to put personal wellness on the agenda, many teachers find themselves in the same situation.
This is why we need a big-picture team approach to teacher wellness. Many of the issues that create stress in the workplace are systemic challenges that educators have very little control over. In order for wellness initiatives to take root and grow, everyone, at all levels in the education sector, needs to buy in.
In business sectors, health and wellness programs have been in place for several years and companies such as Google and Delta Hotels know that investing in these initiatives benefits the bottom line with increased productivity, lower absenteeism, improved employee satisfaction and reduced employee benefit costs. In education, there are unique challenges impacting wellness initiatives. Increasing workloads, funding limitations, insufficient support personnel, population and demographic diversity of school communities, rigid work hours, reduced autonomy, difficulty seeing improvement in one’s teaching abilities and increased pressure to demonstrate improved outcomes are factors leading to burnout.
The most important component for supporting teacher wellness is funding – and not just throwing money into an account labelled “Teacher Wellness” but taking a critical look at class size and composition, support for students with special needs, and ensuring we are implementing best-practice policies at every available opportunity. Best practice policies allow teachers to build a classroom community where students grow, thrive, and learn. Budgets are always tight, but the excuse that there isn’t enough money is hard to justify when extensive research shows that the return on investment can be significant. A 2010 review published by the Harvard Business Review stated that well-run comprehensive wellness programs could offer up to a 6 to 1 return on investment.2 This may seem too good to be true – but even more conservative data illustrates a returned 3.80 dollars in health care savings for every dollar invested.3
Cost reduction is only one of the benefits achieved by implementing wellness initiatives in school divisions. You can measure absenteeism due to stress leaves and sick days, but there are many other factors that are harder to measure. What are the effects of increased stability in the classroom, which would have a positive impact on individual student mental health and learning? Encouraging and supporting mindfulness strategies reduces stress and improves prosocial behaviours, which translates into less time dealing with behaviour management and increased time on instructional learning. In a data-driven world, measuring these outcomes can be challenging, but critical to supporting health initiatives.
Although Occupational Health and Safety measures have historically focused on physical injuries, psychological harm related to the job are included in some provincial and territorial Occupational Health and Safety Acts, which places responsibility on employers to take action to support their employees’ mental health and well-being. Mental health initiatives are in the early stages of development in many divisions, and unfortunately there continue to be individuals at all levels of management who continue to view mental health and wellness programs as “fluff.”
Allocating funds and prioritizing employee wellness programs are first steps, but if we truly want wellness initiatives to take hold, involvement at all levels of a school division is critical. A culture of wellness from the top leaders throughout all levels of employees is necessary to promote engagement and commitment. This requires a significant cultural shift, where an organization begins to emphasize employee well-being not just as a standalone program, but in all policies, programs, procedures, and behaviours. I was pleased, for example, to see more focus on the Mental Health Matters campaign and the hiring of a Wellness Consultant by my school division this year, demonstrating a willingness to support their employees’ well-being.
After years of working with many administrative and support teams, I’m often able to tell quite quickly if leaders place emphasis on their own personal wellness and that of their staff. How many principals send out emails to their staff after 6 p.m. at night or on weekends? This one small act sets the expectation that work is always on. Buy-in by the senior leaders is essential. When senior leadership shows that wellness is a priority, they become role models for work-life balance, resulting in more successful wellness programming.4
School administrators, principals and vice principals play a critical role in creating a culture of wellness. They set the tone for the school community and by placing an emphasis on teacher wellness, and they can create opportunities for daily wellness to occur. This can happen by modeling a good work-life balance, setting a wellness goal for the school, encouraging time boundaries for work activities, building wellness strategies into the day-to-day schedules of the school, and collaborating with their staff members to find out what people are needing. A whole-school mindfulness five-minute session each day, walking programs over the lunch hour, and encouragement to have a life outside of work provide options to infuse wellness into the workday.
There is a momentum or trickle-down effect of wellness. When teachers are focused on wellness and supported by funders, employers, administrators and their colleagues, health and wellness spreads to the classroom. Students learn to embrace wellness strategies and to integrate personal wellness earlier in their lives.
