This week I’ve been plagued with spontaneous (and horrible) nosebleeds. Yesterday was no exception.
source: msnsmileys.net
While holding a kerchief to my nose, I sat down in a colleague’s office. I was hoping this nosebleed would stop before the students arrive for morning homeroom. While sitting there, our school’s Social Worker, Ms. R., walked in and made a comment to my colleague about school climate.
My ears perked up. SCHOOL CLIMATE?
I couldn’t help myself. I had to butt in. Nosebleed and all.
To make a long story short, Ms. R wants to address our school climate. So we started to talk. We both agreed that our school climate needs tweaking. Okay…Maybe a major overhaul.
Now I am not referring to the hot dry air in our school climate. I’m referring to our work culture.
Earlier I had written a post about changing school culture. Here, I’m using “school climate” and “school culture” interchangeably: “School culture is a related term that has been use to describe the work environment; in fact, climate and culture are often used interchangeably by some educators to refer to the distinctive workplace of a school. A useful distinction is that culture consists of shared values and assumptions, whereas climate is defined by shared perceptions of behavior.” (Click here to read more)
If you made it THIS far and still reading this post, then you already know that changing any organization’s culture is no small task. And it should never be taken lightly. Thanks to some timely tweets from my PLN, I have some good resources to use as we embark on the challenge of improving our work environment. When I meet with Ms. R next week, I want to share with her some goodies. I think you will find these resources helpful, too:
- Four Ways to Transform Your School Culture
- Five Reasons Why Educators Should Network
- And a real gem Micro Cultures of Professional Learning Communities
If you would like to share some more resources, I want to hear from you! After all, I am just a school librarian. 
