Transforming School Culture: Creating a Powerful Learning Environment Where All Students Thrive With the Urban Excellence Framework

• In Event: Roundtable Session 10
  In Roundtable Session: Improving Our Understanding of School Leadership: Using the Urban Excellence Framework for Research and Practice

Abstract

This paper shows how the UEF can support leaders and serve as a guide as they make choices and decisions for their school by telling the story of one principal’s experience improving his school’s culture over a three year period. He describes how he used the Urban Excellence Framework to support and drive his actions and the importance of the document in driving his own actions and the practices of the school.
Trained by New Leaders, the principal entered the school familiar with and an advocate for the practices contained in the UEF. The principal notes that the assumption is that as an incoming school leader you should start by digging up all the student data you can find and get to work. However, the UEF served as a reminder to him that student achievement and quantitative data are not the only things of which a school leader must take stock when entering a new school.
The principal, along with his school culture team, recognized that the inspirational, college focused banners hanging in the school looked good, but determined that to really live the mission, the school needed to do more, such as building partnerships with colleges, implementing workshops for families, and finding mentors for student.
The principal used the UEF exactly as New Leaders intended –as part an on-going diagnostic planning cycle, but then as an tool to keep moving the school forward. Even after his initial diagnostic of the school needs, “I kept on referring to the UEF and where we are and it helped me reflect on my leadership and how I was moving the school.”

Author

• Leroy Gaines