Introduction

 

We spend our lives exploring our identities, trying to figure out who we are as people. It is a never-ending search, as we are constantly changing. We all have a unique story that has shaped our identity and continues to reshape it. If we want to know ourselves and be able to tell our own stories, we need to keep searching for the elusive answer to that question: ‘Who am I?’ But what about schools? Our schools also have unique stories, and the search for identity starts with knowing what that story is. We explore our school, identify the story, and in the telling of that story, we shape it over time. That’s the short version of this book. 

​

Here is a slightly longer one: In today's competitive educational landscape, International Baccalaureate (IB) schools face the challenge of standing out. We offer the same programmes, so what is different about us? What makes us special? Again, that question: Who are we? In order for a community to move in a similar direction, we need to share a story. This story needs to be clear, compelling, and accurate; clear to help us understand ourselves; compelling to connect and resonate amongst us; and accurate to reflect both who we are and who we want to be. Storytelling becomes a powerful tool, not just to let people outside the school know what we are about, but to help all of us within the school know what we are about. We need to know this story we share, particularly as it evolves over time. This is where the introspection of an individual is much like the introspection of the school. 

​

Some years ago, a family interested in my school sat across from me, and the parents asked what my school had to offer their family. ‘What’s special about this school? Why should we come here?’ I talked about the IB programmes. The parents said that other schools had the IB. I mentioned how caring our community was, and they said that the other schools were caring. Our facilities were great, but of course, other schools had excellent facilities. Our approach to teaching and learning was inquiry-based and student-centered. Once again, as the parents reminded me, we were just one of many. It struck me at the time that I was unprepared to tell our unique story. I knew many great things about my school but was not able to articulate them clearly. Considered as isolated components, many schools are more or less the same, as this conversation taught me. Our stories emerge from the interaction of the component parts, and at the time, I was unprepared to bring my school’s story to life. 

​

These parents were not being unreasonable, and I came to value their feedback over the next few years. Yes, they eventually enrolled their two children, despite my initial rather inadequate articulation of my school’s merits. When talking about their decision to choose my school, they said that they liked the friendly atmosphere and felt that their child would be supported and allowed to be an individual. This came from observations on the school tour and some time spent at a school event where they had a chance to see our students interacting with each other as well as with the teachers. I knew what they meant, as I could feel it, as well. The school was a place where you could feel at home amid the craziness of the middle school years. 

I needed to be able to articulate this identity with more clarity, but before I could do that, I needed to understand that identity better. My starting point was considering the interaction between the different parts that made up the school. In particular, which parts represented the deeply held values that drove the school community and how these values interacted with other parts of school life. This interaction between the parts is what sets schools apart and therefore forms the basis of our real story. 

​

At this point, it may be useful to look at the difference between school identity and school culture. School identity is what makes it recognisable while school culture is about the shared values and behaviors that shape the social and educational environment. Both have concrete and symbolic parts; both are only partly controlled by the school; and both are important for the overall success and reputation of a school. 

We can think of school identity as the unique and defining characteristics that set it apart from other schools, which is central to differentiating an IB school in a crowded marketplace. In this sense, we could consider school culture as one part of school identity. As school identity is the way a school presents itself to the outside world, a school can promote its culture as one of its distinguishing features, so here we see the relevance for communicating an IB school’s unique story as our school cultures are what will set us apart. How central is our school culture to the stories we tell about our school?

​

School identity can also include items such as the name, mission statements, curriculum frameworks, logos, colors, uniforms, alumni, mascots, tuition levels, and facilities that are all used to symbolize and represent the school. However, this book is primarily focused on promoting our school cultures as central elements of our school identities. Bringing a certain aspect of school culture into the conversation, provides a means to develop that type of culture. It is a powerful cycle. In this way, storytelling can both build culture and shape identity.

​

In the following pages, we explore the significance of storytelling in the context of a series of IB schools and examine a four-step approach for identifying and communicating a school's story. A series of vignettes and real-life examples are used to illustrate how day-to-day conversations within a school can reveal its deeply held values and shape its identity. By understanding the elements of a school's story, we can articulate a clear identity that resonates with the community. Sounds simple! 