The great Canadian poet and musician Gord Downie wrote “No dress rehearsal, this is our life.” Personal wellness comes from within and we have an individual responsibility to prioritize our own health and well-being. While it’s true that there need to be systemic changes, continuing to point blame at others or the system places us in the role of victim. In reality, you are the CEO of your life. Start by fostering self-awareness of what nourishes you physically and emotionally so you can ensure those activities make it to the top of your To-Do list. Understand Us, a mental health initiative and non-profit organization, created the “Share your Recipe” campaign to encourage individuals to talk openly about their “ingredients” for mental health.5 I like the analogy of creating your own personalized recipe for mental and physical wellness. Think about what might work for you and commit to pursuing those things that bring you nourishment. Consider working with other professionals such as physicians, therapists, and counsellors for additional support. Look to your professional associations and colleagues for ideas. The resources are out there, but the responsibility falls to each of us to prioritize our well-being and get what we need to feel better.
If we want healthy, happy, and productive teachers who are able to focus on and support the learning needs of their students, make positive gains in literacy, improve on-time graduation rates, and create safe schools and innovative classrooms, we need to work together to mitigate the challenges. It’s a process that requires funding, continuous work and commitment by government, school boards, school divisions, school administrators and teachers.
It’s time for that cultural shift to happen. Embracing wellness and focusing on mental health for teachers will benefit everyone. Let’s work together to give our teachers and our students the support they need for a life full of learning and the pursuit of happiness.
Photo: iStock and Adobe Stock
First published in Education Canada, December 2019
1 Bernie Froese-Germain, Work-Life Balance and the Canadian Teaching Profession (Canadian Teachers Federation: July, 2014).
2 Leonard L. Berry, Ann M. Mirabito, and William B. Baun, “What’s the Hard Return on Employee Wellness Programs,” Harvard Business Review 88, no. 12 (2010): 104-112.
3 Soeren Mattke, H. H. Liu, J. P. Caloyeras, et al., Workplace Wellness Programs Study: Final report (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2013).www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR254.html
4 Berry, Mirabito, and Baun, “What’s the Hard Return on Employee Wellness Programs,” 106.
5 “Share your Recipe,” Understandus.ca. https://understandus.ca/uu-initiatives/syr
A positive school culture makes work and school fun, supportive, and purposeful. But how do you get there? This principal shares his learning about building school culture that is strengths-based, collaborative, innovative and focused, and grounded on the values of trust, happiness, curiosity and care.
During my 20 years as an educator, I have been part of school staffs who could not talk, would not talk, and even should not talk to each other. I have also worked and learned alongside school staffs who have embraced a positive school culture – one that makes work and school fun, supportive, and purposeful. So how have some staffs created this positive culture while others struggle to get there? This is a question that I have focused on for the past five years as a school principal.
Culture is hard to see but we can always feel it; it is the vibe of a school – the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours that exist within a school staff. In any organization, we continually strive to make positive change; however, as Peter Drucker says, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” so before we can tackle real change, we need to work as a staff to create a positive school culture. How do we do this?
At the previous school where I worked as principal, our staff focused on building a positive staff culture for four years. Our goal was to achieve this, not through isolated team-building activities, but in the way we actually did our work together as a staff of educators.
In one of our first staff meetings, I introduced a collaborative activity and it flopped miserably. When I attempted to encourage more focused conversation, one of our respected veteran teachers stated, “We don’t know how to do this.” I tried rephrasing the instructions for the activity but he interrupted and said, “No, we don’t really know how to talk like this.”
This was such a turning point in our staff meeting culture, as it was clear we needed to start from there and first build trust, safety, and support. We could not dive into the real work until we established a place where this deeper dialogue could occur.
We started with creating some norms or commitments for our staff meetings and collaborative time (Hat tip to Cale Birk for the idea). The staff came up with the list below:
1. The topics will be relevant to what we do (and what we want to do) at our school.
2. We will be flexible and willing to try new things and ideas.
3. We will share the successes happening at our school.
4. We will create strategies to provide equitable opportunities for each of us to share our voice (and not be dominated by a few).
5. We will acknowledge that a sense of humour is important and will embrace opportunities for light-hearted dialogue.
6. We will stay on topic and stick to the agenda.
7. We will have a clear timeline for implementation of ideas.
8. There will be a clear purpose to the discussion and agenda items.
9. We will encourage others for their ideas and ask others for clarification, comments, ideas and suggestions.
10. We will provide time for grade-level collaboration.
11. We will always make time for getting together and having small group discussions.
12. We will respect that some may prefer to listen and reflect.
This set of commitments guided our behaviours and helped create staff meetings that felt safe enough to have the “real” conversations that often only take place in the parking lots and staff rooms. Prior to a discussion that might have some opposing views, we always reviewed and reminded ourselves of these commitments.
