Whenever I meet up with my brother-in-law during the holidays, he regularly insists we do long cross-country runs in the early morning.
And because I know it’s good for me, I nearly always end up agreeing (even if I end up bleating all the way around about the cold and rain), particularly as we always end the run at my favourite coffee shop.
On our last outing, however, when we crawled into the coffee shop, we were overwhelmed by the smell of toasties.
Now, I do love toasties. But we don’t go to this coffee shop for the toast; we go for a proper cup of over-priced coffee. I like to see the coffee beans heaped up in the hoppers; I want to hear them being ground; and I absolutely want to enjoy the aroma of the coffee!
As usual, our coffee arrived in the same pretentious pottery cups I really like, made by the same barista with the same skill and love, and it tasted the same. However, the experience was completely dislocated by the smell of those new high-margin toasties.
And it wasn’t just the coffee shop experience that felt misaligned; it was the whole get-up-early-to-run-in-the-wet-and-cold experience. This was not what I signed up for.
As the aroma of the coffee shop had changed, so had our experience. Adding toasties to the menu might have been well-intended, but we felt that something fundamental was lost in the process, and we over-dramatically resolved never to return.
So what might this little parable mean for schools?
I’ve had the opportunity to visit a lot of schools over my career, and I can never help myself from rapidly settling on an overall feel that I (personally) have of that school:
- What a welcoming school!
- What a lively school!
- What a pressured school!
- What a compliant school!
- What a stuffy school!
- What an innovative school!
- What a committed school!
Rightly or wrongly,
I’ve often got a feel for the school’s culture before I’ve seen the curriculum. I had a sense of the school’s mission and purpose before I read about it. And I’ve sensed the school’s values even before speaking with staff, students, or parents.
Sometimes when I spend more time at that school, I do end up changing my mind. But more often than not, my initial “feel” for the school is not shifted by self-evaluations, exam results, or their policy documents. That’s not to say the school will not objectively be “outstanding” or “excellent”, or that it is not the school of choice for parents. It just doesn’t feel right…for me.
I guess what I am really trying to say is that schools must pay as much attention to their school experience as they do to their exam results, their systems, or their strategy.
Do students feel safe, seen, and known? Do teachers feel valued, trusted, and supported? Do parents feel welcomed, included, and part of a shared purpose?
If the experience becomes misaligned with its purpose, something will feel off – just like the smell of that burned toast overpowering the aroma of my coffee. Those results may still look strong. The systems may still work. The outcomes may still reassure. But the aroma might be telling us something else.
I think the parable is about paying attention to the small things that shape how a school feels to the people who live and learn in it every day. In our community, that matters because belonging, trust, compassion, and purpose are not produced by systems alone. They are formed from our relationships, our culture, and our daily experiences.
I would like to think that visitors to our school can sense our values and purpose before they ever read about them. That they feel them in the atmosphere, in relationships, in the tone of conversations, in the way people are treated, and in the small, ordinary moments that make up daily life.
And I would hope that if the aroma ever begins to change – if something feels misaligned or off – we might notice it early, and act on it, before it becomes normal, accepted, and invisible.
Serendipities 