Develop Your School’s Habits of Becoming

A central concept in all our work at EXPLO Elevate is that great schools strive to become Progress Cultures. Such a school nurtures the ongoing ability to reflect on and adjust to a changing world. In addition, this school also maintains an ability to reflect on and adjust to the evolving concept of how to serve students successfully without compromising what should always remain true about the school — its mission and values. 

Fundamentally, such a school does not imagine the world will reach a new normal or stasis, but rather it creates a new normal regarding how it responds to an ever-changing world. We call the habits that Progress Culture schools develop as Habits of Becoming.

The legacy of a Progress Culture is held in its ability to move closer and closer to its mission and its commitment to the young people in its charge. The skills and ways of behaving necessary to achieve this legacy are its Habits of Becoming. Central to these habits is the idea that great schools, like great learners, are forever aspirational, such places are intentionally trying to move closer to the potential of their mission and embodiment of their values. They know being great never means standing still for long. Progress Cultures don’t approach their mission as a destination but as a compass point.

I have written extensively about both Progress Culture schools and its contrast, Zombie Schools. Several years ago, I wrote this about Zombie Schools:

Zombie Schools abandon strategy for choices that look more like those of a B-movie Zombie, flailing outstretched arms and moving toward the next shiny object that captures its attention.

In many ways Zombie Schools look like their former selves—their buildings still look generally the same, possibly a bit more chipped and worn, and their admissions brochures still portray happy and engaged students doing the stuff happy and engaged students do, but in truth, survival instinct has replaced their higher purpose. They are a sort of Papier-Mache—take a peek beneath the surface and you won’t find much, certainly not cohesive curriculum, consistent, high-quality teaching, or aspirational strategy and vision. Zombie Schools think of students more as sources of revenue rather than people to be served. Thus, they lose sight of the fact that they exist to serve others, rather than the other way around. Students shift from being the alpha and omega of organizational existence to being simply the means to organizational survival.

Zombie Schools don’t have habits, thus they are reactive to whatever allows them to continue to survive. No one should want to work in such a place, and most importantly, no young person should have to go to such a school.

Here is our first take at compiling the Habits of Becoming (please send us anything you feel is missing -– we’d love to hear from you!):

1. Team processing. Progress Cultures only operate in the full best interest of students when the adults — Board, leaders, and faculty–work together to navigate the complexity of working well with young people. This must become an institutional habit rather than based simply on the preferences of an individual leader.
2. Thinking beyond silos. Related to team processing, Progress Cultures develop the habit of seeking to understand a wider view than the confines of individual, department, or divisional points of view. To operate as a healthy professional ecosystem, each part must act upon the idea of interconnectedness and a shared larger purpose.
3. Naming and celebrating what is good. Progress Cultures develop ways to name and celebrate success and progress. This is a necessary ritual in healthy school cultures, and identification of what is going well blows positive oxygen into the work of the professional community.
4. Avoiding hero and villain thinking. Progress Cultures are not too quick to simplify a complex story into the neatness of heroes and villains. The professional community in Progress Cultures is slow to judge others about whom they may know very little. This is a particular danger today when, too often, the culture around us is lightning fast to judge “the other,” and thus it is paralyzed when it seeks solutions to complex human-based issues.
5. Identifying points of view not in the room. Empathy is an identifying marker of Progress Cultures. This starts with the adults in the community. Ensuring the recognition of alternative points of view is essential and too often neglected unless it has become a habit.
6. Understanding the power of communication. Progress Cultures think of communication as a two-way street. They don’t simply think of communication as what they say to constituents. Instead, they recognize powerful communication is as much how they create opportunities to hear from constituents. 

Schools need ways to navigate our current divided moment in history. Adding to the complexity of this time is the speed at which our understanding of student learning is changing. The context in which education is occurring is fluid. More bluntly, education is experiencing its own accelerating climate change. The habits of a Progress Culture use the potential strengths of habit to ensure the school is in the best position to face whatever may come. 

Habits take practice. They are not monolithic, and once present, the school must intentionally preserve and sustain these habits through changes in the school’s leadership and personnel, as well as through remarkable changes in the world.