{"id":4878,"date":"2018-05-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/the-culture-code-creating-a-culture-for-competency-based-schools-part-1\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T13:05:10","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T18:05:10","slug":"the-culture-code-creating-a-culture-for-competency-based-schools-part-1","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/the-culture-code-creating-a-culture-for-competency-based-schools-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Culture Code: Creating a Culture for Competency-Based Schools (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Los Angeles Lakers vs. San Antonio Spurs, Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is the second book in the series Conversations with Authors About Competency-Based Education.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Earlier this year, a collaborative process of practitioners developed a description of what every student should experience in a personalized, competency-based school (See What Will Students Experience in a Competency-Based School?<\/a>) The second item in this list of ten is:<\/p>\n

I feel safe and am willing to put forward my best effort to take on challenging knowledge and skills because I have a deep sense of belonging, feel that my culture, the culture of my community and my voice is valued, and see on a daily basis that everyone in the school is committed to my learning.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking a lot and talking to people a lot about what it means to have everyone, students and adults, feel safe and that they belong. The learning sciences inform us that one can\u2019t separate out cognition from emotion: Feeling safe is an important condition for anyone to make themselves vulnerable to seek and accept help, take risks, and put out extra effort knowing that they might fail. This is one of the reasons that has convinced me that culture is critical and that the school and classroom culture needed to make competency education work is substantially different than that described as the culture needed for high achieving traditional schools. In fact, creating a culture of learning, inclusivity, and empowerment is identified as a principle for equity as well as quality<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I stumbled upon a book, The Culture Code<\/a>, by Daniel Coyle that has been eye- and heart-opening about what it takes to create a culture of safety. It\u2019s a super quick read but I\u2019ll highlight the core messages of the book here for you. His thesis is that high-performing culture can be created through three skills: 1) Building Safety; 2) Sharing Vulnerability; and 3) Establishing Purpose.<\/p>\n

He opens the book with a story of how kindergartners outperform CEOs and other professionals in building a structure with a marshmallow, spaghetti, and tape. He then adds that a study of 200+ companies showed that a strong culture increases net income 765% over 10 years. Which of course made me wonder: Would research show us that a strong culture of learning, inclusivity, and empowerment leads to gains in student achievement?<\/em> (We have to leave open that the way CompetencyWorks has defined, with the help of practitioners, the features of culture might not be quite right. There may be other features that would be important).<\/p>\n

Building Safety<\/strong><\/p>\n

I tend to think of creating safety as combinations of rituals, relationships, and policies. Coyle makes it clear that there is much more to creating a sense of safety. We are highly social creatures, continuously sending out and seeking \u201cbelonging cues\u201d (I would have appreciated a discussion on exclusionary or isolating cues, as well). He describes the way leaders create a sense of safety and belonging as behaviors that \u201ccreate safe connection in groups. They include, among others, proximity, eye contact, energy, mimicry, turn-taking, attention, body language, vocal pitch, consistency of emphasis, and whether everyone talks to everyone else in the group… Their function is to answer the ancient, ever present questions glowing in our brains: Are we safe here? What\u2019s our future with these people? Are there dangers lurking?\u201d<\/p>\n

Belonging cues that send out the message that you are safe here have three qualities:<\/p>\n