Andrew Wade

EDL 271
Climate and Culture
November 2
nd
, 2012
This is my fifth year at Callanan Middle School and my second time being in this school.
I was a sixth grade mathematics teacher from 00-04 and now an eighth grade mathematics
teacher from 08-present, with a stop at Roosevelt High School in between.
I believe the Climate and Culture has declined from where it once was. A lot has
changed at Callanan since 2004, but the past three years has greatly changed the culture of the
building in my belief. The biggest change that has led to the culture has been the change in
leadership and the high turnover in staff. The other things that are factors of the climate and
culture are the change in the school boundary lines, staff cuts, and a change of master schedule.
When you enter Callanan, you can feel an atmosphere of stress within the staff. I believe
this stems from the inconsistency in the office. I had a conversation with another teacher new to
Callanan and they felt that the office was a three headed monster. Our three administrators
seem to not be all on the same page, and that is a big problem. All three of them are great
people, but have very different philosophies of education and what is best for our school. This to
me leads to confusion throughout the school and adds to the stress of the staff.
When you have three different philosophies it leads to the inconsistence in the discipline
that is administered throughout the building. Our referrals have increased dramatically in the last
5 years. I contribute this to the loss of teaming in our building due to budget cuts. Teaming gave
us the opportunity to organize the students into smaller groups, and also gave us the opportunity
to get to know and build relationships with many more students. We also knew the teacher
connections the students had, so we were more of a family. We no longer have that feeling.
Now we do more by ourselves because we have no time built in to meet and talk about our
students and meet the needs of each individual student. I also believe the loss of other
opportunities the students had 5 years ago has something to do with it. Our students no longer
get to take Family Consumer Science, Drama, or Tech Ed. I believe those classes were
important to the growth of our students, and it gave some students something they might be
interested in other than the general academic courses.
I believe those days of what Callanan was are over and now it is time to reevaluate what
we are doing and figure out what we want to become with what we do have. We have a lot of
work ahead of us, but we are finally starting to make the right steps to move on from the worst
four years our school has had in a while. We have formed a Climate and Culture committee to
work on the issues at Callanan.
In our last meeting we discussed where the climate of the building is at, and what ideas
we have in changing it. We discussed that we are not doing best practice for the students at
Callanan. We need to prioritize and find time for teachers to work with students. We will be
looking into how we can manage a change in meeting structure and the amount of meetings we
have, so we have more time working with students before and after school. It gets old telling
students that I cant help them because I have to go to a meeting. We are also going to look at
restructuring our supervision schedule to help with building time in for the students.
We are also going to start planning for next year as we have been informed that we
maybe a Title 1 school if the boundary lines change to what they have said they will be. I
believe this is going to be an important for us as we may have the opportunity to add more staff.
If this does happen, we will be able to go back to the Smaller Learning Communities that we
once had. The thing we need to work out is; what is it that we need to add? Many people will
have different ideas what is best for the school and we will need to get this information from all
the stakeholders of the school. I believe the addition of SLCs back to our school will have a
positive outcome to our climate of the school. This is something we as a staff are going to fight
to get, as this is something we as a staff strongly believe in.
I believe we are heading into the right direction with forming this committee, but we have
a long road ahead of us. If we can manage to make a few changes this year that will bring down
the stress level of each teacher, I believe next year we will be able to change the culture of
Callanan Middle School because of the conversations we are having now. I am hopeful that we
can make this happen and keep Callanan as one of the most beautiful schools in Des Moines.