​

The approach involves these four steps to communicate your school’s unique story:

Step 1: Locating the big ideas within the school's discourse

Step 2: Finding supporting ideas to contextualize those big ideas

Step 3: Clarifying the meaning and relationships between the ideas

Step 4: Shifting conversations through existing discourse routines

​

Each of the four schools represented in the vignettes have their unique contexts, challenges and leadership questions. The four steps for communicating a school’s story have been examined within these different school environments. I wonder if you can see any similarities in your own school environments. We all face similar issues albeit experienced in our unique ways.   

​

Vignette 1 - PreK-12 International school, Tokyo

• Context: Rapid growth with little competition and strong demand. The only international school and IB program in the area at the time.

• Challenge: Families were joining but often not buying into the program.

• Leadership Question: How do we get families to understand and support our program?

• Outcome: Enrolments from 160 to 650 over a period of eight years. A strong commitment to the program emerged with high retention rates. 

 

Vignette 2 - PreK-12 Independent school, Hawaii

• Context: Relatively new campus with a need to grow numbers in the middle and high school. Heavy competition and high attrition rates in middle and high school.

• Challenge: Attrition after primary school. 

• Leadership Question: How do we develop a middle school sense of identity?

• Outcome: Enrolment from 65% to 95% in the middle school over a five-year period due to increased retention with corresponding figures in the high school as middle school students chose to stay with the school. 

 

Vignette 3 - PreK-12 International School, Hiroshima

• Context: High enrollment fluctuations. Major enrolment source pulling out. Unprecedented competition from new IB schools in the area. 

• Challenge: Attrition after primary school and declining primary enrolments.

• Leadership Question: What do we really offer beyond the IB?

• Outcome: From an enrolment crisis to the highest enrolment numbers in the school’s sixty-five year history within a period of six years, achieved primarily through retention. 

 

Vignette 4 - PreK-12 International School, Tokyo 

• Context: New high school campus with a need to grow numbers in a highly competitive environment.

• Challenge: Attrition before senior school after the senior  school campus move.

• Leadership Question: How do we get families to stay after middle school?

• Outcome: The senior school reached capacity for on-campus students within two years due mainly to increased retention. 

 

This is an exploration of experiences related to clarifying and communicating school identity, some attempts, of course, being more successful than others. Experience is the ultimate teacher so these emerging ideas are presented as reflections using this vignette format. The four steps presented can potentially act as a rough guide for you if you are looking at clarifying your IB school’s story and you would like to try a similar approach in your own school context. 

​

The information presented about the schools in these brief histories all exist within the public domain in one way or another and the observations are my personal reflections from my time spent working in these contexts. Different observers would all reach different conclusions, although there would undoubtedly be shared threads. These vignettes have been pieced together from memories, as we do with all past events, so that they definitely make more sense in the present than they did in the past. As with all educational advice, let my lessons be your lessons but be sure to take it all with a grain of salt.

 

Chapter 1: An IB school next door 

​

• IB schools need to differentiate in a competitive marketplace.

• This requires a clear, compelling, and accurate story.

 

We are all aware of the remarkable growth of the number of IB schools worldwide over the past decades. This growth has coincided with an even greater proliferation of international schools, which has fueled at least some of this growth in the IB. Another area of significant market growth experienced by the IB is in public schools seeking to implement the IB’s international curriculum framework. This growth includes a number of countries introducing IB programmes at regional and national levels. Currently, about half of the over 8,000 IB programmes around the world are in public schools, with the other half being implemented in a wide variety of private schools that range from small nonprofits to large for-profit chains and everything in between. 

​

With the rapid expansion of IB programmes around the world, schools are needing to differentiate themselves more and more. Twenty years ago in Tokyo when I started working at my first IB school, we considered our school’s identity almost entirely in terms of the IB programmes we delivered. At the time, this was enough. On our side of Tokyo, we were the only IB programme within a reasonable commuting distance for students. We believed strongly in the idea of a concept-driven, inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning, and this was how we sensed that we were special. It was true at the time.