We also discussed the attributes of an effective staff culture. Staff shared their experiences with positive and negative cultures. They then captured words to describe a positive culture and we put them into a Wordle (See Figure 1; thanks to Suzanne Hoffman for the idea).
Through our work as a staff, as well as my learning at previous schools, I came up with what I believe are the Four Pillars of a Positive School Staff Culture. They are:
• Strengths-based
• Collaborative
• Innovative
• Focused
I am sure there are other attributes that could be used but these four have been most effective for the schools where I have worked. As you can see in Figure 2, these four pillars are also based on the core values of trust, happiness, curiosity, and care. These values weave their way through the pillars and without them, the pillars can crumble.
Figure 2: A Positive Organizational Culture
A STRENGTHS-BASED culture is one that believes that every staff member has strengths that can benefit the school as a whole. Feedback with staff always starts with strengths (character and skills), staff members are given the opportunity to determine their strengths (reflections and/or the VIA Strengths Survey1), and each staff member is encouraged to use these strengths in their important work with students. Research from the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) in 20022 shared that one of the most effective ways to bring out the best in your employees is to start with strengths. Performance and engagement is significantly increased when feedback and evaluation focuses on strengths rather than weaknesses. On staff surveys, many staff reported that with the focus on strengths, they felt more motivated, safer to be themselves, happier and healthier overall at school. A healthier, happier staff who feel safe and motivated can accomplish so much more with their students and for the school community.
“As leaders, we often make the mistake of listening to a problem and then jumping to solve it by ourselves.”
A COLLABORATIVE culture believes “the smartest person in the room is the room itself” (David Weinberger). Staff tap into each others’ strengths and engage in respectful, reflective dialogue to drive professional learning and create positive change. Trust is a huge part of a collaborative culture, and truly listening to others is essential to building trust. Polarizing statements and unwillingness to meet people where they are at will create a challenge to collaboration. By avoiding binary thinking, embracing the “grey areas” and listening to others’ perspectives, we grow as individuals and as a collaborative staff.
As leaders, we often make the mistake of listening to a problem and then jumping to solve it by ourselves. As a new principal, I had a teacher share a concern with me. Within minutes, I was busy shifting support schedules and trying to solve the problem. I bounced into her classroom to share what I had done, and she grew quite frustrated. She said, “I came to you so you could understand where I was at and so we could come up with solutions together. These solutions don’t really work for me and they will definitely negatively affect other teachers.” I was caught off guard by this feedback but so thankful, as I learned that my job is not to solve problems, but to work with staff to develop effective solutions together.
An INNOVATIVE culture is one in which educators feel safe to take risks, think critically and creatively, and implement new ideas with support. It moves from the question, “Can we….” to the question, “How can we…” The CLC’s research found that encouraging autonomy and risk-taking is another way to bring out the best in employees. An innovative culture is not necessarily always doing new things; it is one that understands the research around what is effective and is willing to try new ideas to help meet school goals. As Chip and Dan Heath tell us in their book Switch, we need to shrink the change. We need not always aspire for huge risks and changes, rather, we should encourage incremental changes that can be tried for a period of time to see if there is a positive impact. An important role for principals is to find the resources (time, materials, etc.) to support the innovative work of staff, so that good educators can become great educators.
A few years ago, inspired by Daniel Pink’s book Drive, I offered staff a “FedEx Prep,” which meant that I would provide an extra prep period for six weeks so a staff member could take an idea and put it into practice. The only caveat was that they had to “deliver” – sharing with staff the idea they had implemented and observing the results over the school year. We had teachers work individually and collaboratively to implement ideas in areas such as outdoor education (a school garden), technology (blogging with primaries to help with writing skills), and self-regulation (a teacher and a special education assistant redesigned their classroom and introduced tools to help students be in a more effective learning state). By providing a small amount of time and a few resources, we were able to encourage innovation at our school.
