Building a culture of success Mark Wilson

most every day I’m with principals

assistant principals and people who want

to be administrators and everyone wants

the same thing a successful school they

want their students to be successful

their teachers to be successful but how

do you go about this how do you have a

successful school there are so many

mandates with which we must comply and

we have to comply with them but that’s

not the end of it we have to go beyond

that we have to go into performance we

have to go into excellence we have to

build an environment of success if you

want a successful school there’s so many

different pieces you could do as an

administrator but I would suggest start

with culture a culture of success begins

with defining what culture is cultures

the beliefs and priorities that drive

the thoughts and actions of the people

at the school and the school

administrator is the proprietor the

spokesperson the keeper of those

thoughts and beliefs he says what they

are she does things that show people

what they are and eventually you hear

the echoes of your words in the hall you

see people carrying out the thoughts and

actions of the school and you’ve built a

culture so how do you go about this

success is measured in a lot of

different ways it’s often measured in

quantifiable pieces with graduation rate

students in advanced courses students

who are doing well in advanced courses

in college placement scores at our

school we had explosive growth in all of

those areas but we didn’t start

exclusively focusing on those areas we

had hundreds of people who visited our

school and I wanted to come and find a

nugget that they could take back and

they could do this particular action and

that could be successful at their school

but it wasn’t about what it was about

how we were doing what we were doing it

was about why we were doing what we were

doing it was about culture so to build a

culture of success you need to have a

vision what is it that you’re seeking to

do as a school you need to have unity

has to be a coming together a

collaboration a vision of one person is

just that and there has to be

empowerment people have to be able to do

people have to be able to act those

pieces together they create a special

culture of any organization but

particularly at a school I would suggest

that the people of the school the

residents the stakeholders have to come

together they have to answer a certain

set of questions beginning with Who am I

because each individual has something to

bring to the school collectively the

group has to answer who are we and once

those are answered you can move to those

next questions which are really critical

what is it that we wish to be and why

and how do we become what we wish to be

at our school we determine what we

wanted to be we determined that we

wanted to be a place of student success

and we focused on three Dublin’s what

they know what they’re able to do and

what kind of people they’re growing to

be that approach gave our school a

significant focus on students in what

they were doing it came together also

with the vision a piece of unity and it

was in two words one Morgan as Morgan

County High School one Morgan was more

than a motto it was a way of life

one Morgan not only meant coming

together as one but it also meant that

the one individual one person is very

important their hopes their dreams their

aspirations the things that they’re good

at they matter and they’re exceptional

with vision and unity we add empowerment

and empowerment as Daniel Paint mentions

in his book Drive is that piece of

motivation that really helps people be

very successful in what they do when

people have purpose and you give them

autonomy they’ll work toward mastery and

that’s what happened at our school we

had a genuine coming together of people

who had a purpose of this one Morgan of

people had a vision success not just in

one format or one pursuit but many

because of our focus on empowerment our

students and teachers were able to do

amazing things

they were may have able to do

extraordinary things we were a very

ordinary place a very normal school of a

thousand students 50% on free and

reduced lunch

12% special-needs students but we did

amazing extraordinary things because

people had the opportunity to do those

things we build a skatepark we started a

drive that went national where we wrote

25,000 handwritten letters all in one

day to support dashain muscular

dystrophy research we started a program

for English language learners to support

them in their efforts on a daily basis

every year we raise thousands of dollars

to be able to take community children to

shop at Christmas time both for

themselves and for their family members

we had a mock Congress which taught our

students not just by reading about it

but doing about it on a three day basis

culminating a whole semester of study

learning bills and learning to argue

about things which really came in handy

when we had the opportunity to lobby our

actual state legislature to pass a bill

called Caleb’s law which made it illegal

for anyone in the state of Georgia to

text while driving our students had the

power to act our teachers empowered them

and because of this we did amazing

things at our school including this

which is an example of the extraordinary

things that can happen when people come

together with a common vision in unity I

was at the tennis courts one afternoon

and two students Tyler and Jerry had

walked up to me and they said doc you

got something we want to talk to you

about said sure they said - you know

Nick Walker and I said sure I know Nick

Walker they said he’s one of the best

kids we have at school I’m gonna said

yeah we got a lot of good kids

they said doc do you know he holds the

door open for everybody at lunch every

day at school

I said yeah Nick is great they said we

want to do something special for Nick we

want everybody to know what he means to

our school and I said what do you want

to do and Tyler and Jared said we want

to have an assembly we want to bring all

the students to the school together and

all the tea

and we want to give him a plaque in

front of everyone our school is kind of

place where that wasn’t so unusual so we

called an assembly no one knew what it

was for only a few people and when we

gather together the cheerleaders went up

into the stands and they got Nick and

brought him down to the floor and the

football players made a tunnel and Nick

was walked through the tunnel to the end

of the gym and there at the end of the

gym was a big chair a throne because

Nick was king for the day as he sat in

the chair people came up one at a time

there were songs there were testimonials

people talking about what Nick meant to

our school and the head dietitian mr.

Ronda grabbed the microphone and she

said Nick everybody knows you hold the

door up and every day for people to come

in but what they don’t know is before

you do that you come back in the kitchen

where our ladies are cooking for

everyone and you know every one of the

lunch ladies buy me and you know their

children’s names and you ask about him

and you tell him how pretty they look

that day then Nick’s teacher grabbed a

microphone miss Holloway and she did the

most powerful thing I saw in 25 years of

education she said if Nick has given you

a compliment this year would you stand

up we had a thousand students and 120

staff members in there and nearly

everybody in the room stood because of

one person who made such a big

difference at our school

one morgen a culture of success brought

together by this vision of what Student

Success really looked like

well we concluded the ceremony Tyler and

Jared read their plaque in it read to

Nick Walker mr. Morgan County for

showing all of the students and teachers

here how we should treat each other its

success it’s not a test score but we did

well on all the test scores because we

focused on the big pieces first we came

together with a vision we empowered

people to act and we had success

Thanks