What Is Organizational Silence at School?

Hey, Teachers!

Are you suffering from organizational silence?

Struggling because you have to stay "quiet" about important issues on the job? 🫢

In many school settings, both in-person and online, teachers face negative experiences and subsequent challenges of topdown management within administration which often means decisions are made for us instead of with our input or vote.

How can you develop a stronger voice as a teacher without becoming a target for non-compliance, or worse? 

Following is a quick explanation of "organizational silence", how it might be affecting your school culture, and a FEW TIPS for beginning to cultivate teacher voice on the job.🎙

"Organizational silence" is part of school culture, and many of us suffer from it to some degree. It's the stuff that keeps us quiet when we should be able to speak; it's when we're told to comply and follow the rules because topdown management made decisions we didn't vote for (or went with options we may not have chosen). 🤔

Organizational silence can be isolating and painful. When teachers don't feel like they can speak out about school-level decisions, feel fear and trepidation related to school policies or changes, experience true lack of support and negative repercussions when seeking that support, and risk becoming a target or getting "written up" for sharing new ideas or disagreeing with supervisor views...teachers are experiencing the downfalls and destruction of organizational silence. 

When we feel threatened by having to "stay quiet" about an important issue, this can be extremely difficult and cause ethical, even moral conflict, for us as educators. 

Organizational silence "puts the brakes" on real school harmony and cohesion. It divides rather than unites teachers and stakeholders. It also makes us feel devalued, especially when we are required to "stay quiet" about a situation involving students we are teaching, at the command of administrators who are in charge of those outcomes and who influence what we can or can't do in that situation. 

Organizational silence also asks us to be creative when rectifying the disconnect between what we value and what the school is doing because often, what we would hope to see is what would truly benefit our students.

Organizational silence, in short, is the absence of investing in human capital in a school setting. When the organization does not invest in us as stakeholders, this causes us to recoil and retreat, diminishing opportunities for flourishing and thriving as a school community.

What do we do about organizational silence as teachers?

We may not be able to create quick, widespread positive change at our school site, but we can begin with these two powerful premises:

 1. Getting in touch with your own personal teaching philosophy...What is that personal teaching philosophy you penned years ago? Have your beliefs stayed the same? Have they changed based on experience? If you haven't written a teaching philosophy yet, what are the basic tenets that would also define who you are as a teacher and align with your strong ethics and views of excellent teaching, and the purpose of teaching?

Revisit your personal teaching philosophy. Your beliefs ground you as an educator apart from any mandates, laws, or policies you must adhere to professionally that you may or may not agree with personally. Often, we face disconnect between our beliefs and values and what's going on at school--or at the state level.

Defining and maybe even redefining our personal teaching philosophies helps to remind us why we went into this profession in the first place. It's important to revisit who we are inside as teachers. 💜

2. Finding other teachers who also want to improve the school culture for all staff involved...Depending on how disconnected your school culture is, how much fear you share related to topdown management, and how quiet teachers have to be without causing problems that affect job performance evaluations and overall well-being on the job, if you are concerned about improving school culture...

It starts with us, the teachers.

This means we need to find and start communicating with other teachers who also want to see certain changes in communication, decision-making, and overall "health" among working relationships at the school site. Working together at a grassroots level can bring about long-lasting change for the betterment of all, but we have to start by talking about our concerns with trusted teacher colleagues who also share the same values and vision, want to listen, and have hope about what's possible...even within the confines of new state mandates and policies that further reduce teacher autonomy and liberties.

In this process, we know that being non-compliant or defiant as an employee can put our jobs on the line, increase our chances of not being heard, and cause unwanted stress and problems. That's not the road to take. We're not "going rogue" here. What we want to do is cultivate our teacher voice individually and collectively to improve school culture at the staff level.

We want to work slowly and methodically to build trust between teachers and supervisors, so the dialogue supporting change can occur, and steps can evolve that will result in greater cohesion at the school site.

And yes, teachers collectively can do that.

Organizational silence is woven into the fabric of K-12 public education at large. If you're at a school where teacher voice can be shared openly, and your voice positively affects administrative decision-making, you are in an ideal situation.

But many of us have to work within the confines and limitations of organizational silence to do well on our performance evaluations and remain team players while juggling all the challenges and ups and downs of classroom teaching (whether in-person or online).

The best thing we can do is recognize at the ground level, the areas where we have control and can use our voices, and magnify those places and spaces to bring about incremental changes culturally at school.

Staying open-minded and observant when opportunity arises allows us to make a greater impact toward improving status quo conditions and becoming a stronger collective voice for student advocacy.