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Improve School Culture

Lay the foundation for powerful teaching and learning. Pulled from the Global PD Teams library, this curated collection of videos will help you address your school community’s greatest challenges and develop a cohesive, positive culture where both students and staff thrive.

Designing Systems and Developing Cultures: Impacting the Culture – Regina Stephens Owens

In this video, Regina Stephens Owens conveys the importance of nurturing a belief system within your school. She indicates that the belief system of a school is reflected in the things that the staff do consistently every day and the language they use. Owens also emphasizes the importance of recognizing individual staff talents and passions when engaged in cultural change.

Cultural and Linguistic Responsiveness: Hidden Bias – Sharroky Hollie

In this video, Sharroky Hollie describes the danger of hidden biases. These are biases that, once lodged in our minds, can influence our behavior toward members of particular social groups, but we remain oblivious to their influence. Hollie argues that we all have hidden biases but in order to affirm students culturally and linguistically, teachers must be aware of their own biases and pivot to reaffirm students.

Four Different Types of Traditional US Schools – Austin Buffum

In this video, Austin Buffum describes Richard DuFour’s “four types of traditional US schools”: the Charles Darwin School, where students are sorted by their innate ability and failure is expected; the Pontius Pilot School, where educators absolve themselves of the responsibility to teach those who don’t learn; the Chicago Cubs Fan School, where failure over a long period of time has lowered expectations of what educators and students can accomplish; and finally, the Henry Higgins School, where educators do whatever it takes to help students succeed. This last school type is the only culture suited to high levels of learning for all students.