Four Ways to Prioritize School Culture & Instruction From the Start

As school leaders, we often stress to our teachers and staff that the first days and weeks of school should be used as a time to build community, set expectations, and truly get to know students.

And this makes sense. The routines, community building, and relationships that are formed in the early weeks of school are all in service of an equally important aspect: rich and meaningful content-area learning. Prioritizing both school culture actions and high-quality instruction isn’t a question of “either/or”—it’s a question of balancing both. We’ve outlined four ways that you can maintain that balance right now and throughout the year. 

Prioritizing both school culture actions and high-quality instruction isn’t a question of “either/or”—it’s a question of balancing both.

Define and promote active learning 

It’s normal to want to dive into schoolwork and instruction at the beginning of the year. After all, we all know how quickly time moves! Prioritizing active learning—where students are encouraged to use critical thinking or display curiosity about what’s being taught instead of passively consuming information—is a great way to combine school culture and instruction. 

Prioritizing active learning—where students are encouraged to use critical thinking or display curiosity about what’s being taught instead of passively consuming information or demonstrating recall—is a great way to combine school culture and instruction. 

This example from teacher and program advisor Michael Niehoff illuminates what can happen when you focus on active learning at the school’s start. He and his fellow teachers embarked on a “SmartStart” at their high school: a series of lessons, challenges, and activities that still prioritized learning, but didn’t immediately concentrate on academics.

Niehoff and his colleagues had a hunch that if they focused on “anything but academics” to start the school year—such as culture, opportunity, relationships, and the “why” behind school—”we may actually produce a more academically successful student and school year,” he explained. Many other schools have followed this lead, planning schoolwide design challenges, learning expeditions, and service-learning experiences with the idea to emphasize everything but academics to build the skills and culture conducive to academics. 

While this example might not be easy to implement in all schools, it’s an important point. Even if students aren’t immediately engaged in academic learning the first week of the year, but they’re engaged in meaningful and relevant learning activities, they’re gaining skills that will create a higher level of success in the classroom when those academic lessons do begin. 

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Find ways for students to practice academic skills

Similar to reframing the definition of “learning activities,” encourage your teachers to weave school culture practices into their classroom teachings. For example, let’s say one of the tenets of your school culture is to “know every student.” Is there a way that critical thinking, speaking, and listening skills can be used in the activities that make it possible to know every student?

In this example from literacy consultant Chandra Shaw, she uses the “Getting to Know You” survey teachers often give to their students at the beginning of the year as a learning opportunity. In this activity, teachers come up with a list of basic, probing questions, place these questions on cards on classroom tables, and ask students to use the cards to interview each other—making sure they respond in complete sentences and ask clarifying questions. 

This simple activity not only helps students build relationships with one another and their teacher (and you as well, if you’re popping into classrooms during this time!) but it also allows students to practice their social and academic speaking, equally important skills.

As a school leader, you probably won’t be helping to facilitate these kinds of activities in classrooms, but you can support this kind of thinking and planning by making this a part of your teachers’ beginning-of-year priorities. And repeatedly name (or over-communicate) with your staff that community and instruction are not at odds with each other. They both drive student success.

Strengthen school routines to maximize learning

Strategy and content are two pieces of the puzzle when it comes to student learning—and another piece is the routines we use to ensure students are truly able to retain what they learn. 

Consider this example: In one third-grade classroom, you might see a teacher spending 10 minutes explaining what students will do at each of the learning stations they’ve put together. The instructions didn’t start until five minutes after students returned from recess, the tasks were all ones that students hadn’t done before, and when the students went to the learning stations, some of the students needed help or reinforcement of the tasks. Pretty soon, 20 minutes have gone by.

In another class, the teacher immediately went into action upon students returning from recess. She reminded them of the tasks—all of which the students had done before. Any students who didn’t understand were encouraged to ask a friend for help first. The students were engaged in learning within two minutes of entering the room. 

The difference in these two scenarios comes down to routines—and keeping them consistent. Changing routines often can get confusing for students, and it also creates less instructional time, so collaborate with your teachers to focus on changing the content of their lessons rather than changing the ways that content is delivered. 

Working with your teachers and staff to create predictable, efficient routines can optimize that much-needed instructional time. 

This is also a good reminder that as school leaders, you can help to optimize schoolwide routines, too. Working with your teachers and staff to create predictable, efficient routines—pick up and drop off, lunch and recess, and even the timing that goes into planning all-school assemblies and other activities—can optimize that much-needed instructional time. 

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Protect teacher planning time—and make it collaborative

School culture isn’t something you work on only for students—it’s something you continue to enhance and build on for the adults in the building, too. When it comes to your teachers, nothing demonstrates a culture of “we value you and your expertise” better than making the commitment to protect their time, especially when it comes to instructional planning. 

What does this have to do with school culture? Well, several surveys have been done on the topic of planning and collaboration time among teachers in recent years, and all the surveys indicate that teachers consistently identify more planning and collaboration time as one of the top features that would support both teacher retention and job satisfaction. And, the more planning time a teacher has, the more they’re able to maximize instructional time when it’s happening, too.

Consider all the ways you can help aid in this process. Are there communications you can streamline? Scheduling shifts and changes that can free up a period? Resources that can be used when last-minute staffing changes occur? Because when teachers have the time they need to work together, they’re able to give deep thought to what matters most—classroom practices, adjusting instruction, and building relationships with their students. 

Getting the balance right

We know that the actions that you take to introduce and shape school culture in the first month of school will set the tone for the rest of the year, and it’s critical to get it right. However, it’s not a case of one over the other when it comes to prioritizing school culture and instructional strategies. It’s about balancing both—and making sure your culture aligns with instruction, and vice versa. 

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