I’ve pointed at two inconvenient truths about values education and the expensive – in both time and money – process that many schools meander through to determine their agreed set of four values (if you’re government school, that’s the average) or eight (the average for independent/private schools):
- The first institutions that felt the need to signal their values in our direction were big oil and big tobacco. Not exactly the best leads to follow, are they? The exercise was a marketing one and not an ambition to change any behaviour. I genuinely feel for independent schools who are now so entwined in the education sector as a marketplace that they feel compelled to out-market other schools on the values installation claim.
- Deciding on Respect as a value for your school sounds great. But it doesn’t make your school, your students or your staff more respectful than the school down the road who opted for Responsibility. A little spoiler – Respect is the most common Australian school value and yet most teachers agree that we have a distinct respect issue in our schools.
Your school isn’t known for your values, because virtually every school is now screaming them into the abyss. Picking a new value and/or claiming to be that thing is a pamphlet filler at best and perhaps little more than an expensive contributor to the white noise of your community’s lives.
Want to be known? Really known? Do something cool! Here’s a list of cool things schools can do – and are doing – that both stand out and build values:
- Install a pizza oven and have staff and students eat together every Friday. No speeches. No agenda. Just shared food and shared space. Value authentically enhanced = Belonging.
- Replace detention with a walking meeting around the oval where harm is repaired and plans are made.
- Open the library or light a campfire (screw your petty OH&S “considerations”) at 8am with toast, books or music for kids who need a soft landing before the bell.
- Train Year 6 students to run lunchtime games for the preps instead of telling them to “be good role models”.
- Build a “Fail Wall” where everyone publicly shares attempts, mistakes and what they learned. Have the staff go first!
- Build and maintain a community garden where flowers and produce go to local families doing it tough or to a nearby retirement village.
Stop laminating slogans and start proving that your values are evident in your decisions.
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. You know what else is cool (well, sort of!)?! The Restorative Classroom Playbook. It’s online and it’s affordable – because I know time and both rare in schools these days!
It’s on Friday 13 March, and it will help teachers build a calm, cooperative classroom – where responsibility is shared and teaching feels sustainable again.
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