• A recent Expeditionary Learning leadership conference focused on school culture. More than 170 principals and teachers spent three days studying, analyzing, and experiencing elements of effective school culture. They then drafted action plans for improving a significant aspect of the culture of their own schools.
• A kindergarten through grade twelve school made a conscious effort to improve its culture. The faculty read A Culture of Quality by Ron Berger, visited exemplary EL schools, and made a presentation at the EL leadership conference. During the summer institute, while working with their school designer, teams of teachers identified weaknesses in their school's culture, reached consensus on improvement goals, and developed concrete action plans to pursue them.
• During a summer institute, a high school faculty designed new master portfolio requirements for all students. The portfolios helped build common language and common practices across the school. Every student now presents a portfolio to a real audience every year. Service to the school and community and reflections on character growth are a part of every portfolio and support core beliefs of the school community.
• Middle school students from Springfield, MA worked closely with their teachers and members of the community to develop a set of character traits that they were ready to live by. What made this process unusual and more powerful was the high level of student involvement through out the process. Over a 3 week period students met in small groups with a member of the community to discuss how to be their best selves with each other. They started by discussing specific questions such as what would look like to resolve conflicts peacefully? What would it look like to respect each other and ourselves? And, what would it look like to believe in ourselves? Each small group of students was facilitated by a teacher or community member and over the course of 4 sessions crafted with the support, on site coaching and experience of Expeditionary Learning staff, some the thoughts on these questions were turned into a document that outlined 6 character traits that the students, teachers, and the involved community members could believe in. To gain parental involvement and to further increase the investment from students, each student invited family members to a formal signing ceremony. At the ceremony, students came up to a table in front of the seated guests and stated one behavior that they would commit to in order to live up to these character traits more fully. After offering this personal statement, the student then signed 2 poster-sized copies of the character traits, which were then framed and hung in the middle school classrooms.