​

As we were the only school delivering this type of curriculum framework on our side of Tokyo, we stood out without having to articulate any other aspect of our school beyond the IB’s specific approach to teaching and learning that we had adopted wholeheartedly. The story we told was all about a concept-driven, inquiry-based learning environment. It worked. Enrolments rose consistently over the eight-year period that I was at the school, although this was possibly more indicative of the rising demand for an English-medium education in Tokyo. We hoped that the growing enrolments were an indication of our successful story-telling but suspected the limited access of families to English-medium schools at the time was helping. Of course, there is always a combination of factors at play, and the story we tell about our schools is only one of those factors. Our challenge is to make sure it's an impactful one. 

​

One of the challenges we face when leading schools is that our schools change over time and the contexts we operate in can shift rapidly. Now, twenty years since I arrived in Tokyo to start my IB journey, Tokyo has been inundated with IB programmes, representing both brand new schools and the addition of IB programmes to existing schools, both public and private. A concept-driven, inquiry-based learning environment quite rapidly became the norm, or at least became relatively common in the international education marketplace. The context changed significantly in Tokyo, and this same shift has occurred in many of the major cities and regional centers around the world. Competition for the families searching for this type of IB-style learning environment has become tough. As all IB schools deliver the same curriculum framework, we all share this particular part of our story. It is no longer enough.

​

The IB is not a franchise where a complete business identity is purchased. In a franchise agreement, the franchisee, such as a McDonald's restaurant owner, has purchased the right to use a name and an idea, including all of the processes and systems that go with it. They are purchasing a whole story. You do not go to a McDonald's restaurant, for example, and expect to be surprised. The whole point is that you are not. Consistency across stores in all aspects of their operation is the model, the goal. 

​

As IB schools, however, we purchase just one part of a story: a curriculum framework. The rest we create. In this way, each IB school has a consistent philosophical foundation and curriculum thread, but maintains its own unique identity. This distinction is important. People do not look for a specific McDonald's restaurant to suit their family’s needs, as all stores provide exactly the same service, but when looking for a school, even if the family is convinced of the merits of an IB education, they need to see how their family fits into a specific IB school’s story. With more and more IB schools entering the market, they have more and more choices available.   

​

To continue briefly with the franchise comparison, selling more franchises is good business, but the franchisor recognises that saturating a specific location with stores could be very bad for business. After all, store owners, who are the franchisor's customers, would suffer from excessive competition if new locations were not selected with great care. For example, two Baskin Robbins stores in the same shopping center would be simply bad business, as neither could be a better Baskin Robbins store than the other. Store differentiation, such as more delicious ice cream or friendlier service, is just not possible if the franchise is working as it is designed. They should share exactly the same story. 

​

The IB, however, selling just part of a school’s story, has no such concerns regarding market saturation of a specific location as the school maintains a unique identity. Considering quality, you can be a better IB school than your competitor in a particular area. In terms of a differentiated market, you can fit a family’s specific needs better than your competitor. For this reason, there has never been any consideration of market saturation by the IB, and if you happen to be in an area with more and more IB schools popping up, the bad news is that this, no doubt, will continue without restriction. 

​

The answer is to differentiate ourselves with sufficient clarity for families to see how a specific school would be a better fit for them. For example, a school may: offer better student learning support services; have a sustained programme targeting healthy relationships; be known for academic rigor (whatever that may mean); implement a focus on sustainability in all aspects of school life; or just be more affordable. No school is all things to all people. We have to know what is special about our school, and in order to help a family make their choice, the story we tell needs to be clear, compelling, and accurate. 

​

Chapter 2: How do we know who we are?

​

• What we talk about is a reflection of a community's collective values.

• These conversations impact community values.

• We unpack the elements of a school's story for clarity when articulating its identity.

