Why school spirit matters

I think everyone realizes school spirit is important, but we don't ever talk about it, at least not in the way we discuss standardized test scores or curriculum decisions. I guess it's just a 'softer' topic. After all, in its narrowest definition, school spirit is the territory of cheerleaders, pep rallies, and big rivalries. As a result, you won't see too many articles in educational journals on the topic. But I'd like to make a case for why school spirit is really important.

First of all, it's important to clarify how I am defining school spirit. I'm talking about a collective feeling shared by various members of school community, a feeling of pride, energy, commitment, and togetherness. It often manifests itself through sports teams, but it should be celebrated across all aspects of a school, not just extracurriculars.

1. School spirit helps everyone buy into a positive vision of the school. When students and teachers have pride in their school, that collective confidence can translate to self-efficacy, "I'm part of a good school, I can do this."

2. School spirit creates a stronger sense of community. When there is a strong sense of community, there is a feeling of being part of something larger than oneself. We are more likely to follow community norms if we see that others value and share a sense of community. Some norms we value are having good attendance, being respectful, and taking responsibility.

3. School spirit makes people feel good. When we have the 'we' feeling that school spirit generates, we feel better. And when we feel better, we have more energy, more creativity, more compassion, more of all the good stuff. School spirit makes it contagious.

In my next post, I'm going to share a list of ideas for increasing school spirit.

Blogger's note: the picture shown above is from a football game where our student section, with permission, was throwing baby powder in the air with each touchdown. It looked really cool. However, we soon learned that it also makes it really hard to breathe for other fans seated nearby in the stadium. We had to stop, but overall no harm done.

What if we provided you with a classroom set of iPads?

What if we provided you with a classroom set of iPads? We asked this question during some of our interviews last spring. The range of responses we received was interesting. Some candidates were thrilled with the idea and talked about all the ways they would be able to use the devices. Others admitted they didn't know much about how to use iPads for learning, but would be eager to learn more. One candidate shared that her school bought several iPads for her classroom a couple years ago, but she hadn't used them much. She said the school didn't really offer any training.

To be clear, we only have a handful of iPads in our building. However, we have a vision of being a 1:1 school at some point in the near future. We asked the question to get a sense of how open candidates were to implementing technology in the classroom. Ideally, we are looking for teachers who are passionate about leveraging technology as a tool for learning. Clearly, having iPads go unused for a couple of years is not acceptable even if the school failed to provide training.

So I hear this all the time in the graduate classes I teach. We need to offer teachers more PD on how to use technology. And I couldn't agree more. Schools always need to improve the learning opportunities for teachers, and it is a poor practice to just drop new devices or software on a teacher without training. But it also seems like this line of thinking is the most common excuse for not taking control of one's learning and becoming confident with digital tools.

Ultimately, we need educators to be active learners and seek out the information they need. I am not a technology wizard, but my experience tells me that 98% of what I know I've learned by doing, exploring, researching, etc. It did not happen because of a training. Let's be empowered to learn what we need when we need it. Schools need to offer opportunities for tech training, but teachers should never wait until a training is offered to learn something that might be good for them and their students.

To be successful, focus on what successful people do

When I was coaching we had a sign above the door of the locker room that read "Practice and play like a state champion today." It was a reminder to everyone, players and coaches, that our goal was to strive for excellence in the process of becoming a successful team. We had a vision of what it would be like to win a state championship, but our daily actions needed to reflect what state championship teams do. We had to respect the process.

The same holds true for my work as a principal and for our school overall. We want to provide the best possible learning experiences for our students, and for everyone who works in or visits our building. We want to build dreams, create opportunities, and make a positive impact. So we have to have a vision of what the best schools look like and then we have to go out day by day and put that vision into to action. We have to practice and play like we are making that vision a reality.

If we get too focused on results, we can get discouraged if we aren't having the success we think we should. We can't always control the outcome, but we can control our commitment to the attitudes and behaviors that will likely produce the results we want.