Schools are interesting organizations, to say the least. They may vary in leadership structures and governance policies, but they all contain the same core groups of constituents: students, parents, faculty and staff members, administrators, board members, and donors.
Of these groups, which is most critical for the success of the school? While a compelling case could be made for each one of them, I have come to believe that the answer is faculty. Faculty are the front line workers and first responders of the school. They are not only expected to interface with school customers (parents) on a regular basis. They are responsible for facilitating the day-to-day service (curriculum and instruction) of the organization. In short, their role is indispensable for the success of the school.
For this reason, it is crucial for school leaders to recruit, retain, and professionally develop their teachers. And while factors like compensation, workload, and administrative support are important, I contend that it is the faculty culture that is most pivotal for the overall flourishing of individual faculty members. In this blog, I will offer some ideas regarding what makes for a strong faculty culture and conclude with questions administrators can ask themselves as they seek to lead the faculty culture in the right direction.
A Positive Work Culture
Recently I was speaking with a friend of mine who works for a financial services company. His job is to help people manage their money prudently and effectively. In our conversation, he shared that his company consistently ranks nationally as a place where employees love to work. Having now worked for the company himself for about a year, he could confirm the positive report personally.
I pressed my friend on the secret to his employer’s success in this area, and his response was simple: culture. The culture of the company, he observed, was supportive, encouraging, and full of integrity. It therefore provided a place where employees loved to work. When describing the company, my friend shared that the financial advisors are trained to always do what is in the best interest of the client. Additionally, each advisor is valued and therefore equipped and empowered to excel at their jobs. Leadership ensures that each employee is reaching their full potential. These factors combined contributed to a strong work culture in which employees were happy, fulfilled, and committed to doing as best they could for the company.
The Wells Fargo Scandal
What my friend shared may sound like common sense when it comes to company culture, but it is rarer and harder to achieve than it sounds. Consider what happened with the Wells Fargo account fraud scandal in 2018 as a counter-example. The New York Times reports:
“From 2002 to 2016, employees used fraud to meet impossible sales goals. They opened millions of accounts in customers’ names without their knowledge, signed unwitting account holders up for credit cards and bill payment programs, created fake personal identification numbers, forged signatures and even secretly transferred customers’ money.
In court papers, prosecutors described a pressure-cooker environment at the bank, where low-level employees were squeezed tighter and tighter each year by sales goals that senior executives methodically raised, ignoring signs that they were unrealistic. The few employees and managers who did meet sales goals — by any means — were held up as examples for the rest of the work force to follow.”
Can you hear the difference? At my friend’s company, the needs of the customer are always put first. At Wells Fargo, serving customers became a means to an end. As a result, employees began to cut corners, going so far as to create fraudulent accounts in order to make more money. But it was not even merely about the money. The management of the company became so constrictive that employees felt that the only way to meet their sales goals, and keep their jobs, was to lie, cheat, and steal.
In contrast to a culture marked by support, encouragement, and integrity, this culture had become toxic. It became marked by high demands, no support, unrealistic expectations, and a vacuum of values.
School as a Service Industry
While schools and financial service companies are very different industries (to state the obvious), I do think there are insights here we can glean as we seek to build a strong faculty culture.
For example, it can be helpful as a thought exercise to think about school as a service industry. Classical schools exist to shape and develop students into particular types of people. This service is performed at a price agreed upon between school and family called tuition. At the end of the day, parents with children enrolled at our schools are looking to see evidence that their children are growing.
One important way schools can increase the quality of this service is by being very specific about the ways in which our school programs are helping students grow. At Christian, classical schools, growth is not only measured by academic output. There is more to being human than cognitive firepower. Teachers at our schools are helping students grow holistically–in mind, yes, but also in virtue and wisdom, in body and soul. We need to keep putting this vision before teachers and parents, educating them in the “service” we provide. To do so most effectively, I have learned, requires a robust philosophy of our students, viewing them as persons made in God’s image.
It is also important to let core values guide the school’s approach to instruction. In the Wells Fargo example, the work culture’s decline merely followed the path of its lack of values. Employes were given unrealistic goals and harsh threats, prompting many of them to cut corners by creating artificial accounts to meet deadlines. Values of honesty, integrity, and humility were replaced by a Darwinian survival of the fittest mentality. It was only a matter of time before a collapse would occur.
At our schools, we need to lead with our core values. What do we care most about? What are we measuring? Regardless of outcomes, what approach to work are we committed to? These are the questions school leaders need to ask in order to build a strong and healthy faculty culture.
Reforming the Formers
Of course, there are limitations to thinking about school as a service industry or as a company. The purpose of a school, after all, is not to maximize profit, but to achieve the mission of the school. And in order to achieve an organizational mission, we need to help teachers understand the role they play in this mission.
In You Are What You Love (Brazos Press, 2016), James K.A. Smith proposes that teachers should be thought of as “formers.” His general thesis of the book is that humans are, in essence, embodied affective creatures. That is, we are lovers who are shaped over time by what we do.
Education, in light of this view of humans, is not primarily a project of knowledge-transfer, but in love formation. Teachers are not primarily instructors, lecturers, or information disseminators. They are formers and shapers, leading students in a process to become particular types of people. In the classical tradition, this vision is rooted in virtue. We seek to grow and help our students grow in virtues, that is, the objective moral ideals that God has woven into the very fabric of the universe.
Smith writes,
“Since education is a formative project, aimed at the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, then the teacher is a steward of transcendence who needs to not only know the Good but also to teach from that conviction. The teacher of virtue will not apologize for seeking to apprentice students to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. But she will also run up against the scariest aspect of this: that virtue is often absorbed from exemplars” (159).
Smith goes on to offer four communal practices for reforming the formers at our schools: eating, praying, singing, and thinking and reading together. While these practices are not directly related to teaching per se, they are doing something even more important: creating a culture. By taking time to eat together, worship the Lord, and grow in understanding, schools communicate to teachers that they care more about bottom-line outcomes. They care about all constituents of the school growing as persons, including faculty. This emphasis, more than anything else, is what is going to shape a strong faculty culture for years to come.
Questions for Continuing the Conversation
As school leaders seek to build a strong faculty culture in their schools, they need to consider how they can best shape, support, and encourage each faculty member. Instead of pressuring teachers with unrealistic goals guided by a “win-at-all-costs” mentality, school leaders need to lead with core values, provide strong support, and make time for practices oriented toward helping teachers grow themselves as humans in wisdom and virtue.
To this end, here are some closing questions I pose to school leaders as they think about faculty culture:
- Are the goals and benchmarks we set for teachers specific and realistic?
- Are we providing appropriate support for them to reach these goals?
- Are we taking time to celebrate victories as a faculty?
- How are we showing that each employee at the school is valued?
- Are we cultivating a faculty culture in which every decision is made in the best interest of the student (without being child-centered)?
- How are we appropriately (and inappropriately) incentivizing faculty members?
May God guide and strengthen you as an educator as you seek to not only achieve particular organizational outcomes, but contribute to a culture that is growth-oriented, teacher-supportive, and ultimately, a small taste of the coming kingdom of God.
