Language:

The Critical Tool in Creating Healthy Learning Environments

by Anthony S. Muhammad, Ph.D.

As schools and systems struggle to focus and align the talents of the diverse members of their organization, one critical tool stands out more than any other.  That tool is language.  Language is our auditory expression of thought.  Whoever controls the language controls the organizational thinking.  During the three years and 34 schools studied to create my book, Transforming School Culture: How to Overcome Staff Division (2009), there was a distinct difference between a “healthy” school culture and a “toxic” school culture. 

 Healthy school cultures have been defined by Kent Peterson from the University of Wisconsin in the following manner:

Healthy school cultures have an unwavering belief in the ability of each student to achieve success and they pass that belief on to others in overt and covert ways.  Educators create policies and procedures and adopt practices that support their belief in the ability of every student. (Cromwell 2002)

Peterson’s definition gives us insight into the inner-workings of a healthy and productive culture and his description informs us that there are two major components.  A healthy culture begins with a belief in children, but it does not stop with just belief alone.  Healthy cultures also institutionalize their belief through a series of policies and practices that align with their belief system.  The practices of a healthy culture are aligned with their publicly stated belief in the ability of every student.

Toxic school cultures have also been defined by Kent Peterson and he describes them like this:

Toxic cultures believe that student success is based solely upon a students’ level of concern, attentiveness, prior knowledge, and willingness to comply with the demands of the school, and they articulate that belief in overt and covert ways.  Educators create policies and procedures and adopt practices that support their belief in the impossibility of universal achievement. (Cromwell 2002)

Like in a healthy culture, toxic cultures start with a belief system, and that belief system grows and metastasizes into being institutionalized through policies, practices, and procedures. 

Organizational Language

Based upon the definition given by Kent Peterson on healthy and toxic culture, it is apparent that they are very different.  The focus of a healthy culture is on the success of students and the term “unwavering”, within its definition, describes the resolve of the educators in those environments.  The term “unwavering” uncovers the fact that healthy school cultures recognize that students will arrive at school with different backgrounds, readiness levels, support, and commitment, but despite this diverse group of obstacles, they stay steadfast in their goal of high levels of learning for all of their students. 

What language did educators use in a healthy school culture?  They used the language of problem-solving.  This language expressed a certain level of pragmatism that understood that problems will always exist, but the important thing is the way that we process and react to those problems.  Schools are infamously known for their lack of predictability.  Anytime you take hundreds of students from hundreds of different backgrounds and try to create a harmonious organization with one well defined goal, problems will arise.  But, even in the face of this challenge, the educators that I studied practicing in healthy schools displayed an unusual calm that allowed them to analyze the problem, hypothesize, and propose and develop an experiment with the goal of eliminating the problem. 

How did this problem-solving based language sound?  The first observable characteristic was calm.  In the healthiest schools in my study, they had a calm or coolness that was very easily observed.  Whenever a dilemma presented itself, they automatically started discussing a course of action.  It was very natural.  Healthy school cultures owned their problems.  Their language was prescriptive as opposed to descriptive.  Like in other schools, they got tired, angry, and even frustrated, but their resolve did not change.  Some of the phrases that were very common in the face of a challenging event were:

• What do we do about it?
• Why do you think that happened?
• Let’s discuss it later?
• Who do we need to get involved to solve this problem?

An important fact to note is that this language and disposition was modeled by school site administration in each and every case.  So, it is safe to say that leadership sets the tone in the formal setting for what teachers will discuss and process in the informal setting.  The irony in this situation is that site administration does not get access to the informal part of the organization, so the application of the language and disposition lie on the shoulders of the teachers and other non-administrative staff.

If healthy cultures have a language, what is the language of a toxic culture?  A toxic culture’s language is rooted in frustration and emotion.  Their language is descriptive and not prescriptive. Unlike a healthy culture, a toxic culture assigns blame for problems instead of owning the problem and collaborating to solve the problem.  This disowning of the problem does not create an environment that nurtures self-reflection and collaborative organizational movement. 

When confronted with issues, toxic cultures rely on an explanation of the problem in order to excuse themselves from any responsibility to solve the problem.  So, consequently the language of a toxic culture focuses exclusively on the external forces that make their professional practice difficult and the organizational goals unattainable.  This language is rooted in exasperation and flabbergast.  Language often heard in a toxic culture when faced with a challenge or an obstacle:

• I can’t believe that ……happened!
• This is ridiculous!
• Can you believe……..?
• Someone needs to do something about this!
• If only……..this problem would not exist!

