When the school environment is right

Tshwarelo Hosia | Monday February 27, 2023 06:00

When the school environment is right, students get it right and can overcome distractors no matter how powerful. In their 1996 World Bank report titled, ‘School Count’, Heneveld Ward and Craig Helen spelt out in clear, unadorned and unambiguous terms the characteristic features of effective schools.

The report places a high premium on the school climate as a leading and prominent contributor to school effectiveness. In particular, Ward and Craig highlight the power of positive teacher attitudes. In their view the attitude of teachers determine the altitude of the students.

What teachers say and do in the classroom can seal the fate of the students in a positive or negative direction. When subjected to a thorough and rigorous teaching regimen, the performance trajectory of underachievers can rise dramatically. To his/her students, a teacher can either become a prophet of hope, inspiring confidence or a prophet of doom smothering progress. The grave mistake that a school policy environment can unwittingly commit is to divide a school into weak and strong streams.

The weak stream, which usually consists of an overwhelming number of students, becomes the school’s Cinderella – suffering undeserved neglect while the strong and gifted students, often few in number, gets all the attention. The irony of the situation is that the crème de la crème usually attracts everyone’s attention when in actual fact this rare breed of students can stand on their own without minimal guidance.

Every teacher would like to be identified with this one gem in Form 1B and little attention is devoted on how to deal with basic literacy problems that could be afflicting many students.

It is ironic that a school system can unwittingly withhold attention from those who need it badly and give it so lavishly to those students who least need it. But such is the tragedy afflicting many struggling schools. It is a case of getting priorities wrong and misplacing efforts. A positive school system would endeavour to place all students on an equal footing.

A school that boldly chooses to place all its learners on the same pedestal has a comparative advantage over its competitors ruled by negativity. Positivity is the cornerstone of every school turnaround programme. Chronically low achieving schools are usually their worst enemies because of their propensity to settle for negativity and mediocrity.

Positive attitudes can alter fortunes of schools and save the future of many students. Schools can draw inspiration from the widely publicised experiences of Strawberry Mansion High School in the district of Philadelphia in the USA. It took a positive mind of a devout school principal, Linda Cliat Wayman, to bring order and discipline where there was anarchy and chaos, to replace compliance with accountability and sluggishness with a sense of urgency and hard work. Teachers who initially saw nothing good coming out of their students began to see their students in a different light. Wayman proudly believes that leaders have a duty to make the impossible possible. And to her credit she did demonstrate this in her schools. Wayman’s schools had too many problems and the most worrying of them all was teacher attitudes towards their students. Upon assuming the reins of power, she immediately worked on changing the attitudes of teachers. She made the teachers to be conscious of the significant impact their negative disposition had on students’ confidence. More often than not, teachers are unaware of their role in the destruction of their schools. It takes good leadership to identify the problem and remedy the situation. So if you ask me what are the three critical things a struggling school require in order to turnaround, I would say 1) a good principal 2) a good principal and 3) a good principal.

Just a change of guard can redeem the fortunes of a school that is unable to serve and meet the expectations of its students. Teachers and students can stay put but the appointment of a new leader can bring about magical results. One of the weapons in Wayman’s arsenal was love. Love can be the missing silver bullet in a school’s quest for improved learning outcomes. If found, love and positive vibes can change a school.

Leaders who demonstrate total faith in the capabilities of all students have a whole world to gain. Leaners tend to reward handsomely principals and teachers who care. Rebel students can be born again and become responsible and law abiding students. In his research on the persisting culture of low achievement in Botswana secondary schools, Professor Jaap Kuiper came out with an interesting observation corroborating Wayman’s story that positivity unleashes the potential of every learner and that a discriminatory approach is self-destructive. Kuiper exposed the dangers of neglecting less gifted students. He said, “students are not given enough attention: particularly those that need extra support (those not in the top-streams). They get the opposite of what they need: they are faced with teachers that do not believe in them and thus largely ignore them.

This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy: students feel they are labelled as weak, they see themselves as weak, the teachers see them as weak and give them little attention, they then are ill-prepared for the examinations and thus they fail: apparently fulfilling the prophecy that everyone knew they would do so.” The few students the school system places on a pedestal tend to fare better because they do not only get more attention but they have an added advantage of being expected to be masters of their own destiny. All schools should stand on a positive foundation. Students, regardless of their backgrounds and circumstances, enter school grounds with high hopes and expectations. Save for a few rebels and non-conformists, many students have an abiding respect and unwavering faith in their teachers both as role models and destiny connectors. Once admitted into the school system, children eventually switch allegiance from their parents to their teachers. Every parent can give testimony in this regard. This is demonstrated by the fact that when holding difficult conversations with their parents, children would often take refuge in what the teacher said. In the eyes of students, the word of the teacher is sacrosanct. When the teacher had said it is so and so, it is must be accepted as gospel truth and there is nothing parents can do about it. While children love and respect their parents, a school has the power to successfully wrestle the lime light from parents.

Therefore it goes without saying that students can ‘crash land’ if the school environment were to behave and conduct its business in a manner not consistent with the learner’s preconceived expectations and hopes. Because it is considered a paragon of perfection and a game changer, a school must look and play the part. There should be no room for faltering. Excellence is the profession of a school and therefore underachievement and mediocrity are alien to it. Any school that has now become synonymous with lawlessness, anarchy, chaos and poor learning outcomes should be flushed out of the system. The simple reason being it would have lost the justification to continue to exist.