I was having a great conversation the other day with a good friend, and she was sharing how many boards aren’t really worried about “social media” because they are needing to actually focus on improving their culture first. I thought a lot about what she said, and to be honest, if you cannot have conversations with people in your own organization, Twitter is going to be the last thing in your mind. That being said, I have seen a lot of school organizations use social media to actually improve their culture significantly. It is not the only way, but if used in powerful ways, it definitely can have an overall impact on your school or district.
Here are three ways that I have seen an impact (although I encourage you to look at some of the responses on this tweet when I asked the question).
1. Increased Visibility
In large boards (especially), it is tough for directors, superintendents, principals, etc., to actually physically be in all places at all times. Visibility is an important part of leadership, and I love when I see leaders in schools or in classrooms, but social media actually allows you to not only see leaders in a different light, but also see their thought process. Through tweets, blog posts, and more(Superintendent Chris Smeaton is a great example of this, although I could have chosen from a large lists of administrators), you get to see visible thinking of leaders, but also other aspects of their lives that make them more “human”. If you are a superintendent, and you walked into one of your schools, and many of your teachers had no idea who you are, isn’t that kind of a problem? Social media, used effectively, can help increase this visibility.
2. Increased Accessibility
Now being more connected can have both a positive and negative impact on a person. If you are connected to your device 24/7, that might be great for your school, but bad for your personal life (and health). We have to be able to shut off. That being said, when teachers can tap into one another and learn from each other,it not only improves learning, but it also builds relationships. I have watched in my own school division, the difference in the past few years with the increased use of social media, a greater connection between staff from different schools when seeing each other in person, because the accessibility to one another online doesn’t replace face-to-face interactions, but can enhance them. Teachers that connected online, have ended up meeting face-to-face to plan EdCamps, Innovation Week, and talk about a whole host of other things to help improve learning. The accessibility to not only ideas, but one another, improves learning and relationships. They are not mutually exclusive.
3. A Flattened Organization
I really believe in the idea in schools that everyone’s a teacher and everyone’s a learner, and that these roles are interchangeable throughout any and all days. Watching great schools, I have seen superintendents learn from teachers, teachers learn from parents, principals learn from students, and any other combination you can think of within a school community. As Chris Anderson would call this “crowd-accelerated innovation”, and it is so important to embrace this notion of learning from anyone and everyone, if we are going to improve the culture of our school’s. When you work for an organization and you know that no matter what role you play, that your voice is valued, don’t you think that would have a significant impact on culture?
Concluding Thoughts
If you are looking at improve school culture, open learning is essential to our environments. I don’t want to only know what the decisions are that are made, but about the people who are making them, and their thoughts behind these decisions. That openness is crucial. Only in an organization where voices are not only heard, but also valued, will you ever see significant improvements in school culture, and with the tools that we are provided in our world today, that pace of culture change can be significantly faster than it was without this same technology.
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