 

When we talk about telling a school’s story, this sounds a lot like marketing, and it is. For this reason, some explanation of the relationship between the role of storytelling and marketing within the context of the upcoming examples may be useful. My understanding of this relationship can be traced back to a comment made in a Principal’s Training Centre workshop facilitated by Kevin Bartlett, Head of School at the International School of Brussels and Gordon Eldridge, my Head of School at the time. They explained that educators often consider the idea of marketing too ‘business-like’ to pay much attention to being too far removed from what we consider to be ‘education’. This caught my attention, as it was so true. The presenters stressed that everyone in a school is involved in marketing, as marketing is simply ‘a school telling itself its own story’. That is, why do we do what we do in the way that we do it? 

​

At the time, we were discussing how important it is for a teacher to make intentions explicit to students in a classroom. The same logic applied to the whole school. The presenters clarified that although many people view marketing as something we do for outsiders, in fact, marketing is first and foremost the telling of the story to the internal community because they are the ones who really need to know it. Telling the story to external audiences through advertising and other marketing strategies is also important, but its authenticity and value depend on the internal message. If the school community does not know the story, external marketing carries little meaning. This was about sixteen years ago if my calculations are correct, and those words, or at least the paraphrased versions in my not always reliable memory, have stayed with me, influencing my thinking over the years. ‘A school telling itself its own story.’ 

 

Story Vs Narrative

​

I have been using the term story, but there is another term that is often used interchangeably but which has a slightly different nuance depending on the context: narrative. The term story, in its simplest sense, typically refers to a sequence of events involving characters, a plot, and a setting - how events unfold. Narrative, on the other hand, tends to be a broader term that encompasses the whole framework of the story—not only the events, characters, and setting but also how the story is organized, interpreted, and conveyed. The term narrative has the connotation that there is an intentionality in its construction. We tell a story, but we construct a narrative. 

​

I do not want to get caught up in semantics too much, but want to clarify that the term storytelling is being used because it has a warmer tone, and therefore more suited to our purpose in schools. However it is used in a narrative-like way considering that there is always an element of intentionality in our storytelling in schools, even when we are not aware of our intentions. 

​

This storytelling process is always embedded with the storyteller’s perspective, including all our assumptions regarding how the world works. For this reason, when the term storytelling is used here, there is a recognition that any story is created, told, and consumed within a broader social context. A story never exists in isolation from the intentions of the storyteller or the listener. For this reason, we need to be critical of our intentions when we explore our school’s identity and ultimately the telling of that story.  This critical awareness of self opens up opportunities to understand and appreciate the personal journeys of others as we see illustrated in the IB learner profile.

​

International mindedness

​

The IB learner profile describes an open-minded learner as someone who critically appreciates their own cultures and personal histories, as well as the values and traditions of others. Someone who seeks and evaluates a range of points of view, and who is willing to grow from the experience. When we consider exploring our identity and telling our stories, whether as individuals or organizations, this definition provides some valuable insights. 

​

I have always loved the idea that in order to be open-minded, we first must come to know ourselves before we can understand someone else. Developing an understanding of our own culture and personal histories will ultimately enable us to understand the complexity and significance of someone else’s. International mindedness always starts with an understanding of self. As it is with an individual, so it is with a school. With this in mind, the four steps outlined in the following chapters are intended to help us understand our schools in order to tell our story. Even though this has important implications for communicating our schools’ unique IB stories, it is also another step in developing our individual and organizational international mindedness. 

With this in mind, the relationship between storytelling and a school’s guiding statements needs some consideration. For example, the development of international mindedness in some form is often a part of the schools mission, vision, or other guiding statements. Why can even an impressively memorized mission statement not be the story?

​

What about the guiding statements?

​

An important part of a school’s context is the school’s guiding statements, often referred to as a vision and mission, although other terms are sometimes used. Fortunately, many schools have simplified their guiding statements over the past couple of decades and many schools have been adopting summary versions, often containing only a few key concepts that represent the critical elements of their overall mission and vision. This simplified version allows community members to remember the concepts, and therefore connect to them. This is a major starting point in any storytelling. 

​

Any story told about a school needs to fit within the direction set by its mission and vision. The story does not replace the vision and mission but enhances these guiding statements by supplying the operational details and exploring that key idea of why we do what we do in the way that we do it. The school’s story should flow from its mission and vision. 

