DOCUMENT LIBRARY
The School “Personality”
Taking Center Stage, California Department of Education, 2001, pp. 113, 114.
Almost all schools can develop their own identity and build student, faculty, and community pride. Questions to be addressed by schools attempting to distinguish themselves include the following:
- Are places available for students to sit, relax, and enjoy the school, including places other than the cafeteria? Are there open interior spaces equipped with casual furniture and art? Are outside courtyards and foyers maintained as attractive places for student interaction? Are there well-maintained plantings and attractive landscaping? Does the ambience say, Education is important, and you are important?
- Are the interior walls painted in attractive colors with schemes students have helped to devise? Are they scrupulously maintained? Are they free of graffiti?
- Are the rest rooms clean, free of odor, and safe? Are all the fixtures in working order?
- Are the windows clean inside and out? Are broken windows fixed? Are burned-out light bulbs replaced? Is other maintenance attended to promptly?
- Is the evidence of students’ achievements prominently displayed in classrooms, corridors, offices, and other highly visible places? Is the work changed frequently to maximize the number of students recognized?
- Have opportunities been seized to develop special facilities not a part of the original school design (e.g., celestial observatory, amphitheater, greenhouse, computer labs)?
- Are there areas on campus where the students have access to current technology for conducting experiments, doing research, or creating presentations?
- Do student government meetings take place in a formal environment that tells student leaders that what they are doing is important (e.g., a carpeted floor and a formal conference table)?
- Are efforts made to ensure that students and visitors approach the entrance to the school with feelings of pride because of neat, well-cared-for premises regardless of the school’s age?
These questions address just a few of the issues that students, faculty, parents, and the general public care about deeply. The answers to the questions provide the context for assumptions about the importance of education in any school that go far beyond a simple preoccupation with aesthetics. Rather, the answers have to do with the degree to which education is truly honored in a community. This assumption is just as true for schools as it is for corporations. Outward appearances speak volumes about the core values of both private and public institutions.