Climate and Culture: The Adaptive Challenge of Improving Mutual Respect, Trust and Communication in a K-8 setting with Fluid Staff Movement

Amber Cronin • Cahn Fellow 2020

This project and narrative that follow set out to uncover school-based leadership moves and traits that would result in an improvement of the teacher’s perception of a school’s climate and culture, with an intentional focus in the areas of mutual respect, trust, and comfortability in raising issues to school leadership. The initial data captured from an anonymous survey taken by teachers in Spring of 2020  provided findings that alerted leadership that immediate reflection, probing, and insight into intrinsic traits and interactions were necessary to improve the perception of the instructional staff. The intentional moves leadership has made over the past year in the Cahn Fellows experience, and even prior to (in the past year and a half), are reflected in this body of work, in addition to pre and post data captured. Through this research and exploration, we believe more questions have been uncovered than those answered, which have provided an interesting lens, and perhaps additional studies, specifically around what experiences, other than leadership moves, can cause changes in perceptions in the areas of a school’s climate and culture, focusing on mutual respect, trust, and comfortability in raising issues to school leadership.