A FOCUSED culture is one that knows the key areas of growth that the school is working on, as well as the strategies that can have the largest impact. With so many ideas, policies, and procedures being sent our way, principals and school leaders need to be good filters and keep the staff focused on their vision and mission. There are many “shiny new” ideas out there that look and sound great but they may not help your school on its journey. One question we have used to focus is, “What problem are we trying to solve?” If the new idea is not helping us with the problems (or areas of growth) we are working on, we can set them aside until a later date. By having a laser-like focus on clear goals and clearly defined problems the staff is working on, you can filter and prioritize what’s most important for your school.
Four important values guide our behaviours and our journey toward a positive school culture. To embody any of these well, we must slow down. In a fast-paced world, this is even more important!
TRUST: At the heart of trust is communication. It is so important for us all to talk less and listen more. In author Mark Goulston’s words, we need to spend more time being interested and less time trying to be interesting. As formal school leaders, we must also be as transparent as possible to make sure that people understand why decisions are made and/or have all the information they need to make decisions. Another important way to build trust is to walk the talk; if we say we will do something … do it.
Building trust takes time. When I first arrived at my previous school, I posted a sign-up schedule to meet with every staff member to learn more about them and how I could best support them. After a week, not a single staff member had signed up. When I followed up privately with a few people, it was shared that everyone assumed it was an interview and they were nervous to meet with me. This was far from the goal! But the staff didn’t trust me yet. I met with a few individuals informally and then shared that this was the type of conversation I hoped to have in the scheduled times. After that, others started to sign up and they soon realized it was a positive opportunity. Within a few months, I had met with the entire staff.
“We can still work incredibly hard to support students while also encouraging happiness with staff.”
HAPPINESS: I always knew happiness was important but until I moved to my current school at Shortreed Community Elementary, I had no idea the impact that a staff can have on each others’ happiness. By having a sense of humour, taking the time to slow down and be there for each other (in good times and bad), and by showing gratitude, we can create a much more positive school staff culture. Going to work each day where people are happy fuels others and makes the difficult work we do much more enjoyable.
Within my first week at Shortreed, I knew it was a place with a sense of humour. I had worked many hours planning my first assembly to welcome everyone back in September. I wanted to share a bit about me and a slideshow from the first week. Little did I know that the staff had their own plans. Our Youth Care Worker had asked each class to prank me by coming to the assembly and literally sitting wherever they wanted – anywhere and everywhere. As the students entered the gym, my face started to go red at the chaos. Then the whistle blew and all students, with huge grins, quietly moved to their appropriate spots. It was a reminder to not take ourselves so seriously, to have fun and create some happiness in the school. We can still work incredibly hard to support students while also encouraging happiness with staff.
CURIOSITY: We cannot grow as a school unless we are curious. By seeing challenges as opportunities that we can be curious about, we can then collaborate and work together to meet them. By being curious and ensuring we are asking the right questions, we continually grow as educators, learners, leaders, and people.
CARE: People need to feel like they belong and they matter. Small acts of caring can go a long way to building a positive culture and community of care. At my current school, our mantra is, “You BELONG here.” This drive to create a sense of belonging is not only for students but also for our families and staff. We need to lead with an ethic of care and model to our staff that we support and look out for one another.
As an educator, I have come to realize that building (and maintaining) a positive staff culture takes time. By slowing down, focusing on the four values of trust, happiness, curiosity, and care while also keeping the four pillars of strengths-based, collaborative, innovative and focused cultures at the heart of what we do, we can help create a positive school staff culture.
I am thankful to have observed the incredible power of a positive culture. When we all work together to build and maintain this, we feel healthier at school and at home, more motivated and inspired in the important work we do, and because of this, we also see improved results in the achievement and success in our students.
Illustration: Diana Pham
First published in Education Canada, December 2019
1 The VIA Survey is a free survey of character strengths in the world: http://bit.ly/VIAstrengthssurvey
2 Corporate Leadership Council, Building the High-Performance Workforce: A quantitative analysis of the effectiveness of performance management strategies (Washington, D.C.: 2002). http://bit.ly/CLC2002
Muhammad Khalifa’s book on culturally responsive school leadership – an increasingly important expectation in Canada’s racially and ethnically diverse schools – is both a paradigm shifter and a practical tool.
His arguments are unconventional and controversial, but they provide a critically important challenge for high school principals. Based on substantial data collection, a two-year ethnographic study, and his experience as an educator, Khalifa argues that the heart of leadership must be in the community rather than just in the school. To support “minoritized,” marginalized students who have become disengaged with school, principals must reach out to students and their families, bringing the local cultural knowledge into the classroom, curricula, and policy decisions.