If these phrases are a regular part of the interaction between staff members, the culture is toxic, and no meaningful growth will happen until the paradigm of that culture changes.  Toxic environments by nature, do not allow anything of value to grow.

Practice New Language

As America faces new and compelling challenges in our educational system, we have to be poised to move with the times and deliver the type of services that our community deserves.  I recognize that change has to happen at every level (site leadership, district leadership, and state and federal leadership) and I will deal seriously with these issues in the very near future, but the most powerful place to start is in the teacher culture.  Teachers control the informal organization, and the language of that segment of the organization is paramount to the growth of schools.  I would agree with many teachers that leadership, in many cases, make their jobs much more difficult than it needs to be.  But, we know from labor statistics that the average tenure of a principal is 3.2 years at a school site and the average tenure of a teacher at a school site is 12.4 years (Sparks 2002).  The teachers will be at a school a lot longer than the average administrator.

School cultures are not considered “healthy” or “toxic” based upon publicly stated beliefs and dogma.  Their health or toxicity is determined by the consistent day-to-day interactions of their members.  What can you can control?  You can control what you express and what you allow others to express to you?  Avoid conversations and interactions where the goal is to detach from issues and assign blame to others.  Challenge those who use the informal venue to draw others into their downward spiral of blame to use their energy to come up with solutions to problems that are apparent to all and will not solve themselves. 

With practice and consistent application, you will start to notice a new ethos.   You will start to see colleagues work together and use their talents to make the school a happier and more productive place for everyone.  The line between the formal and informal organizations will be erased.  Trust will build and we will not waste human capital and potential.  I am not promising that this new way of expression and focus will be easy, but it is well worth it.  Your school will sing a new song.  Are you willing to take the brave plunge?

Works Cited

Cromwell, S. (2002). “Is Your School Culture Toxic or Positive?” Education World 6(2): 1.

Sparks, D. (2002). High Performing Cultures Increase Teacher Retention. Results, National Staff Development Council: 2.

Who’s In Charge?: All of Us!

Anthony S. Muhammad, Ph.D.

The structure and hierarchy of organizations have always been fascinating to me.  Schools are by far, the most fascinating organization to study these phenomena. In decades past, the hierarchy was very clear, the administrator was the boss and everyone followed his/her direction or they were subject to his/her wrath!  The changing nature and purpose of school has rendered this top-down authoritarian viewpoint of leadership outdated and obsolete.  The demands placed on schools to develop their students and ensure that they can demonstrate knowledge in a world that is becoming smaller and more competitive requires leadership to be exhibited at every level.

 Some of the more recent additions to the organizational structure of schools are the coaching and curriculum positions.  These educators, who do not directly instruct students and have no punitive power over teachers, are charged with interacting with teachers and providing them with needed guidance to improve instruction, while supporting administrators in their curricular initiatives.  This places the coach in a precarious position.  He/She is neither a teacher nor an administrator.  Oft-times, they find themselves caught in an educational purgatory where they are not considered colleagues by the teachers and they are not considered equals by administrators.

The question in the 21^st century should not be who’s in charge?  The question should be what is my role and my responsibility?  The level of interaction necessary to create competitive and proficient school systems requires relinquishing ego in exchange for committed service.  Instructional coaches and curriculum leaders should not have to fight an immature battle of privilege through legacy.  Educators should embrace the expertise and assistance that they provide to ease the burden of the responsibility for preparing students for a world very different than we experienced decades ago.

In my research on creating optimum learning environments, I have found that healthy school cultures embrace the assistance and guidance of those who can help them meet their goals and improve their professional practice.   This embrace of assistance did not happen in a vacuum.  In these learning environments, I found that three primary commitments were established.

Commitment #1 – A Focus on Service

The highly collaborative environments in my studies have made a profound and selfless commitment to service.  This commitment went beyond the idealistic mission statement and innocuous posters on the walls, and these commitments were materialized in solid policies, practices, and procedures.  These schools developed goals collectively and held one another mutually accountable for their role in the school’s ascension.  In these learning environments, educators embraced the support of experts, both internally and externally, because the focus was on the pursuit of student development, not personal privilege and autonomy.

Commitment #2 – A Commitment to Learning for Professionals

The second commitment that was evident in healthy schools was the staff’s consistent pursuit of knowledge.  Rick DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, and Robert Eaker wrote in the book Professional Learning Communities at Work that, “professional learning communities operate under the assumption that the key to improved learning for students is continuous job-embedded learning for educators”(DuFour and Eaker 1998).  Effective schools are staffed with educators who realize that the commitment to be professional is life-long and does not stop after completing a university course of study.  These schools had no problem embracing a colleague who may be able to guide them in an area where they needed help because the end result of that collaborative relationship would be gains for children.

