Your epic learning journey · Stop 6 of 10 · Explore Culture
Start
Commit
Field Journal · School Culture Quest
Whose culture is this
school, really?
A school can post its values on every wall. It can name them in every assembly. But culture is not what a school says it believes. It is what a school does when those beliefs are tested.
Before you begin
This quest asks you to look honestly at the culture of your school. That is deep work. It builds directly on what you explored in the personal and organizational culture quests.
If you have not completed those quests yet, we gently encourage you to go back and start there. Understanding your own cultural lens and how organizations operate is the foundation this work rests on. Without it, school culture analysis can feel abstract or overwhelming.
Ready to go deeper?
This quest has four missions. They will move you from honest examination into deliberate design. Bring everything you have learned about yourself and your organization. You are going to need it.
1
Mission 1
Read
Heart
One of the hardest professional experiences of my life happened on a fifth-grade team.
A colleague who had been at the school for over twenty years consistently dismissed my experience and expertise. Despite my background as an internationally trained educator, she treated my contributions as uninformed. Whenever our team planned authentic inquiry-based and conceptual learning, she pushed back. Not because the ideas were unsound, but because they required her to step outside her comfort zone. Her unwillingness to be vulnerable created a friction that ran through everything we tried to build together.
My other team members were empathetic. They saw what was happening. But the most they felt they could offer was a quiet suggestion that I move grade levels the following year, for the sake of my own mental health. So I did.
The moment that changed everything
My principal saw what was happening. He did nothing. That silence was a cultural statement. It told every person in that building exactly whose comfort mattered most.
What made it harder to carry was the disparity. Certain behaviors were tolerated in some colleagues while the same behaviors in others were quickly addressed. There was no transparency about why. There was no consistency in how people were treated. On the walls of that school, in large and carefully chosen letters, were the words open-minded and caring.
I realized I did not belong there. Not because I lacked the skills or the commitment, but because the culture of that school, the one that actually operated beneath the words on the wall, did not have room for me.
The following year I was offered the opportunity to become a curriculum coordinator at a different school. That is when I made a pledge to myself. I would not repeat what my principal had done to me. I would not let silence become policy. I would not allow the gap between stated values and lived reality to go unnamed. The people in my care deserved better than that. So did I.
Pause here
Think of a moment in your school when the stated values were tested. What happened? What did the response reveal about the culture that actually exists?
2
Mission 2
See
Head
Zaretta Hammond is an educator, author, and cultural equity activist whose work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, culture, and learning. Her book Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain has become one of the most important texts in education for anyone serious about closing the opportunity gap. Hammond's central argument is both simple and demanding: the brain learns best when it feels safe, connected, and valued. Culture is not a backdrop to learning. It is the condition that makes learning possible or impossible in the first place.
Hammond pushes educators beyond awareness into action. Knowing that a learner feels unseen is not enough. Understanding why the culture of a school produces that invisibility is not enough either. What Hammond demands is that we look at specific people in specific moments and ask an honest question: what is this environment actually doing to this child's ability to trust, think, and grow? That question is where this mission begins.
Think of a learner in your school right now who is not fully thriving. Not because of ability. Because of something in the culture that is not working for them. Hold that person in your mind before you go any further.
Question one
What does this learner have to do to belong in your school that others do not?
Question two
Where in this building does this learner feel most themselves? Where do they shrink?
Question three
What would change for this learner if our culture were working as it should?
Pause here
Open your journal. Write about this learner using the three questions above. Do not edit yourself. Do not make it tidy. Just write what is true.
What you write here is for you. It is not submitted anywhere. It is the most important thing you will do on this page.
3
Mission 3
Examine
Hands
Now read each statement below with the learner you named still in your mind. Rate each one honestly, not for your school in general, but for what is true for this specific person in your specific building right now.
This is where the audit becomes real.
This learner can see themselves reflected in the people, spaces, and learning of our school.
Thriving
Developing
Needs Attention
This learner feels genuinely safe to be themselves in our school every day.
Thriving
Developing
Needs Attention
Our school responds consistently when this learner's dignity or belonging is at stake.
Thriving
Developing
Needs Attention
This learner does not carry a greater burden than others to adjust who they are in order to belong here.
Thriving
Developing
Needs Attention
Our collective practice actively builds the trust this learner needs to take intellectual risks.
Thriving
Developing
Needs Attention
4
Mission 4
Land
Hands
You have examined yourself. You have examined the systems around you. You have looked at your school through the eyes of one specific learner whose experience you now cannot unsee.
There is one question waiting at the end of all of that. It is not a form to fill in. It is not a checklist to complete. It is simply the question this entire journey has been building toward. It belongs to you now.
The question
What is my part in making my school culture better for all?
Closing Field Note
I do not expect you to answer that question today. Real answers to real questions take time. They take conversation. They take the courage to try something and the honesty to assess whether it worked.
What I do expect is that you carry it. Into your staffroom. Into your next planning conversation. Into the moment this week when you have a choice about how to respond to a learner, a colleague, or a situation and you pause for just a second longer than you normally would.
That pause is the beginning of a different kind of school.
You have done the hardest part. You looked honestly. Now keep looking.
The culture trilogy is complete
Three lenses. One framework.
You have laid the foundation. The CARE journey continues.
Personal
Completed
Organizational
Completed
School
You are here
think. chat. create.
thinkchat consultancy · lugerlach.com