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