Khalifa does not duck talk of historical oppression and present power; he emphasizes the need for all staff to engage in ongoing critical self-reflection that goes beyond the personal to challenge the systemic structures that create an inequitable environment.
Although Khalifa’s text pertains specifically to high school principals in the U.S., it is relevant to the Canadian context, especially in schools with populations of students of colour and Indigenous peoples. One shortcoming is that despite encouraging the use of Indigenous knowledge, Khalifa does not provide many specific examples of that work.
Khalifa’s inspiration comes from “Joe,” an urban principal in an alternative high school where failing students from other schools are sent. Substantial data – including “equity audits” and an intensive study of this ground-breaking principal – reveal what anti-racist, community-honouring, and high-expectations education can look like. Joe’s strategies include everything from ignoring culturally based behavioural rules in order to honour students’ identities (e.g. wearing saggy pants, loud talk, or swearing) to expecting teachers to become involved in community issues and incorporate these concerns into their curricula. Finally, he invites community members to have a say in school affairs and policy making. As a trusted “warm demander,” Joe’s care of students, teachers, and parents lead to a blossoming of students’ self-esteem, self-advocacy, and academic success.
Khalifa’s charts, activities, and end-of-chapter discussion questions are invaluable “how to” tools. Courageous conversations about equity are essential, but this text argues that talk must be matched with brave, persistent action. This is a persuasive new perspective for all educational leaders willing to take a leap to make their schools deeply culturally responsive – well worth reading.
First published in Education Canada, September 2019
Harvard Education Press. 2018
ISBN: 978-1682532072
A brand-new school embraces the opportunity to include culturally responsive and relevant pedagogy (CRRP) in its founding mandate. How did they do it, and what factors were essential for success? What does Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy mean and why is it important?
There was a time when Canadian students weren’t asked to leave very much at the door when they came to school each day: their collection of hockey cards, a baseball bat, an occasional slingshot. Once, if the story is accurate, a white-fleeced lamb. Like most public institutions, Canada’s schools were originally designed to reflect the cultural values and worldview of a largely white European society and, for the great majority of students, this meant a comfortable continuity between home, school and community.
Since the 1970s, we have seen a relatively rapid demographic shift and a major change in the cultural make-up of many communities. Yet in many important ways, school systems have not responded to this significant cultural shift.
Nowadays, in addition to leaving their personal belongings behind, many students are also asked to check some crucial aspects of their culture at the school door: their family stories, their language, their sense of community connection and their unique perspectives and ways of knowing the world.
For decades, Gloria Ladson-Billings and Geneva Gay have been arguing, in separate bodies of work, that the reasons traditionally used to explain the persistent failure of black students in the United States do not suffice. Through their work, both began to insist that the answer to the thorny problem of race-related school success was not to be found by blaming the students or their family context. Instead, the mirror needed to be turned to reflect both the problem and the solution to this essential equity challenge: the systemic realities that ignored or even actively suppressed the cultural capital that students brought to school.
When Nicole West-Burns came to Canada from the U.S. to work with Jeff Kugler in the Centre for Urban Studies at University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UT), she brought her deep knowledge and experience of this research to add to Kugler’s many years of working as an educator/administrator in Toronto’s Regent Park. Combining the theories of Ladson-Billing’s Culturally Relevant Pedadogy and Gay’s Culturally Responsive Pedagogy, they framed an approach many Canadian educators now know as Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy (CRRP).
At first their intensive work with educators was concentrated on ten “Model Schools for Inner Cities” in the Toronto District School Board, but in 2013, they were asked by the Ontario Ministry of Education’s Inclusive Education Branch to mobilize the work in a year-long pilot program, centred in two Greater Toronto Area Schools: William Burgess Public School in downtown Toronto, and Irma Coulson Public School in the town of Milton, just northwest of the city.
CRRP is not a program that can be delivered to schools in a box and distributed at a staff meeting or even on a single professional development day. Instead it is a dynamic framework that provides a set of tools and lenses that, if taken seriously, can lead to thoughtful unpacking, personal reflection and honest dialogue among staff, students and communities. CRRP examines issues of power and privilege, calls participants to challenge the beliefs and assumptions about the students in their class and explores on a very deep level what is necessary to enable all students to be successful in school. It intentionally centres the cultural assets that students bring with them to the classroom and uses those assets as a way to get to know the students and their way of knowing the world, and as a way of engaging all students. But it also forces educators to consider how those assets are put to work to allow students to see themselves reflected in the curriculum and in the life of the school.