​

Each of the four vignettes includes a short section related to how the constructed story exists within the parameters of the school’s guiding statements. The story needs to bring the guiding statements to life. The IB describes the IB learner profile as the IB mission in action, and this is a similar relationship. That is, an IB school’s mission and vision fit within the IB mission but in a very specific way. A school’s story fits within the school’s mission, but in a very specific way. The story is the school’s mission in action.

​

Why we do what we do in the way that we do it has always been an essential question to consider because, oftentimes, we may not even notice. We may never really know. In schools, we are all busy, and moments for these essential reflections can get lost amongst all of the noise of school life. This is very true not only in schools but also in nearly all other areas of our lives. As an educational leader, the answer to this question is extremely important when trying to lead a school in any sort of direction. You need to know how an intended path aligns with whatever is going on in that moment. 

​

Keeping a marketing perspective in mind (telling ourselves our own story), the search for our identity becomes crucial. How do we know what to tell ourselves because, firstly, we need to be accurate? We have all met individuals whose self-perceptions have seemed a little off, not always correlating with our experiences of them. We do not want this to be the case at our school. When a new student or teacher joins us, the story they are told about the school should match their experience on the first day in and out of the classroom.  We should be who we tell ourselves we are, reaching an accurate understanding that incorporates strengths as well as areas in need of development. 

​

Secondly, this understanding of ourselves needs to contain an aspirational element. We want to be able to understand ourselves well enough to know who we want to be and incorporate this into the story. The story is not just about who we are, but who we hope to become. It is also the way we get there. We want to push the boundaries of our story. This has been the purpose of storytelling since we first started painting on cave walls.

In order to uncover this story, an individual needs time to reflect, a type of self-observation, and an organization requires a similar reflective journey. This reflection necessitates taking the time to observe. One of the interesting characteristics of schools that can get in the way of reflection is the incessant busyness of everyone. As teachers, we become extremely action oriented. There are so many things to get done that we collectively avoid the pause. This tends to become heavily enculturated in school and often forms an ethic for teachers who then become school leaders. We never shed this ethic of action.

​

This is obvious, for example, if you ever sit down with a group of teachers to discuss a student concern. Starting with an outline of whatever caused the concern which led to the discussion, we tend to very quickly jump to solutions. At least in my experience, we tend not to spend much time analyzing the broader context such as underlying causes, unless there is a structure in place to force us to stop and take this time. This environment supports a solution-based approach to problem solving rather than a problem-based approach and I suspect that this is due to the constant state of busyness that we experience during our day-to-day professional lives. Out of necessity, we collectively avoid the pause to consider problems deeply, and jump straight to a solution. In this way, we often implement simple solutions to what are actually complex problems and are surprised when our approaches do not work. 

​

If we want to really understand our school identity, we must embrace the pause. We need to appreciate the unfathomable complexity of what we refer to as school culture. It is a shared understanding of ways of being. As a recognizable collective of shared values, beliefs, traditions and behaviors, to name just a few of what can potentially be shared, culture defies precise definition. Culture is something we recognize because a group shares it, but just like in quantum physics, the closer you look, the more difficult the intangible is to actually define. For this reason, we do not define school culture, we merely get a sense of it at a particular moment in time. 

​

This sense of school culture is revealed by behavior and the relationships that this behavior illuminates. Interactions tell us just about all we need to know in order to piece together our school’s story but it takes time, oftentimes more than we have been enculturated to expend. Observing rather than doing feels unproductive and this can be a personal challenge, but an important one on the road to unlocking the secrets to our school identity. 

​

Discourse & Culture

 

​Observing how we interact with each other offers valuable insights into the underlying values of the people in our school community. As a principal in an IB school, I became interested in better understanding how teachers and students interacted in the classroom and how closely these interactions aligned with IB philosophy. This curiosity led to some doctoral studies looking at student-centeredness in IB classroom and how closely IB philosophy aligned with classroom practice. What I learned over several years (this study took a while!) is that if you would like to find out what people value, observing how they interact is far more useful than asking them questions. The experience mainly focused on sharing the story of the classroom, which is the most crucial aspect of the school's overall story. Hopefully, it drives everything else and is also driven by it. 