Commitment #3 – A Collaborative Infrastructure

It is not reasonable to expect a school that does not practice collaboration among its own staff to embrace and collaborative with a coach or curriculum specialist from the outside.  Steven Covey identifies that human being are creatures of ‘habit’ and habits have to be nurtured and cultivated (Covey 1989).  District administrators must be careful about their investment of resources in schools that do not embrace internal collaboration.  If this variable is not present, how can district leaders expect them to embrace the expertise of a curriculum and instructional coach from the outside?  I would highly advise that a school district support the construction of a structure of internal collaboration at each school before setting up curriculum specialist for failure by sending them into highly divisive cultures where there is a high-likelihood of rejection.

A Rebirth of Commitment to Children

We live in a day and time that demands that we pay close attention to the development of our children.  The ever-shrinking world has become more complex and a nation’s ability to prepare their children for this new world will determine the viability of the community for the future.  The old, divisive hierarchy of schools, which oft-times placed the concerns of the adults ahead of the concerns of children, must die.   Our organizations have to be quick and nimble, and change will probably be the only constant in schools for some years to come.  Don’t fight it, embrace it!  Schools have to look and operate very differently than they have in the past and our future is counting on our coöperation.  We can no longer waste time arguing about who is in charge because the answer has to be All of Us.

Work Cited

Covey, S. (1989). The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Free Press.

DuFour, R. and R. Eaker (1998). Professional Learning Communities at Work. Bloomington, Indiana, Solution Tree.

A free study guide for Dr. Muhammad’s book “Transforming School Culture” is available for free download.

Dr. Muhammad introduces the focus for our upcoming Detroit summit:

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Dr. Muhammad was recently interviewed by NBC 25’s Elizabeth MacFarland. A transcript of Part 1 and Part 2 of the interview is also available.

Inequality and varied levels of academic achievement among America’s students based upon cultural, racial, socioeconomic, and gender lines has been status quo for over 100 years. Reports highlighting disparities in academic performance between certain student groups in our nation has become passé, and have only caused alarm in certain pockets within American society. But, with global competition and a slumping domestic economy, Americans may need to rethink the under-performance of students in housing projects, barrios, and rural country-sides.

A new report released in May of 2009 reveals the real economic impact of the so-called Achievement Gap and its effect on the national economy. The report reads:

The study, conducted by the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, pointed to bleak disparities in test scores on four fronts: between black and Hispanic children and white children; between poor and wealthy students; between Americans and students abroad; and between students of similar backgrounds educated in different parts of the country. The report concluded that if those achievement gaps were closed, the yearly gross domestic product of the United States would be trillions of dollars higher, or $3 billion to $5 billion more per day.

During prosperous economic times, it is easy for people outside of the mainstream to be marginalized and ignored. Time always reveals that all people are valuable and when a society forgets that universal fact, the fate of those in power always seems to come back to how they treated those without power. As the rest of the world becomes more competitive and the economic and political dominance of the past seems to fade away, our country has to turn to those communities who always thought that they were a permanent underclass to survive and grow. As the report cited above notes, by unlocking the intellectual potential of poor and minority children America stands to gain trillions of dollars into its economy and guarantee prosperity for American citizens for years to come.

As I conduct professional development around the country, I remind educators that the true power and fate our nation rests in the hands of our educators. To unlock the intellectual potential of a human being is akin to creating a new life. The only trait that separates humans from the animal kingdom is our ability to think at high levels. In fact, we witness humans turn to animalistic behavior when they do not develop intellectually. So, as I drive through dilapidated neighborhoods in Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles and other depressed regions of our nation, I do not see thugs and useless people walking the streets, I see potential, and the future leaders of our nation. What do you see? If more of my colleagues in our field, especially those who practice in communities like these, do not see through a new lens, we might all find ourselves in unfavorable positions. Joel Klein, the Chancellor of New York City Public Schools, stated it well when he said, “Schools can be the game changer. We can and should get very, very different (better) results with the same children and we can change the world”

The above question is one that has been asked for decades and has yet to receive a uniform and adequate answer. As I travel North America and conduct professional development for educators, I oft-times ask this question to participants and I get a wide range of answers. Some of those answers include qualities like compassion, nurturing, knowledgeable, flexible, patient, and collaborative. All of these traits are noble and would be positive traits in any profession. The problem is that we lack a consensus among educators about what a quality educational professional does. Many professional organizations have come up with their own versions or belief statements, but there has yet to be a consensus on what a consummate educational professional does and how he/she performs and behaves.

