School Culture Is About More Than Cheering People Up
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder argues that real school culture isn't about pep rallies and positive vibes — it's about creating conditions where people can do their best work.
Key Takeaways
- Culture is conditions, not cheerleading - Positive culture comes from safe schools, reasonable workloads, and professional respect
- Forced positivity is toxic - Asking people to be upbeat when working conditions are terrible is insulting
- Fix the conditions first - Once the environment supports good work, positive culture follows naturally
Transcript
What makes for a good school culture?
One of the things that I see a lot of principals putting a lot of effort into is kind of cheering people up, right?
Having treats or putting up balloons or decorations or doing kind of birthday party type things that seem designed to cheer people up but don't really get at the real contributors to culture.
professional culture like the culture of a school really is all about the actual working conditions under which people do their jobs right if you're a teacher you need conditions under which you can do that job successfully right you need time you need resources you need continuity you need trust you need you know not a new initiative every five minutes and when you have that you don't need a whole lot of the birthday party kind of rah-rah cheer me up stuff And I'll just be the first to say, like, that also is just not my personality to be very into the decorations and, you know, kind of party atmosphere approach to school culture.
But I also, so, you know, if you're into that kind of stuff, great.
But I also think it's really important that we keep in mind that everybody has kind of a different reaction to that stuff.
Like one of the things I realized as a principal is I needed to do a little bit more of that than I would naturally do because I'm just the kind of person I am and I was an elementary principal and there is a lot of interest in the kind of rah-rah birthday party stuff.
So if you're into that grade, if you're not into that grade, what I think really matters for culture in a school is, are people supported?
Do they have the professional respect that they need to do their work?
Do they have the freedom from distraction and from disrespect, like the buffering?
I think principals play a huge role in buffering teachers from district forces, from state forces, from federal forces, from parents, from students that would damage their professionalism and that would interfere with their ability to do their job.
And that's tricky because principals are often in the middle and required to get teachers to implement things from all those stakeholders or fulfill the wishes of all those different stakeholders.
And that's a fine line to walk as a principal, to have to balance buffering your teachers, protecting your teachers, versus being responsive to other stakeholders and getting teachers to do things and to follow through on things.
So school leadership is not an easy job.
School culture building is not an easy task.
But I really think it all comes down to working conditions.
Because at the end of the day, everybody is here because they want to do their job.
They're here not for the paycheck.
alone, not for the working conditions alone, but they're here because they want to do the work.
But in order to do that work, they need the working conditions.
In order to stay long term, of course, they need the paycheck, they need the fair compensation, they need respect.
And I think that's just got to stay on the forefront of our minds as school leaders.
Let me know what you think.