To be sure, CRRP is an approach that takes time, resources, vision and leadership. But under the right conditions, it can significantly impact the way we talk and think about race, culture, identity and equity. The story of CRRP at Irma Coulson Public School (ICPS) offers a grounded vision of how those conditions can come together in a very tangible and powerful way.
In early 2013, Principal Merrill Mathews and Vice Principal Mary Marshall were busy preparing to open the doors of a new school in Milton, Ontario – Canada’s fastest-growing town. The neighbourhood in which Irma Coulson was to be located was also one of the most culturally diverse in the Greater Toronto Area. The ICPS catchment area drew families from seven or eight different schools in the Milton area and included a wide range of religious and ethnic groups.
It was this diversity that drew Mathews to his first assignment as principal. The belief that all students could and would excel at Irma Coulson was part of the way that Principal Mathews presented his vision for the school – to potential teachers and staff, to parents and students who would call ICPS home, to potential community partners and to district colleagues. The phrase “Equity and Excellence for All” became the official motto for the school, and appeared on the front doors of the school when they opened in the fall of 2013. On most days, members of the ICPS staff could be seen wearing school T-shirts proclaiming their belief in the work in which they were involved. At the heart of this belief was the recognition that every family enrolling at ICPS had a story richly steeped in culture, and the promise that the school would be a place where those stories were valued.
Vice-Principal Marshall recognized that Mathews’ commitment to the vision ran deep. “His own experiences as a student really played into that and his passion for equity work as an educator from the very beginning of his career. And so, when the opportunity came to be appointed as a principal for an opening school, that vision was front and centre.”
This dogged commitment to a clear and compelling vision is a necessary condition for CRRP. It was something that Kugler recognized as soon as he began to understand that Mathews’ vision would run through the entire design of the school: “The major criteria in hiring new staff to come to this brand-new building was their openness at least to working around equity issues… And to build a school upon which equity was the foundation.”
Today’s complex school context provides many challenges, not the least of which is finding the room to focus on what is important. The CRRP pilot was not an add-on, but something that supported and expressed the grounding philosophy of the school.
In many cases, educational pilot programs revolve around one or two enthusiastic teachers who are provided with the time and resources to engage in the work. By contrast, the CRRP pilots at both William Burgess and Irma Coulson demanded the involvement of all staff from the very beginning. It was a requirement for participation in the pilot.
In addition to the internal resources available at the school level, the Ministry commitment to CRRP came with extra release time for teachers to participate in monthly sessions with Kugler and West-Burns’s team, and for the “in between” work necessary to deepen the conversations among staff.
One of the most important words that emerges when Mathews and Marshall talk about their leadership role is intentionality. At Irma Coulson, monthly staff meetings were intentionally planned in advance, ensuring that the work of the CRRP pilot was maintained as a priority. School Council meetings followed a few hours later, so the admin team could intentionally involve parents in some of these same conversations. Schedules for planning time were intentionally organized to allow grade-level teams to meet together weekly. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that this was important work and that it involved everyone in the building – not just teaching staff – and extended to the parent community.
Marshall admits that the extra resources provided by the pilot were a luxury, but insists that, if the commitment is there, the work can get done. “I believe that there’s time and space and resources in schools that make a commitment to do this work, to then undertake this work. Now, it may take longer because you haven’t got the richness of resources.” She believes, however, that strategic thinking, a strong sense of direction and the type of intentionality that instills confidence and commitment can make things happen in a very powerful way.
Much of the transformational power of CRRP is that it requires a good deal of deep and very personal work. At the core of this identity work is understanding that most Canadian educators have grown up in and have been favoured by the system in which they are now working. It is challenging, if not contentious, to begin the process of unpacking issues of privilege, marginalization and oppression. The work can be emotionally charged and requires participants to come face-to-face with questions and realities that they may be encountering for the very first time.
ICPS teacher Shannon Morgan doesn’t remember encountering any of these ideas in her own teacher preparation program. She does remember clearly the unease on the part of many in the early days of the pilot. “It was the conversations happening, not just in the groups with Jeff and Nicole, but sidebar conversations as well,” she says. “You could really see how uncomfortable this work was, and some people not wanting to say how uncomfortable it was in a large group.”
