Schoolwide culture shift

School doesn’t have to be toxic. A lot of what makes school awful doesn’t have to be there… Institutions that feel permanent get rebuilt all the time. And you think there’s no way to change school?

We've collected strategies from on field-tested research, CIA counterterrorist orgs, Mean Girls, and interviews with students, teachers, and experts on culture change worldwide.

Play toxic vibes bingo to find the perfect solution for your school or choose a strategy here yourself:

The Common Enemy

School turns into a jungle because it’s everyone for themselves. There’s no OUTSIDE FORCE that you need to UNIFY AGAINST.

There will be less fights/toxicity/boredom if you have something in common with each other, like destroying the fuck out of your rivalry school in Kahoot.

That’s right. During long lunch and pep rallies you’re gonna be going head to head with OTHER PEOPLE you have beef with. If you need to pitch it as a learning thing to get admin to buy in, you can collaboratively build the Kahoots with teachers from another school so you make sure the content is relevant for everyone. This can be an activity everyone can do for cash prizes, or it can be a pep rally where the school’s cheering on the most elite academic weapons in the building. I’m talking about five people from the math team teaming up with five people in the regular math class to take on the same type of group from another school.

Everyone will be watching. Then the math team plays basketball against the field hockey team. Trust. It’ll be insanely fun. We can help you find an opponent school and get everything set up - shoot us an email.

Why does this stuff work? When you put people in CROWDS or RANDOM GROUPS, you remove STATUS and POWER from the equation. You equalize.

Any idea like that will be a game changer. Take a minute to think of fun, simple activities like this one that you could run at school!

The common enemy can be the education system. Everyone wants urinal dividers, ice cream, better classes, access to the damn microwave… Make this a COLLECTIVE FIGHT that the students are COLLABORATING TO WIN, and you’ll give people things to talk about besides how much beef they have with each other.

[Coming soon - The national myth]

The Economist

[Coming soon: Exploit the economics of school, get grants, tiktok absences—for now you can read doorstopeducation.org/doorstops/money]

The Outlet

Fights every day at school? What if there was another (silly) way to release aggression.

I’m talking about shaving cream fights. I’m talking about a room where any two people can go, put on complimentary oversized T-Shirts, and spray shaving cream all over each other.

It’s the best man. It’s not going to resolve every fight, but ideas like this—silly, not expensive, accessible—are the first steps to culture shift.

The second step is privileges: cool shit people can do if they don’t get into fights. Access to a mini-waffle maker, anyone? They’re only $10 and it's easy to get waffle mix. Make access to the shaving cream room a privilege. Transparency and collaboration is critical to making this work. It’s not healthy to TAKE AWAY the waffle maker when someone does a bad thing, but if you make it clear that you want everyone to be able to enjoy the waffle maker, and you can always earn your waffle rights back, that’s awesome.

If this stuff is working at your school, you have evidence. And that’s invaluable: you can press admin for more funding for larger scale change.

If you like this idea, you can also give students the opportunity to teach gym class or science or whatever they’re into for a day.

The Man to Man

[Coming soon - How to make friends on the football team]

The Referent

Is there a loud human in one of your classes?—When they’re absent, does everyone NOTICE because the vibe is so different? Psychologists call these people who influence everyone around them social referents, and they are at the center of every social network.

Referents are at the heart of culture change because if you change how they act, their friends (if they’re the captain of the football team) or their followers (if they’re the “it” girl) will follow.

Want to see it in action? Who’d you ask on the football team to get every player to wear red tomorrow? Once you have a list of who that person is in every social group, read on.

Check out this comprehensive playbook on how to create a system that changes all of their minds and gets them fighting to end the toxic cultural norm you see. It’s been done at 56 middle schools and we’re bringing it to high schools. It’s about clout.

The clout chase

Bullies, the people being hateful in toxic groupchats, the people condescending at you in the hallways—they are the minority.

They’re popular, but they’re not the most popular. And they preserve their social status by hurting the people below them.

