We know that we can no longer work in isolation to meet the needs of our students. We need to be able to work together in order to plan for instruction, create engaging lessons, and to determine how to support all of our students. The movement from working in isolation to collaboration can be rather challenging. It means becoming vulnerable with your colleagues so that you can have honest conversations about your teaching practices. The thought of sharing your truth with others and sharing that you may be struggling with implementing a teaching strategy or that your students are not responding to your instruction can be overwhelming. We can play it safe and do what we have always have done in our classrooms. It is comfortable and often staying comfortable is what we like to do. However, staying comfortable means that we aren't growing and if we aren't growing our students aren't growing.
Unfortunately, we know that teaching and learning can be an isolating endeavor. Dan Lortie (1975) in his seminal work writes about the difficulty teachers have in changing their practices. He states that because teacher collaboration does not always play a role in teachers work that teaching can become isolating and individualistic. Professional learning communities were created partially to remove the isolation and individualism that exists for teachers in our schools. The very nature of professional learning communities requires teachers to belong to a community. Teaching should not be isolating and individualistic, with teachers repeating the same practices and lessons year after year that do not meet the needs of students.
One of the keys to schools becoming learning communities is the amount of social capital that is built between the members of the learning community. The concept of social capital was introduced by L.J. Hanifan (1916) to describe how schools in rural areas can be used as community centers. Hanifan alludes to the fact that individuals who are isolated end up helpless socially and that everyone has a desire to be part of a larger group, to satisfy one’s social needs. James Coleman (1998) describes several forms of social capital: obligations, expectations, and trustworthiness which is the idea that there is trust that obligations will be repaid; information channels where information can be acquired by use of social relations; norms and effective sanctions where individuals put the interests of the group before their own self interests. Don Cohen and Laurence Prusak (2001) define the concept this way “social capital bridges the space between people”. Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan (2012) describe social capital in schools as the quality of the relationships an individual has with their colleagues and how that relationships influences expectations, trust, increasing one’s own knowledge.
It is abundantly clear that building relationships with other educators has an impact on the individual and organization. Bo Rothstein (2005) states that the amount of social capital in an organization is determined by the amount of the social networks that the individuals of an organization have and the degree to which the individuals trust their contacts. Everyone in the organization is responsible for creating the connections necessary for high levels of social capital.
Principals need to create an environment where teachers can connect with one another and talk about practices and where teachers have a voice and can participate in the decision making process around instructional practices and strategies that should be implemented. Principals, also need to develop a culture where collaboration and relational trust are the norm. This appears to be the crux of a principal’s work, which is to lead the teachers in the ability to work together and put the interests of the group before their own self-interest. As a principal I constantly think about the importance of building relationships. I need to create the conditions for teachers to be vulnerable, to be honest, to build relationships with one another, and to create that strong social network. I also need to look for ways that I can support teachers as they work together to ensure that students are learning and growing.
In the recent reading I have been doing the idea of building relationships and relational trust have been jumping out at me.
"As leaders in education, our job is not to control those whom we serve but to unleash their talent. If innovation is going to be a priority in education, we need to create a culture where trust is the norm." - George Cuoros, The Innovator's Mindset: Empowering Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity.
"If we're truly concerned with doing what is best for kids, we must get out of our isolation and connect with others - in and out of our profession." Todd Nesloney and Adam Welcome, Kids Deserve It: Pushing Boundaries and Challenging Conventional Thinking.
"Great principals never forget that it is people, not programs, who determine the quality of a school" Todd Whitaker, What Great Principals Differently: 18 Things That Matter Most.
"Educators, like any other professionals, need peer-to-peer interactions and reciprocal investments in order to grow and develop" Todd Whitaker, Jeffrey Zoul, and Jimmy Casas, What Connected Educators Do Differently.
Relationships can make or break the culture of a building. They influence how teachers work together, how they co-create, how they learn from one another. I urge you to spend time cultivating relationships, get to know the students and teachers in your building, understand their passions. Leaders need to support their teachers, provide space and autonomy for them to create, and celebrate their risk taking. Without strong connections, that social capital, it is hard to move a school forward. Cultivating relationships and building social networks should be the focus of our work if we want to truly impact students. 