Why is this debate so important? The overwhelming consensus among the experts in the field of education is that the most important variable in improving student achievement is a high-quality teacher. This fact brings cause for leaders to ask three questions:

1. Who are these high-quality teachers and what do they do?
2. How can school districts find these professionals or can each teacher be taught to be high-quality, model teachers?
3. Are there parts of the traditional school structure and culture that are detrimental to the concept of guaranteeing every student a high-quality teacher?

These questions have plagued school districts and school district leaders for years and there seems to be no end in sight to desperate attempts to close the gap in performance from teacher-to-teacher.

Recently, the New York City Public Schools created an experiment called the Equity Project. This program is a part of an experimental charter school that seeks to fill every classroom with a “superstar” teacher selected from a nation-wide search that the director styles as an educational version of “American Idol.” Each teacher will be paid a base salary of $125,000 (nearly twice the average for a NYC teacher) and each teacher is eligible for an additional bonus of $25,000, starting in the second year, based upon improvement in student achievement. The school will start with a class of 120 fifth graders and it will expand each year to accommodate an additional grade level up to 8^th grade. The students will be selected on a lottery format. The district will monitor the experiment to determine if head-hunting for top-talent and paying a premium wage is the way to guarantee high-quality instruction and improved student performance.

This experiment, like many others, sheds an unfavorable light on the current state of our profession. What these experiments show is the low level of confidence that the public has in the average educational professional to improve, grow, and provide adequate service for all children. It also sends a message that investment in the development of currently employed teachers is a waste of time and money, according to top leaders.

The improvement in teacher quality and performance has to come from a fundamental shift in focus, values, and practices that have to be championed by educators within our culture, not from the outside. I do not fault the New York City Public Schools for their attempts to improve student learning. They owe it to the children and citizens of their city. I am insulted by these types of experiments, not because people have the audacity to try them, but because they have not created any alarm within our field. I am not talking about the traditional alarm around rhetoric in the areas of “stealing money away from local schools” or “protecting jobs.” I am angry about the lack of self-reflection and internal accountability in our field that approves of varying levels of professional performance. I am angry about a lack of internal outcry for professional development and capacity building that would allow us to create high-performing professionals in each classroom instead of going on nation-wide “American Idol” auditions. If we do not develop the internal capacity to look in the mirror and create learning communities of professional educators, we cannot be mad at others who try to fill this need, no matter how goofy their experiment.

The true path to improvement begins with an honest analysis of performance and schools are no different. Unfortunately, the anxiety caused by recent accountability initiatives like No Child Left Behind (NCLB) have made schools, school leaders in particular, afraid to be truly self-reflective for fear of affecting ethos or image. This reluctance to critically self-analyze is understandable given the public scrutiny and criticism that educators have been subjected to over the past several years. Many schools find themselves trying to project a positive public image, even in the face of very disturbing facts for mere survival in a hostile environment. This reality has to change because if we are to create the types of transformational schools that we need, educators must feel comfortable critiquing their performance in order to improve.

In the popular and oft-quoted book Good to Great, Jim Collins outlines the variables that distinguish Great companies from Good companies. The first thing that Jim Collins notes is that Great companies confront what he refers to as the brutal facts. These facts or data are evidence of areas of low performance. Collins points out that high-performing companies hunger for this information in order to pinpoint opportunities for improvement and aggressively attack these areas in order to maintain an advantage over their competition. Steven Covey also addresses this issue in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In this book, Covey identifies the difference between the Circle of Influence and the Circle of Concern. The Circle of Influence embodies the issues that can be controlled and improved, while the Circle of Concern contains those issues beyond our control that we complain about, but do not have the ability nor influence to change. Covey points out that when a person focuses on what they can control, concerns become smaller and influence grows. The evidence is clear, when honest self-analysis is at the core, growth happens.

School leaders must have the courage to break through this barrier and engage their staffs in honest dialogue about their reality and lead them in strategizing on continuous improvement. Even high-numbers of students achieving a proficient score on a state assessment is not nearly enough for a school to stop focusing on improvement. There is not a school or organization on the planet that does not need to improve, and the truly great ones recognize this fact. I encourage my fellow educators to stay focused and push your school to higher and higher heights! Your students deserve it and our society and world need it.

When the founding fathers of the United States shaped this nation and established the Constitution, public education was not a fact of life. In fact, education is not mentioned at all in the U.S. Constitution. Over two centuries later, it may be the public school system that pulls our economy and nation out of the worst economic lull since the Great Depression. Why is education so important and why hasn’t our society realized its true importance to our society?

