Ron Berger on a Teamwork Approach to School Culture

Ron Berger has been teaching for 40 years. He’s the Chief Academic Officer of EL Education and author of some popular books like Leaders of their Own Learning and last year a Companion piece. He's the leading advocate for inviting learners to do quality work. His Models of Excellence, built with Harvard GSE, is a great portfolio of student work that shows what is possible.

Berger and his colleagues recently published a new book called We Are Crew: A Teamwork Approach to School Culture. At EL Education, Crew is the culture and the advisory structure. The new book details secrets to creating great secondary schools that promote academics and character development.

The book describes what EL calls A Culture of Crew: a school culture that supports the interwoven growth of academics and character—performance, ethical, and civic character—throughout the school community.

It also describes what they call The Structure of Crew: EL’s name for the daily advisory meetings that become a student’s “family” at school and supports their positive identity, character, and academic success. (Listen to our conversation here.)

The eight chapters of We Are Crew are shown below:

1. Creating a Culture of Crew
2. Building Staff Crew
3. Creating a Structure of Crew
4. Helping Students Become Effective Learners through Crew
5. Helping Students Become Ethical People through Crew
6. Helping Students Contribute to a Better World through Crew
7. Preparing for the Postsecondary Journey in Crew
8. Improving Crew across the School

There are a handful of videos in support of each chapter on the EL site.

We Are Crew is the best book on building positive school cultures and advisory systems out there--check it out!

For more, see Ron Berger on Helping Students Become Leaders of their Own Learning (2019 podcast).