What is a Teal School?
Progressive learning organizations are inherently Teal Organizations — Let’s start to treat them as such.
Sometimes a truth of the way the world works breaks through the cloudy skies of traditional structures like a ray of light. After reading Frederic Laloux’s book “Reinventing Organizations” I feel awakened to the fact that many of the elements I most cherish about the culture of a school align deeply with a Teal Organization. That being said, so few of the practices Laloux presents are used in schools… it feels like a deep malalignment that is yearning to be addressed.
Having worked in a variety of education institutions over most of my adult life, it has always struck me how different the structures put in place are when compared to the practices actually employed in the classroom.
In progressive classrooms, holistic learning which speaks to a whole person is encouraged. It has been found that greater agency allows for greater intrinsic motivation, and pedagogies that reflect this are referred to as student driven or student guided learning. Many schools emphasize collaboration as a key critical skill that is regularly practiced throughout a learners time in the classroom.
However, the organizations that are emphasizing such a learning environment are not so quick to reflect those in their own workplace culture. Schools by and large are curriculum driven, with plans of learning set in place by slow to evolve (called Amber Organizations by Laloux) institutions such as school boards and national curricula. The hierarchy in schools is very real, with little agency at a classroom level. This can build into frustration, as the educators are sensing everyday challenges and the organization simply cannot respond to them. Finally, most schools operate in silos of age and subject, with little room for collaboration. With these idiosyncrasies present a shift towards a truly progressive school, which I feel should aptly be called a teal school, can only go so far.
Modelling an organizational structure that speaks to these values is necessary to create context around such a message. While some systems like Steiner employ some of these approaches (they are firmly a Green Organization based on Laloux’s classification), what might a teal school look like?
How Might Schools Employ Teal Structures?
Decentralized decision-making:
In a teal school, decision-making power would be distributed among small self-organizing teams, rather than being centralized at the top of the organizational hierarchy. This could include teams of teachers, students, and other school staff working together to make decisions that affect their work.
Does this mean the end of a Head of School? Well, not exactly… the role will change since much of the executive function evolves into one of advisement and coaching. A teal school would likely still have a Head of School to act as the public figure head, and generally it is good to have people who can be role models on how to sense and respond to change. They can also act as a constant buffer between parents (who likely will need time to adjust to a teal organization) and the educators, supporting their decisions and educating parents about how such an organization works.
Most schools already have an element of decentralized decision making in place practically, but unfortunately it can be overridden at any point due to the hierarchy that stands in place.
Self-management:
In a teal school, team members would be responsible for their own work and have a high degree of autonomy. This could include students being able to make decisions about their own learning and teachers being able to choose how they teach their classes.
Once again, the schools I have worked in practice this to a certain degree. Most educators have a level of autonomy in setting the culture of their classroom, and in progressive schools the students are brought into this mix. However, many of the large institutional barriers put in place create a turbulent countercurrent.
Most national school systems (with the exception of Finland as far as I can tell from an outsider perspective) use standardized tests to evaluate students on their ability to regurgitate knowledge the national curriculum has stipulated they learn. Many curriculums are packed with learning outcomes, and there is little ability for educators to diverge from this without the threat of having a class who performs badly on an effectively meaningless test.
What is missing at the core here is trust. Schools don’t have systems in place to trust the teachers who work there to be effective educators, and work in a wide range of checks and balances (all of which require a lot of management) to ensure the teachers are hitting the exacting and at times ridiculous standards set by the state.
In a trusting system, the educator feels valued as a professional who is doing what they love and using their in-class experience to adapt and evolve what is being taught to meet the needs of the learners. They recognize that they are also learning, and so regularly seek advice from colleagues on how to best meet the needs of the learners in their care.
Flexibility:
Teal schools are designed to be adaptable and responsive to change. This could involve being open to trying new approaches to teaching and learning, and being willing to pivot and adapt to new information or changing circumstances.
Most schools saw their systems crumble as our world went into a pandemic. The organizations were just not equipped to evolve the learning process to meet the new needs of the environment. For this reason, the term ‘learning loss’ was globally acknowledged. It was the resistance to progressive change that caused the largest shock for many schools, and the resistance to adapt and be be flexible with those changes that put the nail in the coffin.
Some schools weathered better than others, and those schools were invariably the ones who were most willing to be flexible about how and what their role in the learning process became. Instead of maintaining a 6.5 hour school day and regular periods, some schools embarked on self study journeys and coached students to get outside and play whenever possible. Others explored leveraging the vast field of existing online resources and shifted their focus on well-being and mentorship.
