Schools bring together students and pupils from different cultural backgrounds. Culture is a demographic characteristic distributed across a population based on tribes. Upon considering Navarre Primary School (a hypothetical school) as an institution that brings together children from different tribes, the existence of cultural diversities in the school is evident.
Culture is the fundamental building block for any environment such as a school that harbors different people with common aims, objectives, and goals. For the achievement of common goals and objectives in an institution that has different demographically distinct people, organization theory proposes the creation of a common organizational culture that is driven by the desired vision and mission (Kouzes & Posner, 2007, p.37).
Navarre Primary School has made strategic initiatives of transcending from an organization that educates people from different traditional backgrounds to an institution with a unique tradition guided by the vision of productive leadership. This leadership is defined by common ritual, commitment to the institution’s objectives, common purpose, and collective motivation of all people irrespective of their cultural differences (Deal & Peterson, 2009, p.13). This strategy is an effort to reduce multiple cultures into one culture.
The core aim of Navarre Primary School is to deploy all synergies available to yield success for its students. Achievement of this noble aim with perfection requires the school to operate as a cohesive unit where everyone’s energy is directed towards students’ success. Parties constituting both internal and external school environment such as teachers, parents, non-teaching staff, students, and the school’s administration including the PTA must keep aside individual interests and affiliations to build a coherent unit. Unfortunately, the motivation of different people has individual and diversity differences and affiliations as its essential components (Kouzes & Posner, 2007).
Deal and Peterson (2009) reveal that schools need to have stories describing their existence. If there is failure to have this plan in place, the authors suggest, “People become fragmented and find refuge in subgroups, bureaucratic routines and minutiae, or toxicity” (Deal & Peterson, 2009, p.60). Hence, schools such as Navarre Primary School are not cohesive units where everyone’s energy is directed towards students’ success.
Organizations’ visions and missions are driven by norms, beliefs, and assumptions (Deal & Peterson, 2009, p.58). The school under scrutiny assumes and believes that learning from the past failure stories can establish a strong foundation of continuous success. It has normalized this approach to future success to the extent that all performance standards are based on the ability to surpass past performances. Deal and Peterson (2009) support this approach to success by claiming, “In reality, visions emerge serendipitously from experience” (p.59). However, the environment for operation of schools keeps on changing due to the changing learning-enhancing tools such as technology (Louis, 2006, p.169). Technology is dynamic. Hence, it is significant to change the norm that success can always be achieved by learning about past mistakes.
Organizations are different based on diverse differentiation criteria. For example, different rituals and ceremonies make a school different from any other in a district. According to Deal and Peterson, students and teachers “bring their personal problems, conflicts, hopes, and dreams to the classroom” (2009, p.91). Thus, in any school, including Navarre Primary School, moments are taken during normal teachers’ meetings and classroom learning processes to address this challenge.
The manner in which this ritual is performed is different depending on the person performing it akin to the personality and group cohesion skills possessed by different people. Before any learning starts, teachers deploy different strategies to execute the most important ceremony in a classroom. They orient the students to the mood of learning depending on the subject matter scheduled to be taught together with the desired outcome at the end of the lesson. Again, this ability is diverse depending on the personality and leadership traits of different teachers. Hence, no two teachers are unable to attain similar outcomes in terms of performance. Consequently, no two schools in the same district can be the same.
The history of Navarre Primary School is built on the platforms of emulating good performance standards showcased in the past. Hence, a good performance that is beyond the set standards of the past is the driving story for continued success of the school that is told and put in practice by all teaching staff members. Such stories are important since they help to demonstrate the desired destination of the school and/or build a coherent motivation in the whole of Navarre Primary School. Stories are important for this school since “they tickle the fancy, warm the heart, and say a lot about what the school really means” (Deal & Peterson, 2009, p.72). Schooling at Navarre Primary School means a commitment to build the successes story.
All organizations operate under different architectural designs and artifacts. In a school setting, symbols act as essential architectural forms that are representative of the school’s culture (Deal & Peterson, 2009, p.33). At Navarre Primary School, architectural forms are made up of teachers who play central roles in shaping the culture of the school by placing emphasis on different routines and compliance to the set standards of discipline in different magnitudes depending on the capabilities of different teachers to portray assertiveness. Such differences are the measures of different artifacts (Kouzes & Posner, 2007, p.67).
Since the artifacts and architects for Navarre are the representatives of different people (teachers) who have different personalities and abilities, the artifacts and architectural aspects are not similar to those showcased in other schools.
Reference List
Deal, T., & Peterson, K. (2009). Shaping School Culture: Pitfalls, Paradoxes, and Promises. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Kouzes, J., & Posner, B. (2007). The Leadership challenge. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Louis, K. (2006). Change over time? An introduction? A reflection? Educational Administration Quarterly, 42(1), 165-173.