​

Rather than concentrating solely on teachers' actions in the class, the study focused on the activities and intentions of the students themselves. I had a principal when I first started teaching who said that he did not really care what the teacher was doing because it was what the students were doing, or were not doing, as the case may be, that was the crucial part of a lesson. You could teach the best lesson in the world, but it would not matter if the students were not engaged and learning. This was a piece of advice that I could not have known would lodge in my brain and significantly alter an important stage of my later life. In fact, these words  that I had heard nearly twenty years before influenced the whole study. We never know the long-term impact of even our smallest actions. 

​

I will not bore you with the details of the study as I have some other things to bore you with, but bear with me for a little longer. When I started considering an approach to making sense of what I was observing in classrooms, I turned to some theories associated with discourse. In particular, I found two major points stood out in terms of understanding school dynamics. 

​

Discourse involves all factors that impact meaning making

​

Firstly, discourse refers to all of the elements of an interaction that help us make meaning. It is far more than just the words spoken. It includes such things as all that is said and how it is said, as well as what is not said; the power relationships between the people interacting as well as the observer; the location; time of day; the way people are dressed; the personal histories of the people interacting; and the list goes on. There is an almost inexhaustible list of factors that impact each interaction’s meaning. When we look at any interaction, we need to consider which ones are important in terms of what we are trying to understand. Considering interactions within this meaning-making focus of discourse gives us a sense of the complexity of even the simplest interaction.

​

For example, we could consider a classroom where the teacher asks seated students questions while the teacher walks around the classroom. If the teacher is the only one with freedom of movement, this is an element of the discourse. Furthermore, the teacher may be the one asking most of the questions. This restriction on both movement and questioning rights could be interpreted in many ways. One potential interpretation is that the teacher is in control of the learning. It could be an indication of the power relationship between the student and teacher, with implications for the peripheral role of the student in constructing knowledge. How many indicators would add to this meaning-making? We may not always give conscious thought to the effects of our interactions, but there is always an impact. Patterns in interactions tend to be consistent as they mirror cultural contexts, so the way we craft our ongoing interactions sheds light on our deeply held values. Understanding these patterns can help us understand ourselves. Yet, we all see and experience the same events very differently.

​

As we are unable to consider all factors in the discourse, you need to select important ones in terms of your purpose. For example, if you are hoping to increase the student-centeredness of the classroom, you may consider questioning strategies. You viewed the lesson described above and noticed that the teacher asked all of the questions, waiting for students to respond so they can validate the answer. You then discussed the class with the teacher and found that your interpretations were very different. The teacher considered that the class was student-centered as there were many interactions where students were presenting their ideas. You considered the class to be teacher-centered as students were mainly answering questions to have their knowledge validated. The teacher considered student interactions as an important value that guided their pedagogy. From your observations, you would have thought that the teacher valued control more than anything else and this is what drove their pedagogy. Who is correct? This is always the big question. 

The reality is probably both of these, depending on who is interpreting the observations so a conversation with those involved about what the observations mean is always necessary. This is a good point to remember when we look at trying to work out our school identity on the basis of our observations. A lot of conversations are required and ultimately, an interpretation needs to be made, but it will never be  a perfect science.

 

Community-wide meaning making is the cumulative result of all the small interactions

 

The patterns in these interactions over time lead us to the second point that helps us use discourse to understand classroom dynamics as well as the broader school culture. Each interaction matters. Discourse is about meaning-making, and this involves both individuals and groups. The cumulative effect of interactions between individuals has a cumulative effect on the whole community. In this way, identifying patterns in individual interactions enable us to understand societal-level meaning making. Each individual interaction adds to the noise and if we listen carefully, we can make sense of it. 

