every group ( community, organization, or social group) evolves rituals and routines that support the group’s formation, continued existence, and social interactions with in the group. There are fundamental part of every group’s culture and climate and create collective perceptions of “the way we do things”. They support the groups goals and objectives, may be formal or informal, and over time become institutionalized and determine how the organization will operate (do business). Eventually they determine what will be acceptable and unacceptable behavior, and shape types of outcomes that the group can or will produce.
In school settings there are two general types of rituals and routines that are fundamental to school operations. Schoolwide rituals routines and individual classroom rituals and routines develop over time (legacy rituals and routines) or may emerge in response to changes in school organization or population (ad hoc rituals routines). What’s important to academic leaders is that these rituals routines can be positive or negative (in terms of teaching and learning) and can make life easier or more difficult for leaders, teachers, and students.
Educational directions research into school rituals routines as lead the organization to develop an approach to establish intentional both schoolwide and individual classroom rituals routines that support the creation of optimum learning environments. In this and the next few blogs we will introduce what our research tells us about different types or “sets” of academic rituals .
This first R&R log focuses on “core understandings” their fundamental to developing rather than inheriting rituals and routines
- There is a window of opportunity for creating rituals and routines that define the culture and climate of the district, school, or classroom and will to a great extent determine the success or failure of the teaching and learning year. Research indicates that such rituals will be developed in the first 3 to 5 weeks of school (the opening window
- Rituals and routines can be developed accidentally or intentionally. They can be reactive are proactive. They can be schoolwide, grade level wide, or individual teacher/classroom). The problem is that they will emerge. They can be designed intentionally to support optimum teaching and learning, they can evolve accidentally but still allow teaching and learning to go on at a less than optimum level or they can completely undermine academic momentum, optimum teacher work, and optimum student work. In a worst-case scenario lack of leadership allows the school staff the adults to individually continue legacy rituals and routines that they “remember” while the students to create rituals routines that reflect their interests and expectations. In these cases very few optimum experiences will be available for teachers or students.
- Even when academic leaders try to be intentional in their development of rituals routines in most cases their intentionality represents adult interests or preferences. They are designed to make life easier and more efficient for adults. ED research supports an alternative approach. If the district or school accept that their job is to produce students that are confident and competent learners and performers, they can identify the optimum environment is necessary for all students to reach that criteria. This optimum learning environment can then be analyzed to determine what rituals and routines need to be in place to give every student an opportunity to learn and perform to their potential.
- There are multiple processes available for developing intentional rituals and routines within an optimum environment. ED recommends that schools wanting to develop academic rituals and routines utilize the process that ED uses when training academic leaders and classroom teachers. This process reflects research on adult and student learning and behavior and emphasizes a strategic approach to developing culture, climate, and rituals and routines that involves multiple steps.
- The first step is to reach consensus on what the school or district is about i.e. creating confident and competent learners and performers who can make successful transitions the next stage in their life.
- Next is the creation of a consensus on what an optimum learning environment or producing those confident and competent learners and performers includes
- the third step focuses on conducting an audit of current rituals routines to determine whether they support or act as barriers building the optimum learning environment
- academic leaders then build a shared vision of the types of rituals routines that are needed. This ensures a rationale for and a commitment to building rituals routines as a part of an optimum learning environment.
- The next priority involves marketing the importance of intentional rituals to the district or school staff, creating a sense of urgency to change, and planning the next steps in the process.
- The staff then need to collectively develop a menu of rituals and routines that they can use to choose the set that will define the district/school/classroom “way of doing business”. The be successful core rituals and routines must be located, defined, and organized before school starts.
- Adults teaching staff then analyze the menu of rituals and routines to identify schoolwide, grade level, and individual rituals and routines that the school community feels will support an optimum learning and performing environment
- Adults clarify their understanding of rituals and routines through “shaping” practice to defines exactly what the ritual and routine will look like in school settings (e.g. what is “prompt” or when is a student “tardy”). This process “standardizes” the ritual and routine that will be a schoolwide way of doing business, a grade level way of doing business, or way teachers and students will interact the classroom level. In best practice this standardizing process should take place at least two weeks before school starts.
- If possible, it is valuable to identify a diverse group of students and bring them in before school starts to learn and practice the rituals and routines with the staff. This ensures that there will be some student models who can help shape and standardize student perceptions of their role in the rituals and routines
- Beginning with the first day of school rituals routines need to be identified and practiced until all students become proficient in performing the rituals and routines. In terms of student success the shaping practice and mastering of optimum rituals and routines is at least as important as spending all class time introducing content on the first day of school. The first three days of school represent an ideal time to develop a perception of how rituals routines contribute to an optimum learning environment.
- Periodically in the first three weeks of school academic leaders should be visible observing rituals and routines and periodically asking classes or groups of students to demonstrate proficient performance while other students evaluate their performance and provide positive and shaping feedback. This can form a basis for an ongoing “review and evaluate” ritual that can be embedded in class discussions and learning routines.
- At the end of the opening period teachers and students should evaluate the emerging rituals and routines for efficiency and acceptance. Any that are judged to be ineffective can be refined or replaced. This enables Both the adults and the students to understand that they are part of a teaching/learning team responsible for building and shaping the learning environment.
- At the end of the year schoolwide artifacts and anecdotal data can be collected and used to evaluate the success of the design, the implementation, and the impact of the rituals and routines. This creates an ongoing review and revision ritual that school leadership and staff can use to identify rituals and routines that have not produced the desired results need to be and revise them to increase efficiency. The goal is to establish an ongoing, schoolwide effort to build an optimum learning and performing environment that is supported by schoolwide and individual rituals and routines.
ED has found that schools that develop intentional rituals routines and refine them over time have more user-friendly cultures and climates, lose less instructional time to inefficient behaviors, have higher job satisfaction in both students and teachers, and improve the community image of both the district and the school.
In the future ritual and routine blogs, ED will deal with different types are sets of rituals and routines that academic leaders and teachers can use as menus for building personalized ritual and routine sets for the district, the school, or the classroom.
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