The stories we choose to tell say a lot about who we are.
What is the first story you tell? I would expect that each visitor, new student or prospective member of staff isn’t met by a Senior Leader to be given a thorough and considered history of the school.
So where do we begin to tell our story? Our website? At the gate? At reception? The first student we see?
What we choose to immortalise as a school doesn’t just tell stakeholders who we are but also who we want to be. The past events that we highlight gives anyone new a sense of our direction and purpose. Do we display trophies or celebrate success? Does the ‘outstanding’ banner, rigidly fixed to the fence in front of the school give a consistent impression to the whole community? As with many culture questions there is a lot to consider but no resounding right answer.
Johnson and Scholes (1992) identify stories as an element of their 'cultural web', recognising the link between the values held and the past events that are talked about inside and outside of an establishment.
This could not be more important for the culture of a school but how often is it discussed? Each year we have potentially hundreds of students who must begin to talk about their experience in a past tense but are still much a part of the community. At the same time hundreds join us who have been told stories of 'big school' and need to begin to separate fact from fiction.
The beginning of this blog will focus on the stories we tell and what they say about our values, behaviours and experiences. Whether we can change those stories and what we can learn from our own tales.
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