In the example above, the teacher firmly holds movement and questioning rights. If this occurred in just one lesson, the impact would be minimal. However, if this occurs frequently, it is the cumulative effect of this pattern that impacts the school culture. Any pattern of interaction between individuals impacts the group. A teacher smiling and greeting a student by name in the corridor when they pass will show the student, quite literally, that the teacher knows them. The student may get a sense that they are worth knowing. If this type of interaction continues across the school over time, there will be a cumulative effect on the atmosphere of the school. Students may feel that they are welcome and that their teachers care about them. 

Individual interactions are the building blocks for meaning-making at the broader community level. In this case, teachers greeting students each day may help students come to understand that the school community values them. This is a shared understanding of ways of being in the school, an important element of school culture. When a group of people share patterns in their ways of thinking, acting, doing, and being, we refer to this as culture and it is observable in the interactions within the group.

​

Patterns of interactions and school culture 

​

We see a cycle happening in the day-to-day life of a school where school culture generates certain types of interactions, and those interactions reinforce the culture. This cycle is self-sustaining. Cultures reinforce themselves in this way, creating reasonable degrees of stability over time. However, we also know that cultures are dynamic and constantly shifting, so the cycle also provides the key to guiding shifts in school culture, as it is not a closed system. New patterns of interactions, even on a small scale, can force a shift in the ongoing generation of culture. For those of us who work in schools and have an interest in guiding the development of school culture, we can consider what types of interactions will produce the sort of culture we want to build and then promote that type of interaction. It is a simple idea, but immensely powerful.

For example, if the community values diversity, then diverse opinions will be reflected in many of the community interactions.  These varied viewpoints, nevertheless, do more than merely reflect or represent the community's values. This discourse's structure reinforces these values by raising awareness of the significance of these various points of view. In other words, certain discourse elements both reflect and shape values. This is the reason a school leader hoping to effect real change in a school community must give careful thought to discourse. 

​

Discourse allows us to understand what a school community values, which is at the heart of school culture, but more importantly, adjusting those discourse patterns can help shape those values and hence shift school culture. These patterns of interactions can be thought of as discourse routines. The term routine suggests that we have given some conscious thought to the pattern. Harvard Graduate School’s Project Zero uses thinking routines as a way to make thinking visible in the classroom and this is a good example of a discourse routine. Teachers implement a specific type of routine that impacts the way we make meaning of an interaction. 

As we see with this example of Project Zero’s thinking routines, discourse routines are malleable. We create discourse routines together, so we can shift them together. An understanding of the malleability of both discourse routines and school culture and their close relationship help us to guide the nature of interactions between members of the school community when trying to shift and sustain culture in schools. 

​

The real value of considering the powerful impact of patterns of individual interactions in the development of school culture is that it empowers individuals. We create our school culture, one interaction at a time. This also helps us when trying to more deeply understand our school identity. By closely observing patterns of interactions within a school community, we can better understand school culture and develop strategies to shift that culture. 

​

The order of these two steps is very important. Understanding school culture must always come before trying to shift that culture. The reason for this is simple. When we try to shift something as complex as school culture, we are not trying to implement something completely new. Constructivist learning theories provide an apt metaphor. We build new knowledge on the foundation of existing knowledge, and in this way, we extend our knowledge and understanding Likewise, when we are trying to implement change in school culture, we need to identify something that already exists in that culture and then consider how we can build on that element in whatever direction we are wanting to go. Whether we are talking about constructivist learning theories or a building’s construction, we always need a foundation. 

​

Taking the time to understand the existing school culture before trying to shift it in a particular direction is not just about creating a successful impact. It is also about respecting the people who are part of the existing culture. Just as specific words in a language are always developed in response to a need, all aspects of culture emerge from some form of need. Even a dysfunctional school with a toxic culture has developed the culture (ways of thinking, acting, doing, and being in the world) based on the needs of the people. We would need to understand the origins of the dysfunction before trying to make changes.

​

When we put these ideas together, it seems that we can observe the ongoing patterns of discourse to find out what the school community really values, and we can also shift some patterns in that discourse to try to influence what the school community comes to value. This is a concrete way to both understand our school community and positively influence the direction of change. Four vignettes will be introduced to illustrate how this has worked in my school experiences over the last 20 years. This approach for identifying and communicating a school’s story is based on the simple idea that the deeply held values of a school community can be found within its day-to-day discourse. That is, we talk about what is important to us, and our story is firmly rooted within those values.