While the Pandemic came as a once in a generation shock, it is more indicative of times to come than the calm seas of the past. We are living in an accelerated age of change, and a continuously evolving and adapting curricula is needed just to stay afloat. The only AI in my education came through Science Fiction books I personally read, but nowadays students can write reasonable 5 paragraph essays in minutes using it.
Beyond responding to change, flexibility also allows an organization to sense what works best for the people and place that it inhabits. Education is far from a one size fits all solution, and allowing the organization to adapt as needed only improves the ability to meet these specific needs.
Collaboration:
Teal schools rely on strong interpersonal relationships and collaboration to function effectively. This could involve students and teachers working together in small groups or teams to achieve common goals.
I have learned more through the people I work with (and that includes students) than I could ever imagine learning outside of this context. Yet in many schools it is common practice to isolate a group of students and a single teacher to help with focus. The environment effectively shuts off any ability for the educators to collaborate. Grades, class sizes, and the design of the learning environment all play a role in limiting collaboration in schools.
Yet these barriers can be overcome in a variety of ways. We assume that a better quality of learning happens in small class sizes, but Stephen Heppell has a strong argument for making super classes of 60–70 students with multiple educators collaborating. In this environment, they can support a wider range of learners, and can learn from one another in the process.
Most schools matriculate learners through a definitive progression of learning, which we refer to as grades. While there are advantages to such a structure, it also comes with distinct limitations. A same age cohort model can not take full advantage of the mentorship and role modelling older students can play, and once again limits the ability to educators from multiple age groups to collaborate together.
Many schools have thrived as one-room schoolhouses, with one or two educators working with a wide range of ages. One element I persistently see is that it creates an environment that is far more collaborative. The educators in these schools work together out of necessity, and the students take on a greater sense of responsibility throughout their own learnign process. Perhaps the limitations in size allowed for a naturally teal organization to develop in such an environent?
Transparency:
Teal schools value transparency and open communication. This could involve making information about school operations and decision-making processes readily available to all stakeholders, including students, teachers, and parents.
As many schools operate as non-profits, this is not a completely foreign concept. However, the practice of transparency goes well beyond a release of the annual budget. It should include curriculum development, salaries, core processes, and personal and team goals. Furthermore, the information should not only be available, but accessible. The latter is a challenge of organizing information in a fashion that allows stakeholders to independently find the information they are curious about.
Schools are complex organizations, and there are naturally limits to what can be shared. For example, a student’s record of behaviour is an important tool in recognizing patterns, but ethically should not be shared beyond those who need this information. With the exception of sensitive materials like this though, learning organizations could readily share much of their data. A transparent source of relevant data like this could indeed provide an excellent and relevant learning tool for students as well. Imagine math classes that dig into school accounting ledgers to better understand ways to optimize the organization, or environmental science classes that seek ways to procure better produce for the kitchens from local sources.
The biggest advantage of transparency comes from the ability to avoid hearsay. Gossip is pretty entrenched in human society, and has through history led to massive misunderstandings, sometimes even outright revolutions. The best way to prevent hearsay is to provide tools so stakeholders can fact check whenever possible. What this does once again is build organizational trust, and this at its core is what exemplifies a teal school from those which already exist: a community that trusts one another to provide the best learning experience possible for as many of its constituents.
What Needs to Happen to Create a Teal School?
While I am certain there are already schools out there that embody many of these principles, I am equally certain there are not enough of them yet. A teal school is an a confluence of practices I already see cherished by educators in schools with an evolutionary purpose the institution of learning.
Frederic Laloux points to two factors that are necessary for an organization to become a teal organization. The leadership (CEO, Director, Founder) needs to be on board with creating such an organization, and the owners (those who pull the financial strings) also need to support this structure. In both of these cases, safeguards can be created at a structural level so that as the organization evolves and changes it can still remain true to its form.
With the above parties on board, it is possible for any school to find its evolutionary purpose and become a teal school. It will no doubt be a process and involve a lot of learning, but in the end of the day what better place to learn than in a school!
Noan Fesnoux is an independent educator and lifelong learner with a vision of subverting educational institutions worldwide. He currently works with a number of institutions in redefining what it means to be a learning organization. If you are looking for a bit of disruption, don’t hesitate to contact him and have a conversation about it!
Images from this article were created by Etienne Appert for the Reinventing Organizations Wiki. If you are to read one book this year, give this one a go!
