My plunge into Professional Learning Communities reminded me of some insightful comments by Shane Hipps, a former advertising mind for Porsche turned pastor in Phoenix, Arizona. Hipps spoke about authentic Christian community, but the principles and dynamics apply very closely to schools.
Via the video, authentic community depends on four critical components:
Shared history – Who we are together is defined by where we have been and what we have done together.
Proximity – This is the together part of shared history, but it’s not limited to spatial proximity. The factors of time and attention must also be included to add up to significant proximity.
Permanence – Longevity of the school building is not enough to nurture community. A core group of members must remain over a long enough period of time to build a tradition from shared beliefs and values.
Shared imagination of the future – It’s really challenging to get teachers to stay at a school, or even keep them in the profession. Engaging in open, sustained conversation about personal purpose and beliefs can lead a group of teachers to discover common traits in what they hope to do where they hope to go in their professional lives.
This certainly isn’t the only way to slice and dice community, but I think these four factors sum up the challenge for schools pretty clearly. If your school isn’t developing each of these traits continuously, then your community is like a shaky chair with wobbly legs.
Hi, Joel.
Thought I’d continue the conversation here, where we’ve a bit more space. At this point, I’m not convinced that the points above are more than a starting point for considering what might create community at schools. I am particularly cautious of shared history and permanence, though it is the first that sets my spider sense tingling. I’m going to try to tease out why I think this is the case, and maybe I’m not interpreting it the way Shane meant. But, schools are a cultural mix of a school’s location (hence demographic), the profession of teaching itself, a school’s particular traditions/mission (if it has ones) — in a group of people that frequently changes (and I’m not necessarily talking about turn-over here, but simply the fact that teachers change grades/responsibilities with more frequency than other jobs). So…community has to come from something other than shared history — b/c the people there are not necessarily a constant, or in constant positions. Nor, for the sake of education, should they be. This is an environment that needs to be sensitive to change. So I’m not sure that shared history in the sense of a core of people that have remained at an institution and define its community for newcomers is either realistic or desirable. Instead, I tend to think schools are better served by having missions, a defined approach, a set of rituals/traditions — both tangible, practicable behaviors working in tandem with intangible, message-based culture.
Now, I do think such an environment only flourishes when some aspect of core administration is fairly permanent — in fact, that’s one of the things I looked for when I visited schools for my kids — how frequent principal and vice-principal turn-over was, how long staff had stayed there. But I wasn’t so concerned that teachers had been affiliated with a particular institution IF it seemed that administration was firmly set. Then, newcomers enter in the community in a rather natural way, similar to how we become members of any new cultural group.
I would agree that proximity is a big deal with successful schools, but this is one that is played with a lot politically. At least that seems to be the case in public schools. My county (alachua, florida) had the tendency to create magnet/charters in low-income districts…this has the positive effect of increasing test scores, hence income, for schools more evenly, despite the tax base of a particular place. I like that fact that it mixes demographics, since this kind of diversity is important to me as a parent (it’s been made excruciatingly clear to me that not all parents find this attractive) — but I also believe that location does imbue a school with a sense of identity, and if administration is good, a sense of pride in that place as well. My kids’ school (which is out of zone for us) has community meetings that are called “the Stephen Foster” community/neighborhood — in other words, the area defines themselves at least partly by the public school operating in its midst. I think this is awesome, and it’s one of the aspects I really like.
The last aspect I definitely agree with! This is the aspect of “mission” or “goal” — that a school define itself and think of itself in a certain way. This also helps new teachers find their footing, gives more experienced teachers a platform from which to mentor, and encourages innovation in response to the “group think” mentality which is the dark side of community identity.