​

All of our schools need to be following parallel journeys between what we say we are going to do and what we are actually doing. This is, of course, true when we are looking at our written curriculum and trying to make sure that what we say we are going to teach is actually taught in the classroom. Some of it may even be learned! It is equally true for the way we want our school culture to develop. If we say we are a certain type of school, we need to make sure that the day-to-day experiences of the people within the school align with our description. A school’s identity cannot outrun its culture.

​

First Step - the conversations

​

In order to communicate the unique story of our IB school, the first step is to know ourselves as a school. This can be difficult because the school's culture, as discussed above, is a shared understanding, and any shared understanding is always an approximation of perceptions. Examining school cultures can be both fascinating and frustrating. If we were to identify all of the groups that make up the school community and try to get them to agree on exactly what the school is about, we would find that we have given ourselves a near-impossible task. Just as each person will perceive the school differently, each of the constituent groups within the school will share a slightly different understanding of what the school is about. So where does this leave us in trying to pin down our school culture? 

​

As these perceptions of the school can be so varied, what we are really looking for when we want to clarify a school’s identity are the deeply held values that are more or less shared, rather than the surface-level details about which there may be lots of disagreement. An inquiry into these deeply held shared values is a useful place to start when we are trying to clarify and articulate our school's identity. 

​

Fortunately, no matter what surface-level differences we all disagree on, there will always be a series of deeply held values that can bring us together.  It is the search for these shared values that we need to focus on, and a useful starting point for any inquiry into the values we share is the conversations that shape the life of any school. People tend to talk about the things that they are interested in, and our interest is in many ways guided by our deeply held values. For example, in a school environment, if we find ourselves constantly talking about the way that we can communicate with our parents and help them develop their understanding of what we do as a school, it is likely that we value the partnership between the family and the school. It can be difficult to ascertain deeply held values because we often take them for granted. We assume that is the way the world should be, so we may not even consciously consider the way those values drive our everyday behavior. 

​

This brings us to the four steps in this approach to communicating a school’s unique story which will be explored through four vignettes, or short case studies, examining the experiences of four IB schools. Vignettes are useful as school contexts are complex. We are each dealing with a unique situation that will never fit another school’s model. By considering the context of four different schools through vignettes, you may be able to find some patterns that fit your own unique environment. These patterns will allow you to experiment in your school with the steps presented to see how they work for you. 

​

This type of learning has always been the most useful for me as an educational leader, listening to the stories of other schools and adapting lessons learned to my own context. It is important to explore a bit of theory for context and background, but what has always been most helpful is hearing how the ideas play out in practice. 

It is also important to note that a  vignette is merely a brief, hopefully evocative, description of a school. For anyone who experienced the real, day-to-day life of the school during these times would probably feel that the portrayal has been made with overly rose-colored glasses. This is as it should be. For the purpose of developing our stories, we focus on the parts of our schools that shine. For all of the bits that do not shine, we continue to work on those in the background. Schools are constantly evolving and our stories help us to guide this process.

​

There are three main takeaways in this book that underlie the four steps presented. These three statements are observations that I have made about schools based on my own unique experience, so please challenge them as you read. Just like any observations, these are context-specific but may be applicable to you and your unique context in some way. 

​

Takeaways

• Day-to-day discourse routines reveal a community’s collective values.

• Discourse routines are malleable, impacting school culture as they change.

• An understanding of the elements of a school’s story enables clarity when articulating a school’s fluid identity.

 

As you can see, discourse, values, and identity play a major role in the content, so we will be exploring all of these ideas within the vignettes. Hopefully, you will all find something of interest to help you consider your school and the storytelling that surrounds it.

​

The four vignettes are presented in chronological order, although my thinking has shifted over time. In this sense, the first three vignettes are a sort of retrospective consideration of those earlier experiences as I made sense of them over time. The fourth one is a work in progress.

​