We were fortunate recently to have Chris Kelly, retired superintendent of Vancouver School District, visit our school for a day. The purpose of Chris' visit was to help guide us in our continued work on school culture. Chris' insights and thoughts have been helpful in guiding our directions for next year.
Two key ideas have emerged in relation to our on-going efforts for developing our school culture. One is the notion of belonging. This is the act of ensuring that students (and other members of our school community) are genuinely and caringly included in our school, and those who promote this should be recognized for their contributions. The work we have been doing over the past few years has focused on the centrality of the learner and ensuring a sense of belonging really allows us to fine tune this. Secondly, Chris has given us a new insight into the notion of leadership that moves away from formal or defined leadership. He defines leadership as "the act of taking personal responsibility for the quality of others' experience". These intentional acts to foster belonging and care for others are foundational to the kind of culture we continue to strive for in our school.
With these ideas in mind it becomes an exciting prospect to move forward into the next school year with some lofty ideals to work towards. We have always supported the notion of internal control and decision making for our students. If we can now get them to think about the relationship of their actions on another individual as well as the broader community we will have achieved something amazing.
Stay tuned as we further develop our thinking on these ideas.
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