Clinical Field Experience A: Shaping School Culture Interview &

Observation
Michael Underhill

Department of Education, Grand Canyon University

EAD-513: Shaping School Culture

Dr. Nesa Sasser

December 15, 2021

 Over the course of this fall semester, I have been paying a lot more attention to what is

going on in the building. Over the last couple of days, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk

about school culture with the principal of our building, who is also my mentor, and with our

assistant principal who spends his day split between our middle school campus and our high

school campus. My assistant principal and I have been working closely since I started working

on my degree and has been extremely helpful in the process.

My first interview was with our principal. I have some “float” time built into my school

day that allows me to be more visible in the building and help our current administration with

behavior issues, etc. I set up a time to meet with her at the end of the week on Friday and we

spent some time going over our organizations’ mission and vision statements. She is new and

just started in the middle of quarter and is still adjusting to how things are here. She commented

on how she appreciates what our mission and vision are within the organization because there

have been other schools that she has been with where the mission and vision were misleading

and not a true representation of the school. A lot of our discussion was about the role of the

principal-the one in charge of the entire building. She expressed that she was excited to work

with the staff and meet with the students to see where they were at and if they were on board

with one of core statements of 100% college acceptance rate. We have several students in the

middle school who cannot look into the future and see a life where they graduate and that is one

of our biggest hurdles. We also discussed her role in working with community members to help

with the communication that needs to occur from within the organization to the general public.

One of the key things she likes to do is hold “open house” events with community and parents to

where all stakeholders are together in one place and she can get the information out to everyone
at the same time. We also discussed increasing the buy-in of the students as a whole. The

organization and our Executive Director have set high expectations for the students to reach and

some of the student population is pushing back because they feel like it is over-exaggerated and

too much for them to accomplish. She talked about an idea of utilizing PBIS campaigns more

effectively to increase the buy-in.

The next interview was with our assistant principal who splits his time between our

middle school and our high school. He has been with the organization for the last six years and

knows the staff at both buildings fairly well. He has seen high teacher turnover at both schools

and has been a member of our Instructional Leadership Team. We started by revisiting the

mission and vision and his biggest takeaway is how much more he deals with these on a daily

basis now as an administrator compared to when he was teaching Anatomy and Physiology. He,

works really close with the students and staff at both buildings while he combs through the

behavior and does not really deal with community members or board members. I have also sat in

on a couple of his conferences with students who have been written up and his conversation is

solely on graduation/promotion expectations. He said that he knows that the students know they

exist and we will hold them to it but he expressed concern with the frequency of how fast a

student is getting into trouble. He discussed a strategy that he is using where he is visible. He

feels that school culture can start going in a negative direction when the administrator/dean is not

present and available throughout the day. With him splitting time between campuses, this has

posed a bit of a struggle since he cannot be in two places at once. The solution was to delegate

tasks with other members of the building while he is gone. For instance, when he is at the high

school, our principal is first to respond and then if more assistance is needed, than I am the one is

traveling throughout the building, solving whatever issues are going on. I also have a group of
students that I meet with weekly to update them on possible consequences from behaviors in the

classroom. He ended with a really important concept that it takes the entire school to be on the

same page and working towards our goal and mission statement. If there is even one person on

staff that the kids know they can manipulate, they will and that puts the entire school on edge.

This concept of school culture and climate deals specifically with the Professional

Standard for Educational Leadership (PSEL)-Mission, Vision, and Core Values. As educators

and leaders in a building, we should all be working together to achieve the same end goal of

student success. One of the easiest ways to achieve this is to “strategically develop, implement

and evaluate actions to achieve the vision of the school” (PSEL). As an administrator, it is

critical that we are constantly evaluating and re-evaluating action plans to make sure that the

students' achievement is at the center of all educational decisions. In the future, I intend to make

sure that the voice of students is heard and that the decisions are made with the intent of

obtaining the greatest student achievement possible. I will also make sure that part of the school

culture is to create a safe learning environment for all students. Lastly, I will make sure that I am

available to be in PLC (Professional Learning Communities) for each grade level so the teachers

have a voice within the building as well (Tabak & Sahin).

 References

Tabak, H., & Sahin, F. (2020). Investigating the Relationship between

School Effectiveness, Professional Learning Communities, School Culture and Teacher

Characteristics. Education Reform Journal, 5(2), 45–59.

National Policy Board for Educational Administration (2015). Professional

Standards for Educational Leaders. 2015. Reston, VA: Author