ASCD Summer 2006 Volume 63 Best of Educational Leadership 2005 2006 Page 1 of 6 Pages 29 33 Improving Relationships Within the Schoolhouse Roland S Barth Relationships among educators within a school range from vigorously healthy to dangerously competitive Strengthen those relationships and you improve professional practice Summer 2006 One incontrovertible finding emerges from my career spent working in and around schools The nature of relationships among the adults within a school has a greater influence on the character and quality of that school and on student accomplishment than anything else If the relationships between administrators and teachers are trusting generous helpful and cooperative then the relationships between teachers and students between students and students and between teachers and parents are likely to be trusting generous helpful and cooperative If on the other hand relationships between administrators and teachers are fearful competitive suspicious and corrosive then these qualities will disseminate throughout the school community In short the relationships among the educators in a school define all relationships within that school s culture Teachers and administrators demonstrate all too well a capacity to either enrich or diminish one another s lives and thereby enrich or diminish their schools Schools are full of what I call nondiscussables important matters that as a profession we seldom openly discuss These include the leadership of the principal issues of race the underperforming teacher our personal visions for a good school and of course the nature of the relationships among the adults within the school Actually we do talk about the nondiscussables but only in the parking lot during the car pool and at the dinner table That s the definition of a nondiscussable an issue of sufficient import that it commands our attention but is so incendiary that we cannot discuss it in polite society at a faculty or PTA meeting for example For more on this topic see my article The Culture Builder in the May 2002 issue of Educational Leadership Consequently the issues surrounding adult relationships in school like other nondiscussables litter the schoolhouse floor lurking like land mines with trip wires emanating from each We cannot take a step without fear of losing a limb Thus paralyzed we can be certain that next September adult relationships in the school will remain unchanged School improvement is impossible when we give nondiscussables such extraordinary power over us Relationships in Schools So let s discuss the elephant in the room the various forms of relationships among adults within the schoolhouse They might be categorized in four ways parallel play adversarial relationships congenial relationships and collegial relationships http www ascd org portal site ascd template MAXIMIZE menuitem 459dee008f99653f 10 29 2006 ASCD Page 2 of 6 Parallel Play Parallel play a wonderful concept from the preschool literature is thought to be a primitive stage of human development through which 2 and 3 year olds soon pass on their way to more sophisticated forms of interaction To illustrate imagine two 3 year olds busily engaged in opposite corners of a sandbox One has a shovel and a bucket the other has a rake and a hoe At no time do they share their tools let alone collaborate to build a sandcastle They may inadvertently throw sand in each other s face from time to time but they seldom interact intentionally Although in close proximity for a long period of time each is so self absorbed so totally engrossed in what he or she is doing that the two of them will go on for hours working in isolation Parallel play offers of course a perfect description of how teachers interact at many elementary middle and high schools The term also aptly describes the relationship between one school principal and another whose school is only blocks away One teacher summed it up with discouraging accuracy Here we all live in our separate caves A playful notice on the wall of a faculty lounge captured it even better We re all in this alone The abiding signature of parallel play in education is the self contained classroom with the door shut and a piece of artwork covering that little pane of glass The cost of concealing what we do is isolation from colleagues who might cause us to examine and improve our practices Adversarial Relationships I once heard a Boston school principal offer this sage observation We educators have drawn our wagons into a circle and trained our guns on each other Adversarial relationships take many forms in schools Sometimes they are blatant The 7th grade algebra teacher on one side of the hall lobs a metaphorical hand grenade into the classroom of the 8th grade geometry teacher on the other side saying to parents You don t want your child in that classroom All they do is fool around with blocks Reciprocal unfriendly fire is returned You don t want your child in that classroom it s a grim joyless place with desks in rows and endless worksheets One principal concluded his remarks to a large parent group with I think a slip Here at John Adams Elementary School we all live on the bleeding edge No wonder so many teachers engage in parallel play Barricaded behind their classroom doors they escape the depleting conflicts so rampant among the adults outside More often we educators become one another s adversaries in a more subtle way by withholding School people carry around extraordinary insights about their practice about discipline parental involvement staff development child development leadership and curriculum I call these insights craft knowledge Acquired over the years in the school of hard knocks these insights offer every bit as much value to improving schools as do elegant research studies and national reports If one day we educators could only disclose our rich craft knowledge to one another we could transform our schools overnight But I find educators reluctant to make these gold nuggets available to others Sadly when one educator persists in repeating the failures of the past while another next door has great success everyone loses When a teacher does place value on what she knows and musters up the courage and generosity of spirit to share an important learning I ve got this great idea about how to teach math without ability grouping the kids a common response from fellow teachers is Big deal What s she after a promotion Regrettably as a profession we do not