School Climate, Front and Center

ASCD Executive Director Gene R. Carter begins his latest Is It Good for the Kids? column by describing a struggling Baltimore high school’s unhealthy climate: chaotic classrooms and hallways, disrespectful and apathetic students, rampant truancy, and dismal turnout by parents and guardians at events like back-to-school night.

It is any wonder that 50 percent of the school’s 9th graders drop out by the end of their first year and student test scores are well below state averages?

Carter emphasizes that it takes a "whole school" to nurture a "whole child" who is knowledgeable, emotionally and physically healthy, civically inspired, and ready for the world beyond formal schooling. He describes a whole school as one that “collaborates with its community to deliberately build and sustain a positive school climate.”

The Center for Social and Emotional Education’s National School Climate Center and the Education Commission of the States’ National Center for Learning and Citizenship recently released The School Climate Challenge (PDF), a white paper that underscores the importance of school climate and how that importance is inconsistently reflected in educational policy and practice. Carter’s column highlights recommendations from the white paper that will help schools create positive climates that are capable of nurturing the whole child. These suggestions include taking the pulse of the school’s current climate, using school climate evaluation results to develop and implement an improvement plan, incorporating school climate measures into a richer accountability system, and promoting community participation in improvement efforts.

Here at Inservice, we'd like to know whether and how your school is measuring school climate and using this to set in motion a schoolwide improvement process. What are the challenges or barriers that complicate students, families and school personnel working together to improve school climate? Has your school found ways to overcome those challenges?

Comments

[saba shaikh khan]

An interesting and a very workable approach by Mr Carter...I would particularly blame the problem of kids dropping out of school to oblivious parents...the progenitors will make the most essential participants of the positive School Climate.

[Agustavia Tatum]

Wow, it sounds like the Boston school system may need revamping. I agree that to solve this problem there has to be cooperation between all parties involved. All parties would also include parents.

[Sayali Shirgaonkar]

As Carter stated above, it takes a whole school, a whole community, to nurture a whole child. Many of the problems rest in the community itself. Taking walks around schools around DC, we have found that liquor stores, adult entertainment, and tobacco and alcohol advertisements line the stores on the way from home to school. The first thing about envisioning a healthy lifestyle, the key to academic success, is to remove the negative influences from a child's life. Although they cannot be completely removed, they can be reduced (if we do something about it).

The second thing a child needs is a social circle, a positive support group, that regularly interacts with the child or adolescent. I was just reading about reading programs and their chief influence pertaining to academic success. Parents need to read with their children. Atleast 10% of daily conversations at home need to incorporate topics about school. These little steps have been proven to encourage healthy growth and behavior. Consequently, negative peer pressure, which is uniquitious in bad neighborhoods and inevitable everywhere, will have a child confront smoking, drinking, gambling, or sexual activity, who will resist these tendencies if they have a social circle of support.

Thirdly, professional development must be a part of every child's academic life. Whether local businesses decide to support fundraisers, recruit for internships, or provide guest speakers, something has to be done. Having a glimpse of a career in their future will boost their will to learn and benefit from it. My research on professional development in schools has yielded few results. There needs to be more interaction between schools and businesses. Businesses also need to take direct involvement in designing the cirriculum in vocational and technical schools. What good is attending school if the skills don't help you in today's world?

Lastly, climate within school has to be altered. Classrooms can be arranged to encourage social development between teachers, peers, and students. Parents should be required to attend Parent Teacher Conferences and Meetings and encouraged to chaperone for field trips. Taking a little time off work to support their child should not harm their work life, and employers should provide their employees time specifically to get involved in their child's school. If a Parent Teacher Conference requires a day off, employers should be required to give it to them.

[Jonathan cohen]

I agree that so many of our K-12 schools have a climate that does not support students, families and school personnel feeling safe, 'connected' and engaged.

I would very much value learning what people (teachers, administrator and parent/family leaders are doing to promote sustained and positive school climates. When we do so, we really are creating a climate for learning and positive youth development.

[Jessica Johnson]

Socioeconomic differences really play a large role in our school. There is such a difference in the families that trust our staff with their children. We have families where the mothers do not work, and spend their days shopping. On the other hand, we have single parents who work so much, just to make ends meet, that they have very limited amount of time with the children.
Our school struggles with parents. We have some wonderful parents that participate in activities, show up for the orientation and curriculum nights, and always give their children the attention and help they need to have from home. But what about the parents who do not come to school, do not answer the phone when we call, or do not give the children any attention when they come home from school?
While the students are under our care, the staff at my school sees to it that they are taken care of. We have many opportunities for them to feel like they are a part of something wonderful, whether it is at home or school. Our school works hard to get the students involved in activities, groups, and even have small group counseling for them to be a part of. The teachers I work with really try to incorporate exciting, hands on, and memorable experiences into our teaching. We want the students to feel happy about attending our school, and we work really hard to make that possible.