This means beating them just takes UNIFYING THE CLIQUES. Not an all out food fight in the cafeteria, you just need to convince people to make small changes. That’ll be enough. “HI” is the central status game in most schools.

Who they say hi to in the hallway. When popular non-bullies start saying hi to more people in the halls, genuinely, they create a status symbol, giving it to people lower on the hierarchy)
Share hydroflasks full of ice cream. This is a great way to make friends with people from other friend groups and a great way for them to act with others. Don’t invite the bullies to the ice cream party.
Gum. Same idea. Can’t afford it? We’ll venmo you, just send us a picture back with proof you bought it.

If you go from lunch table to lunch table pitching different ways of saying hi, things miiiight not go great. The friend group dynamics you’re jumping into might not be ~conducive~ to listening, empathy, or action.

If you go talk to people one-on-one instead, maybe the most approachable person from each friend group, you’d be able to better connect. But how will others perceive that? How do you avoid getting mixed into drama when the campus sees you pulling so many people aside to talk?

Short answer: practice first. PLAY THE POST IT NOTE GAME WITH YOUR FRIENDS:

Find 12 colors of post-it notes. Or just 12 things. Or if there’s seven of you, seven things you have a lot of.

Everybody is trying to get their post-it color worn by the most people. Play for five minutes.

Then go again. This time, half the people have no post it note on their own and no incentive to win. There will only be TWO COLORS. The other half of the people get split into two groups, each selling their color.

AGAIN: do this in a class with a strict teacher. Try and pass blank post-it notes to as many students as you can without the teacher noticing.

Why? You’ll learn to pitch your ideas to friends—then to other students—in difficult social situations.

The mediator

You have no leverage on your own. Skipping a class you hate is a fart in the wind. As STUDENTS, together, you’re unstoppable. If you don’t show up until the disgusting bathrooms get fixed, or if you agree to use your phones less in exchange for the school offering cooler classes…

All we’re saying is you can bargain. Here’s how.

The long game

Achieving long term change takes answering three questions:

WHO HAS POWER?

Since 1932, Thailand has been through 12 coups, or sudden seizures of state power. Why do they keep happening?

Part of it is geography. Power is centralized in Bangkok, so conquering the rest of the country isn’t necessary. Control Bangkok, control the country. Easy!

In your school, say the school board is Bangkok. How do you get good people on it capable of achieving long term change? Who elects the board?

WHO CONTROLS THE CHOKE POINTS?

In 1917 Russia, a coup was stopped in its tracks when the railwaymen’s union refused to operate rail carrying soldiers. They controlled movement through the country, making them incredibly powerful even though they had no political or military influence themselves.

In schools, controlling choke points is usually collective: for change to happen, all teachers have to go on strike, most students have to protest. But one technician can be enough to disable a system. Who’s the secretary that’s really doing half the work running the school? Who’s buying the scantrons you need for the awful state exam? It would be so unfortunate to lose those.

WHERE DO YOU GET LEGITIMACY?

Say you want that protest to happen. Maybe the dress code is awful. Maybe there’s a culture of harassment at parties. The first problem you might run into is apathy: sure, it sucks, but nobody cares enough to do anything about it.

If you go from lunch table to lunch table pitching a protest or seeding some social change, the friend group dynamics you’re jumping into might not be ~conducive~ to listening, empathy, or action.

What if you’re negotiating with a teacher, or with your principal? Legitimacy comes from having data and knowing what the other person wants. Want a salad bar or a waffle maker? First ask, What percentage of kids eat nothing during lunch? If the principal’s goal is to reduce absenteeism to get more grant funding, how can you frame your waffle pitch as bringing more kids back to school?

The extra mile

From negotiating with your admin on your behalf to bringing celebrities into your school to clown on bullies to literally paying a handyman to walk in and fix your bathrooms, we can help. Email ben@fix.school with your problem.

We build more Doorstops every day. Have an issue in mind you want us to work through next?