Norms in My Educational Communities

So far, I've got:

1. I love KSTF's norms.  They are fantastic!  
2. I have control over the norms in my classroom, therefore I am going to ensure that there are positive norms in place.

And now, I've got norms in my educational communities.  This is the one I have probably thought the most about, and feel like I know the least about.  I am eager to understand the "what's going on here" of norms in my educational communities.

First off, I am a part of lots of educational communities, code.org, MTBoS, KSTF, CSTA-MN... and for the most part I am a part of all of these communities because I appreciate the norms in those communities.  I choose to participate in those communities because of their norms.  

But the biggest educational community I am part of is in my school.  Even within my school there are tons of sub-communities: PLCs, departments, committees.  Furthermore, the norms in each of these sub-communities impact each other.  In short, it is complicated.

I know there are the 7 norms of collaboration that every educator has seen in a power point at some time - and they are great norms.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with them.  But putting a list of norms in front of someone and actually having those norms valued and practiced are two different things.  Norms exist regardless of if they are stated or written down somewhere, which made me think, what are the norms that my department and school has? 

One of my goals this year is to better understand the norms already in place at my school and department. I wonder how I can tackle this.  Are there ways to think about different types of norms?  There are norms around communication, collaboration, and decision making.  What other categories of norms exist out there?

Even when thinking about communication, collaboration, and decision making, there are a lot of questions to be considered!  For example...

Communication:

• How do we communicate? In person? Via e-mail? How often?
• When do we communicate?
• What do we communicate about?  What is "worth" sharing?
• Who talks and who listens?  Who is invited?
• How do we know when people are listening?
• What do we expect interactions to look/sound like during meetings?  During lunch?  In the hall?

Collaboration:

• What transactional collaboration is taking place? Who is doing it? What are their motives?
• What transformational collaboration is taking place? Who is doing ti? What are their motives?
• What types of collaboration is sought out? Tranactional vs. transformational? Between courses?  Between departments?
• What time is provided/created for collaboration?
• Who decides who collaborates?
• How does collaboration in one layer of an educational communities impact collaboration? 

Decision Making:

• What decisions are made about curriculum, instruction, policies? How and where are they made?
• Who is invited into the decision making process and who invites them?
• What decisions need to be made by the whole department/building and what decisions are left to be made by other sub-communities?
• What happens when someone disagrees with a decision?

Moving forward, I wonder what other norms our department has around the values of our department or the propose of teaching in general (and math specifically).  I keep thinking back to Taylor Williams (@MrWilliamsSTEM) who shared one of his school's documents on "What is Math at our school?" which explained values of their department.  I have long wondered what such a conversation like this would yield in my department.  Furthermore, after reading Why School? by Mike Rose for KSTF, I have wondered what our building would say the purpose of school is.  How would having these conversations help us better formulate norms for our educational communities?

For KSTF this year, I am looking at norms in my educational communities and as I explore what norms already exist in my department/school, I wonder what norms other people see.  I wonder if I am too close to the data to really be able to make sense of the data.  I wonder what assumptions I already have.  I wonder how an outsider would make sense of the same data.