School Culture, School Climate: They are Not the Same Thing
By Steve Gruenert
Sheila Remington
The article starts off by defining climate and culture. Basically, the current definition of climate is the organization’s attitude. Simply, it is the set of beliefs that a group has accumulated over time and will pass on to new members of the group. Districts need to pay attention to both their climate and culture. If a district has a good climate, it implies that the teachers are happy and doing a better job than if they were not happy. Districts struggle when the climate is not good and many times try to increase their climate by providing a reward such as donuts on Fridays. This does not increase the climate. Culture is just as important to a healthy district. The main reason to pay attention to the culture of a district is to make sure that new teachers, as they become infused with the district, have an opportunity to apply the strategies that they have been studying for the past four years. Too often, a new teacher feels pressured to do “what has always been done” in that district. They may not have enough confidence or prior experience to go against the norm of the district. The article states that it is much more difficult to change he district’s climate than its culture.
Although these two words have distinct definitions, they are related. The article authors must think teachers eat donuts all the time, since they do great examples with them throughout the article. But, essentially, if a principal is trying to improve the district’s climate by bringing them donuts every Friday, then donuts on Friday becomes the expectation, and therefore becomes part of the culture. If the principal decides to skip donuts on a Friday, and that has potential to change the climate may change.
The article goes on to explain that these two terms are conceptual. I really liked that that the article stated that how the district handles successes and failures of students is really based on that districts culture. Lastly, because culture is ingrained in everything that you do, it takes years of adjusting climate to change the culture.
The article states that districts wanting to change their culture need to assess their climate. For districts with an ineffective culture, they need to figure out the climate issues that were present before they became part of the culture.
At first glance, this article seems to be a simple definition of these two words. Yet, I really gained a lot of information and have a new regard for the impact that climate and culture have on a district. This article made me laugh at the use of donuts in the examples provided. It brought back memories of a district that I was in that did the In-Service donuts and then decided everyone needed to start eating healthy, so they provided whole wheat bagels and fresh fruit to the meetings. Too many teachers spent an unbelievable amount of time and energy on this one decision.