[Margo/Mom]

Jessica--it sounds like your school is doing many things right. Let me just say, however, that as a parent, I have struggled often with my kids' schools. This includes things like not letting parents know about scheduled orientation nights or conferences until after they had already occurred, not answering the phone, calling home to leave a voice-mail instead of calling at work to announce an attendance-required meeting about my child (tomorrow). I have also had teachers willing to use email, to recommend helpful programs, to see my child's talents and abilities as well as deficits.

Some of the answers to building better home-school relationships are simple things, but nonetheless far less practiced than would be helpful. Make intial communication positive (and personalized). You are building a relationship. Be wary of typecasting parents based on little bits that you know about them. Don't attack. Parents of difficult kids may very well be just as stressed out by them as you are--better to find ways to support one another than to assign blame. Think about what you want from every event and interaction. Why do you have parent-teacher conferences? This is not rhetorical. Think about what you hope to accomplish and whether the way that they are organized is the best way to accomplish it. What do parents want? Not what do you think they need--what do they want? You have to be able to listen.

I have worked with parents, especially low-income parents, outside of schools for a long time. It is surprising to me how much schools and teachers are missing by not being able to build better relationships with the parents of their students. It really is worth the effort--but it cannot be done without some willingness to change.

[Marthe Jones]

At my school we also have challenges with students' behavior. To make matters worst sometimes parents and guardians don't support the school's staff. Therefore, the students do not see the school as a place to respect. My principal holds assemblies to talk to the students about why the school should be cherished. When we have programs at the school such as a talent show which we tend to get our highest parental turnout, my principal takes that opportunity to also talk to the parents about why we all have to work together to improve the school's climate. There must be a no tolerance policy installed at Baltimore High School in order to begin the process of measuring school climate.

[Jonathan cohen]

Hi Marthe,

I am curious why you suggest that a school must adapt a no tolerance policy to begin the process of measuring school climate.

There are two reasons why I raise this question. On the one hand, there is a growing body of research (most recently from a ten year study conducted by the American Psychological Association) that “no tolerance” policies have little impact. And, on the other hand, when school do measure climate in a comprehensive manner (recognizing student, family and school personnel “voice” as well as all of the major dimensions that scholars and practitioners believe shape the quality and character of school life) we all learn about what is and is not “working”. This includes information about how all members of the school community feel safe – socially and emotionally as well as physically – in ways that can help us build on whatever violence related policies and practices we have.

[James E. Mac Shane]

The educational problems that are being focused upon in this article are natural consequences of the basic formal and informal education systems. Unavoidably the village does create the child.

The child's purity at birth experiences their total environment at both the positive and negative levels. At the survival development level each child makes positive and negative choices that creates the persons that they become. It is this self creation process that education needed to scientifically understand.

The need is to understand when and how to create a natural educational environment that will as positively as possible facilitate the natural human intellectual development and self-creation process. Scientifically it is now understood that human viable human learning consciousness begins at 2 1/2 to 3 years of age.

By nature the present education system is an externally motivated elimination process. The search is for therapeutic solutions for the general education problems not natural developmental solutions.

In 1830 the U.S. assimilated this exclusionary system and tryed to make it work for the natural intellectual development of all children. Educators have been struggling with that contradiction of control ever since.

[Vanessa A. Camilleri]

I work at a charter school in inner-city Washington DC and we are entering our third year of using a school-wide Social/emotional learning initiative which is comprehensive and purposeful.

To that end, we do assess school climate and have used the results to assess what areas need to be targeted for further improvement.

We believe at our school that social and emotional health in the adults and children lead to academic improvement, professional satisfaction and overall development of positive school climate.

We have seen a decrease in teacher turn-over as well as suspensions and in addition, improved standardized test scores and attendance.

It is clear that attention to the social and emotional development of our children and staff will have life-long implications.

[kaf1052]

I believe that the high school experience has never been what is best for students but what is best for teachers, coaches and administrators!

What is best for students is a curriculum that is well integrated in an environment that breeds honest and positive collaboration. Instead, we have encouraged competition, individualism and dishonesty.

I am all for sports to keep kids involved in school but we have gone too far for far too long!

In my school district, all of the social studies teachers are hired because they can coach and not because they teach well. A vice principal talks in the locker-room about cheerleaders "boobs and butts" and tells everyone outside the locker room that he imposes the strictest of codes.

We encourage these people to be this way, we encourage students to follow their example. We should be ashamed! No one has the courage to really focus on what is best for students and we run our schools as they have always been run. Creatures of habit need to get with the program and embrace change! Changing school climate will not be easy and people will resist, but it needs to be done for our students' sake!