H. Ross Perot, a prominent business man and presidential candidate in 1992, wrote a stinging critique of the American public school system in the March 2009 edition of the U.S. News and World Report. On page 16, Mr. Perot wrote:

Fifty years ago, when we had the finest public school system in the world, the United States could count on an educated populace to create, design, and produce innovative products and services needed to drive the economy and create jobs. Today our public schools rank near the bottom of the industrialized world, and it’s not for the lack of money. The education system is partly to blame for the financial crisis in which we find ourselves. Unless we do a better job of educating our children, we will be unable to grow our economy at even a moderate rate.

Mr. Perot’s critique is not very flattering, and many educators may find his criticisms insulting, and that is very understandable. The crisis that is on our doorstep and the decline in some areas of student performance is a complex issue and should not be placed completely on the shoulders of the public schools and educational professionals. But, the importance of education to the economic, political, and moral survival of our society emphasized by Perot is correct.

I have had the pleasure to be an educator for twenty years and it is a distinction that I wear with honor. I call on educators to accept and nurture their prominent role in our society. Even though we do not always feel appreciated, we are the backbone of this nation. If we are to expect respect from those outside of our field, we must first respect and value our own profession. Politicians, economists, and other professionals think that they run this nation, but the truth is, educational professionals who prepare the future leaders and citizens control the nation’s agenda. As the saying goes: the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. As the nation, and in fact the entire world, teeters on economic disaster, the skills and intellectual development of our children will move us to safe harbor. I implore my fellow educators to consider the following challenges:

1. End petty and personal issues that interfere with a razor-sharp focus on student development. They are the true purpose for the existence of the system.
2. Become the life-long learner that we encourage students to become and consistently sharpen your skills, not just because the state requires it for continued credentialing, but because you want to improve your practice.
3. Call, write, and lobby your legislature to fix the school funding structure that cripples schools in many states and grossly underfunds schools and leaves them without the tools that they need to improve student learning. If we can find money for wars and bailouts for greedy and irresponsible banks, we can find money to support the growth of our students.
4. We must make a pledge that if we get the increased funding we need, we will commit to presenting our nation with the most educated and progressive group of citizens that we have ever seen. It is the right and patriotic thing to do!

January 20, 2009 witnessed the swearing-in of the forty-fourth president of the United States, Barack H. Obama. This event was significant for many reasons. The nation, for the first time in its history, elected an African-American to its top office. This act by the American people symbolized to many the end of a brutal era of inequity, discrimination, and human separation along many different lines. Over two million American citizens traveled to Washington, D.C. to witness this event and the theme of the day was hope.

Why are Americans so hopeful? From my observations, it appears that people are hopeful about creating a society where there are limitless possibilities for every citizen, even those who were not blessed with privilege and wealth. The fact that only fifty years ago African-Americans could not drink from the same fountain as white Americans and today an African-American serves as commander-in-chief is significant and should make people hopeful for a more egalitarian society. But, what I hope is not missed is the fact that it was not Barack Obama’s skin color that helped him to ascend to the most powerful position in the world, it was his ability to think, articulate, and connect with the American people. He is a graduate of Ivy League schools and served as the editor of the Harvard Law Review. Barack Obama is not just black, he is smart!

His ascension is only important to traditionally marginalized groups if we produce students, of all races and walks of life, with the same level of skill that President Obama possesses. There is no better place to start this ‘renewal’ of the American promise than in the public school system. Why the public school system? It is the only institution that provides access to education regardless of race, religion, social class, or any other social characteristic.

Hope has to spread beyond Washington if this renewal is going to be real. In a 2007 study published by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), they identified four primary reasons, or risk factors, to explain why students do not perform well at school:

1. Students living with one parent
2. Students who miss more than three days of school per month
3. Students under the age of 5 with parents who do not read to them daily
4. Students who are in the eighth grade or beyond who watch from 4 – 5 hours of television daily

Obviously, interpersonal relationships are difficult and it will take a national effort to keep families together to reduce the number of single parent homes, but the other three factors can be easily eliminated by any parent at anytime. If we are going to create the nation that the participants at the inauguration hoped for, we have to do more than admire our forty-fourth president; we have to nurture students who can grow to emulate the substance of President Obama. Why can’t we begin with the students and parents in our schools that are most at-risk and make this historic event more than just a symbolic gesture? With the unity of Americans at all levels, especially at the educational level, we can create “a more perfect union.”