Yet, this personal identity work is necessary if educators are going to be able to truly understand CRRP. Teacher Phil Gibson, an Afro-Canadian male, remembers the day when he realized that his experience of growing up in Burlington, Ont. was different than other staff members from the same area.
“One of our colleagues was also from Burlington. And when she talked about her experience growing up there, it was like all flowers and roses. It was a great environment. My experience growing up in Burlington was the exact opposite of that. So it kind of jump-started the conversations where people were able to say, ‘I’ve never thought of that!’”
Many leaders and participants might be tempted to back away from these types of conversations and reflection. But Nicole West-Burns insists that we need to stay with them and live through the discomfort. “We talk (to teachers) about the rumbling in your stomach or the things that stand up on your neck and that this is part of the feeling. But the discomfort sometimes is what helps us push through or figure out. And so that’s what we need.”
Moving beyond these initial feelings of discomfort is essential to the work of CRRP. The expertise and sense of confidence brought by West-Burns and Kugler helped the staff move to the next level in their conversations – a focus on the students.
“The intensity of the work built strong relationships with people and established some trust, which is always a challenge in the first year,” says West-Burns. “This wasn’t about jockeying for position, this was about coming together for the good of the kids. This project really allowed staff to establish that from the beginning: This was about the students.”
The personal and group identity work formed the important groundwork for a change in the way that teachers and staff saw students and families at the school. It was noticeable in the way that parents were welcomed into the school and spoken to by office staff and administrators. It was noticeable in what was hung on the walls throughout the school. And it was noticeable in the stories of change that staff began to experience and share with each other.
Phil Gibson is a Phys-Ed teacher at Irma Coulson. He recalls what happened when, during a unit on baseball skills, he decided to bring in cricket equipment as well, placing the game in a cultural context that resonated with many of his students. Students unfamiliar with the game of baseball suddenly felt empowered and affirmed by the opportunity to teach their peers about an important part of their culture. “They were teaching them how to bowl. They were teaching the rules of cricket, talking about how to hold the bat.” Now, Gibson reports, those same students can’t wait for spring and the opportunity to get outside and play cricket again.
Shannon Morgan has many stories about the impact of CRRP but one that she remembers fondly was reported to her by a lunchroom supervisor who had listened in on a conversation among Morgan’s Grade 2 students. “They were all sharing the different creation stories from their different backgrounds and families. In a very civil manner, they were actually engaging in a rich dialogue… They were able to listen to each other and respect each others’ differences, and that was huge for me.”
It could be argued that the extra supports directed toward pilot programs makes operationalization on a larger scale difficult, if not unrealistic. It is true that lighting a pilot light may get things started more easily, but there are lessons to be learned from identifying the conditions that allowed CRRP to take root and drive equity work at ICPS.
The understanding that cultural change is reliant on focused leadership should open up important conversations about how our school leaders are chosen, trained and supported through their work. Creating the ability for principals and vice-principals to develop and maintain that energetic focus is important for everyone in the building, as is the way that we encourage school leaders to connect with each other across a district and beyond.
If a staff is going to follow a leader into uncomfortable and challenging work, there needs to be a strong sense of intentionality. One-off workshops or single-day PD events cannot replace the knowledge that this is the work that we are doing, now and throughout the year.
Finally, outside support and expertise may be necessary to guide the personal work that allows CRRP to take root. Having the resources to draw in that support, especially to facilitate the difficult but essential conversations, cannot be overlooked or taken lightly.
Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy was originally introduced in Ontario by Nicole West-Burns and Jeff Kugler as a way of addressing a specific group of racialized students proven to be marginalized by the system in Canada’s largest school district. It was soon recognized as a powerful framework that challenges all educators to see themselves and their students differently. Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy insists that we start to understand that success for all students means embracing the cultural assets that they carry with them every day, and refusing to let those assets remain at the schoolhouse door.
As the two CRRP pilot programs reveal, this is not easy work. It takes vision, time, resources and the courage to stand up to a system that is, too often, supportive of the status quo. At stake is the success of a growing number of culturally diverse students who are marginalized and often alienated by a system built for a different time and place. What’s possible is the nurturing of school communities that reflect, respect and leverage the power of the stories, experiences and ways of knowing carried by all of our students and their families.
Photo: courtesy Halton District School Board
First published in Education Canada, September 2019