Legacy Video Series: Invitational Education

Segment 4: The 5 P’s with William W. Purkey and Judy Brown Lehr

As educators focus on implementing invitational education, they have created five areas to focus on and improve: people, places, policies, programs, and processes.

The most important area is people. When a school focuses on the people who work there and who study there—students as well as staff—everything else begins to fall into place. When the people are sidestepped, over-ruled, and forgotten, the rest of the system cannot function properly.

High school teacher Daryle Nobles said of the people strand, “The people strand is aimed at the ‘people type’ things like the socials that we have. We have a newsletter that comes out each week saying what’s going on with our faculty: who’s having a baby, or who’s getting some award, or whose kids have done well…those kinds of things. We call them Blue Boats, and they come out every Friday. That’s one of their projects. Anything related to the people themselves. I think that the biggest morale booster would probably be through the people strand.”

Principal Larry Lancaster spoke on the places group: “We’ve done a lot of things to decorate the building. We’ve really tried to do a lot of things that are in the ‘places’ part of our strand to turn this into a place where people want to come; where they have ownership; where they have pride.”

The policies that schools and districts develop must always be created with the people in mind. Policies have a tendency to grow out of former policies rather than coming from existing situations and people. Judy Brown Lehr weighs in on how to judge a policy’s efficacy: “We look at our policies and we ask ourselves, do we have any policies in this school that label kids? Do we have policies in our schools that are unfair? Do we have policies that some people perceive as orange [negative]? We have some kids where we practice, I think, educational malpractice on those kids. It’s a term that I really want to think about. It’s educational malpractice, and that’s when 85 percent of the studies tell us that labeling and grouping and retaining kids are not sound. Eighty percent of schools across America still label kids, group kids, and retain kids.”

The programs that a school hosts should always promote high self-esteem and optimism. Principal Larry Lancaster shared his experience with a student assembly that was, in a word, inspirational: “We had Brotherhood Week here a couple of weeks ago, and for the first time I had 1,200 kids in that auditorium. If I ever experienced a perfect moment in my twenty-eight years of education, I experienced the perfect moment during that assembly. It was the most moving thing that ever really happened to me. We just had all kids in there, and we just had this program of brotherhood, and love of coming together, of sharing, of the cooperative spirit, or pride in one’s self. As this thing was winding down, kids were walking down and holding hands with each other. It was just a very moving experience, and I saw teachers looking at each other differently than they had. I had kids in this school that didn’t have any recognition standing up in front of 1,200 of their classmates getting a standing ovation.”

The processes group deals with how policies are enacted, how visitors are welcomed, and even how students are disciplined. As with the other groups, a school’s processes must demonstrate, above all else, that people are the most important aspect of a school.

The results? Principal Rosemarie Bullard shares her experience: “Our drop-out rate has also decreased. The vandalism is virtually nil. So, all those kinds of indicators that one traditionally looks at have certainly shown a dramatic increase. So, we have a high number of students who are now earning A’s and B’s. . . . School climate is critical in invitational education. It infuses the school in color, life, and vibrancy. Invitational education empowers everyone at the school through involvement, excitement, expectation, and caring.”

Get more ideas and information on making your school more inviting. Watch this video segment along with the rest of the videos in this series on PD 360.

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Segment length – 19:30

From the Legacy Video Series on PD 360

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