Authenticity: Living Into Your Values Through Storytelling

Every School is unique; that much we can all be assured of, but what is it that achieves this uniqueness? Here at Interactive Schools, we believe the People, Place and Purpose of a school are the defining factors in who they are. In this blog, we’re focusing on the Purpose of schools, and how authentic demonstrations of a school’s values paint the most illuminating pictures of what a school really does. Perhaps more importantly, values help schools to demonstrate their ‘why’.

‘Values’ are words used by schools to describe the underpinning reasoning behind their culture and provision. Familiar ‘values’ include creativity, curiosity, responsibility, and so on. But without meaningful demonstrations of these values, they become meaningless buzzwords.

Students may come to begrudge the thought of being bold if, for instance, they do not see the reflection of boldness in their peers or teachers. To be creative in the Arts is a given, so to entrench the idea of ‘being creative’ to an already creative student, may just fall on deaf ears.

Regardless of what the individual words are that relate to a school’s values or purpose, the key is to provide poignant demonstrations of how those values play out in everyday life. The example above of demonstrating creativity in the Arts is, as we’ve mentioned, rather a given, so why not provide demonstrations of the Science Department’s creativity: how is the school instilling this value in the perhaps more logically-minded areas of the community?

A great example of how schools can live into their values through storytelling is St. Cuthbert’s Catholic High School. The Newcastle-based High School celebrates its values of Compassion, Conscience, Competence and Commitment, but in the context of ‘Forming men of…. Compassion etc’. This is a great example of how language brings to life the purpose of the school, and indeed how the individual pupils at that school are living into those values. The examples illustrate how the school’s success in a recent Chess competition reflects the competence of the students taking part, and how pupils in Year 7 demonstrated commitment through their hard work and dedication to their studies.

When it comes to sharing valuable stories around a school’s values, start by defining the word itself: what does it mean to be compassionate? Next will be to consider how that definition aligns with the culture or the community of the school: ask yourself ‘in what areas of the school do we demonstrate compassion?’ Perhaps through charitable outreach, pupil-to-pupil mentorship or through pupil leadership roles. Finally, capture those examples in images and videos, and be sure to tell the outside world that ‘this’ is a demonstration of our pupils’ compassion - in the example of St. Cuthbert’s Catholic High School, they use our recommended approach to tagging through #BrandedHashtags to assign compassion back to the School - #StCuthbertsCompassion. This #BrandedHashtag will also pull the post to the values page of their Interactive Schools website.

Whatever a school’s values may be, it is important that they do not become noise. Instead, those values should be the guiding principles of everything done within the school, which in turn become the direction for storytelling. Ensure to use that language as part of your #BrandedHashtags to ensure that those values are being regularly attributed back to the school, and indeed become ingrained in the culture of the school.