School Culture Rewired: How to Define, Assess, and Transform It

by Steve Gruenert, Todd Whitaker

Overview

Your school is a lot more than a center of student learning--it also represents a self-contained culture, with traditions and expectations that reflect its unique mission and demographics. In this groundbreaking book, education experts Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker offer tools, strategies, and advice for defining, assessing, and ultimately transforming your school's culture into one that is positive, forward-looking, and actively working to enrich students’ lives. Drawing from decades of research on organizational cultures and school leadership, the authors provide everything you need to optimize both the culture and climate of your school, including

* "Culture-busting" strategies to help teachers adopt positive attitudes, outlooks, and behaviors;
* A framework for pinpointing the type of culture you have, the type that you want, and the actions you need to take to bridge the two;
* Tips for hiring, training, and retaining teachers who will actively work to improve your school's culture; and
* Instructions on how to create and implement a successful School Culture Rewiring Team.

Though often invisible to the naked eye, a school's culture influences everything that takes place under its roof. Whether your school is urban or rural, prosperous or struggling, School Culture Rewired is the ultimate guide to making sure that the culture in your school is guided first and foremost by what's best for your students.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416619932
Publisher:	ASCD
Publication date:	01/16/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	246,692
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Steve Gruenert is the department chair of the Educational Leadership department at Indiana State University (ISU). He helped design the Indiana Principal Leadership Institute, has coordinated the Principal Preparation Program at ISU, and has been a principal at both the high school and middle schools levels. His research passion is school culture and climate, and he continues to engage with leaders at the national and international levels, helping them to think about the role of culture in school improvement.

Todd Whitaker has been fortunate to blend his passion with his profession. He is a leading presenter in the field of education and a professor of educational leadership at Indiana State University. He has previously served as both a teacher and a principal and is the author of over 30 books, including What Great Teachers Do Differently, The 10-Minute In-Service, and Shifting the Monkey. Todd and his wife, Beth, have three children: Katherine, Madeline, and Harrison.

Table of Contents

1 Defining Organizational Culture 1

2 Culture vs. Climate 9

3 Building Blocks and Subcultures 25

4 What Type of Culture Do You Want? 47

5 What Type of Culture Do You Have? 65

6 The School Culture Survey 79

7 To Reveal the Invisible and Start Conversations 91

8 The Beat Goes On-or Does It? 107

9 How Long Does It Take to Rewire a Culture? 119

10 Breakthroughs 125

11 Leverage Points 133

12 How the School-Year Cycle Affects Cultural Rewiring 45

13 Building a School Culture Rewiring Team 153

14 Leadership Matters 161

Bibliography 167

Index 171

About the Authors 177