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Building an Intentional School Culture

Excellence in Academics and Character

By: Charles F. Elbot, David Fulton

Transform your school by shaping a culture based on shared values, beliefs, and behaviors.

This inspiring guide for school leaders helps create an "intentional school culture" that fosters excellence, builds character, and improves student achievement. The book provides tools, case studies, strategies, and implementation plans for creating a strong school culture and offers guidelines for teacher trainings, principal workshops, staff meetings, and district-level use. The authors demonstrate how to:

Support students' independent and interdependent thinking and behavior
Foster ethical decision making
Collaborate with students, parents, and teachers
Evaluate and monitor a plan to enhance the existing school culture

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Product Details

Grade Level: PreK-12
ISBN: 9781412953788
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2007
Page Count: 160
Publication date: October 25, 2007

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Description

"Charles Elbot and David Fulton get it! They get how dominant a force a school's culture is in assisting—or thwarting—the development of learning and character and how extraordinarily difficult it is to make changes. Unlike most of us, they also get how possible it is to build a desirable school culture. This tidy little volume is the authors' first step in sharing their inventive 'lesson plans' from their successful work as school culture builders. When we take these lessons learned to heart, we too will get it!"
—Roland Barth, Professor Emeritus, Graduate School of Education
Harvard University

Transform your school by shaping a culture based on shared values, beliefs, and behaviors.

Based on lessons learned from the authors' work in improving school culture for more than sixty schools across the country, this inspiring guide for school leaders helps create an "intentional school culture" that fosters excellence, builds character, and improves student achievement. The book provides tools, case studies, strategies, and implementation plans for building a strong school culture and offers guidelines for teacher trainings, principal workshops, staff meetings, and district-level use. The authors demonstrate how to:

Support students' independent and interdependent thinking and behavior
Foster ethical decision making
Collaborate with students, parents, and teachers
Evaluate and monitor a plan to enhance the existing school culture

The authors illustrate how deliberately shaping a school culture cultivates faculty trust, sets the groundwork for raising test scores, and is a critical ingredient in building a successful school.

Key features

This resource:

Offers a practical roadmap toward school improvement
Includes tools, templates, rubrics, and an implementation plan
Can be used in teacher trainings, principal workshops, staff meetings, and district-level meetings

Author(s)

Charles F. Elbot

Charles F. Elbot was born in Europe and lived his first twenty years as part of three cultures—French, German and American. After graduating from Wesleyan University, he pursued his dream to see the world. With his backpack, sleeping bag and only a few hundred dollars, he traveled west, crossing Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe over a three year period. For funds, he worked on ships out of Bali and Singapore. These were three extraordinary years of being exposed to a rich array of the world’s cultures.

Upon returning to the United States, he began teaching and then helped to found an alternative high school, September School, in Boulder, Colorado. After several years of teaching and serving as a principal, he attended Harvard University, earning his masters’ degree in moral development and educational administration. This was followed by serving as a principal in public and independent schools over the next twenty-one years.

Charles served as principal of Slavens School, a K-8 Denver public school, which in 2001 was honored as one of eight schools in the nation as a National School of Character. This school was also recognized for its extraordinary student academic achievement. These accomplishments attracted educators from around the country who spent days observing “how” things were done at the school. The following year Charles founded the Office of Character and School Culture and began to take these ideas to other schools in Denver and around the country. In 2003, the New Zealand government invited Charles to share these approaches with educators in New Zealand. Since then the Office of Character and School Culture has continued to develop the work of harnessing a school’s culture to build excellence in academics and character, culminating in this book.

Charles is married to Barbara Robertson Elbot and they have two children, Jason and David.

David Fulton

After graduating from Emory University, David Fulton taught high school and middle school for four years in Denver, Colorado. While in graduate school, he worked for the State Department of Education in Wisconsin, was a researcher for a National Science Foundation-funded school reform project, and supervised preservice social studies teachers. After completing his MA and PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison in foundations of education, he lived in Northern Ireland as part of the International Forgiveness Institute. In 2003, he joined the Denver Public Schools Office of Character and School Culture. He is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Denver-School of Education and has taught courses at the University of Colorado-Boulder and at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

1. Building an Intentional School Culture: Excellence in Academics and Character

The Importance of School Culture

Laneer Middle School: The Shaping of School Culture

Resource

2. The School Touchstone

Resources

3. The Four Mind-Set Model

Teachers and the Four Mind-Set Model

Students and the Four Mind-Set Model

Parents and the Four Mind-Set Model

Leadership and the Four Mind-Set Model

How to Use the Four Mind-Set Model

Resources

4. Introduction to the Eight Gateways

Teaching, Learning, and Assessment

Relationships

Problem Solving

Expectations, Trust, and Accountability

Voice

Physical Environment

Markers, Rituals, and Transitions

Leadership

Resources

5. Applying the Four Tools

Timeline: The First 36 Weeks (Year 1)

Timeline: The Second 36 Weeks (Year 2)

Pulling It All Together

Closing

References

Index

Reviews

"Many school leaders realize that a school's culture impacts everything, including the quality of relationships, staff morale, and student achievement, and most would like to know how to go about changing their school's culture in deep and lasting ways. The authors offer a powerful set of strategies for getting staff to think and work together to make their school the very best it can be. They have packed a wealth of practical wisdom into this small volume."

Tom Lickona, Director
Center for the 4th and 5th Rs

"Theoretically engaging, yet with clear and tested practical strategies for creating a positive school culture."

Alan L. Lockwood, Professor
University of Wisconsin-Madison

"The authors bring a wealth of wisdom and practical experience to a fundamental and complex challenge for schools, namely, how to understand and shepherd a positive school culture. They offer impressive creativity and true practical tools and guidance in a concise form that can be invaluable to educators."

Marvin Berkowitz, Professor of Character Education
University of Missouri-St. Louis

"It is clear that a school’s culture has an enormous impact on how well students learn and on the values they develop. This book will help principals and staff shape the kind of school culture that students deserve."

Michael F. Bennet, Superintendent
Denver Public Schools, CO

"Charles Elbot and David Fulton get it! They get how dominant a force a school’s culture is in assisting—or thwarting—the development of learning and character. They get how extraordinarily difficult it is to change a culture. But, unlike most of us, they also get how possible it is to build a desirable school culture. I see this tidy little volume as the authors' first step in sharing their inventive 'lesson plans' from their successful work as builders of school culture. When we take these lessons learned to heart, we too will get it!"

Roland Barth, Education Consultant

"Charles Elbot and David Fulton have given educators a great gift. Here is a book that is strong in both theory and practical application that can help thoughtful educators create a school culture that is energizing and life giving for all concerned."

Parker J. Palmer, Author
The Courage to Teach and A Hidden Wholeness

"From explorations of decision-making processes to school character, chapters provide plenty of practical, applied ideas especially useful for college-level education collections."

The Bookwatch, February 2008
Midwest Book Review

Other Titles in: Principalship | School Change, Reform, & Restructuring | School Culture & Climate

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This book is not available as a review copy.