Strategies for Success

Strategies for Success » Enhance School Climate and Culture

4. Enhance School Climate and Culture

Strategy Four: Intentionally craft a school environment designed to foster effective teaching and learning

Our teachers are in a better position to flourish when their school environments present as few distractions as possible and they can focus on instruction. To equip teachers from inside our schools, we’re taking measures to building strong leadership, swift and effective discipline, and efficient administrative procedures.

We demonstrate this commitment to teachers by:

Ensuring stronger leadership in each school
MCS continues to build the capacity of our school principals—as mentors and a primary teacher resource—in part through a partnership with New Leaders for New Schools Memphis and The Urban Education Center.
Minimizing teacher demands outside of instruction.
This includes reducing teacher paperwork by facilitating better coordination among district offices.

Implementing technology tools so that teacher and principal observations can be done electronically.

Read about how strong leadership has already started to change the culture at one Memphis school.

A School Culture in Transition

Over the 2010–11 school year, new principal Antonio Burt began to turn around the culture at Lester, a K-8 school in Binghampton, based in large part on his training with New Leaders for New Schools.

Mr. Burt immediately set out to improve the physical condition of the hallways, which in prior years had been plagued by trash, pests and foul odors. A no-tolerance policy for litter or disrespect of school property immediately went into effect, with fast results that surprised even some members of the teaching staff. He created an environment of quiet and order, requiring students to line up by gender in hallways and speak in low voices. His presence on…