How-To Guide: 6 Steps To A Positive School Climate & Culture
How-To Guide: 6 Steps To A Positive School Climate & Culture
How-To Guide: 6 Steps To A Positive School Climate & Culture
6 Steps to
a Positive School
Climate & Culture
6
A school with a struggling or
The culture of a negative culture may experience
school can have a increases in behavior referrals and
decreases in school attendance.
profound impact on
student learning This, in turn, takes away from students’ instructional time, which can
lead to declines in academic achievement. To turn things around,
and academic school leaders and teachers may launch initiatives to track student
behaviors on Excel spreadsheets or to reward positive behaviors with
achievement. incentives like school “dollars” … but something just isn’t adding up.
In schools of all shapes and sizes, it’s not uncommon for culture to
be the elephant in the room that goes untouched. Even with the
most talented, dedicated teachers and school leaders, culture can be
difficult to change. One major reason for this is that the right tools
simply weren’t available.
UNTIL NOW.
This guide will walk you through the key steps necessary to turn
around or improve your school’s culture, and transform it into one
that is consistently positive and measurable.
6 1
6 Steps to a Positive
School Climate & Culture
BEYOND THESE STEPS, YOU WILL FIND TIP SHEETS AND HELPFUL HINTS YOU CAN USE ALONG THE WAY.
1
Can you see behind the
classroom door?
STEP 1 To truly grasp the state of your school culture (within a single school or
Collect &
the entire district), data needs to be at the center of all your
decision-making. It may not be tidy yet, but you already have mountains
of data that will help you identify the core challenges your school leaders
Analyze
and teachers may be facing in regard to behavior.
Your Data
ANALYZING CULTURE USING DATA.
In this example, we’ll use the data you have to make a direct correlation
between your school culture and students’ academic performance.
· First, collect all of the behavioral data your school already has. This
may include data such as positive rewards, scholar dollars, referrals,
time out of the classroom, suspensions and anything else teachers may
be tracking.
You should see that there is a direct correlation between the number of
DATA IS ESSENTIAL infractions, total minutes missed, and how your school is performing
With the right mindset, you’ll be academically.
able to use it to establish clear
goals to help you reinvigorate When you look at your school data in this way, it’s easy to see how student
behavior can affect student performance. The good news is that you
your school culture.
now have data that makes this problem tangible – and manageable.
Lowery Elementary
25,395
First, she collected the data she had available and found that her school had
over 1,900 infractions during the 2012-2013 school year. By talking to her
teachers she found that over 1,600 of those infractions occurred in the
classroom – and that number equated to 25,395 total minutes of instruction
missed. Her teachers told her that many of the infractions were a result of
TOTAL MINUTES MISSED
willful disobedience, threats to authority and disturbances in the school.
BEFORE POSITIVE CHANGE
By analyzing the behavior data in this way, Dawn knew that to increase student
performance she had to decrease the number of infractions, so students were
spending more time in the classroom rather than in the principal’s office.
When teachers began using a system to
reward students with points for positive
To achieve this, Dawn implemented an Instructional Management
behaviors each day, they saw behavioral Solution (IMS) to support the school’s Response to Intervention (RTI)
infractions decrease significantly, which programs for academics and behavior, and to allow teachers to track student
created a big shift in the school culture. data in real time.
Team and a
Leadership Team.
Mission
your mission to turn around your school(s)’ culture. This
team will help you lead the charge to motivate the staff
and ensure the success of your positive school culture
Statement
plan (Step 4).
1 2 3
Make sure that teachers Make certain that every
Equip teachers with understand they are staff member understands
the right tools and supported by leadership, they are there to support
supports so they can who will work with them the teachers, since teachers
succeed. to do whatever it takes to are the ones making sure
help them continue to get students achieve success
better and better at each and every day.
teaching.
3 4
STEP 3 Once you’ve assembled your
Culture Leadership Team, it’s
Conduct a time to rally your teachers!
Needs The best way to gain faculty support is to gain deep insight into where
and how your teachers need help.
Assessment Start with a survey. A culture survey will give you a clear
understanding of your staff’s readiness to commit to creating a
positive school culture. What’s more, a survey will allow your
teachers to provide feedback at a time that’s convenient for them.
Develop Your
your school(s)’ behavior problems, the next step is to
develop an action plan. Where should you start?
Positive
With trackable and quantifiable goals!
Set goals that are
Culture Plan quantifiable. You want to be
able to measure progress
every step of the way!
Your Culture Leadership Team should pick out goals that
align with trackable behaviors so it’s easy to pull together
progress reports and regular check-ins.
key milestones to reach your goals. It’s okay to start small! Schools
find it most successful to pick one
Depending upon your goals, milestones could occur every day, week,
success measure they want to
month, quarter or semester. You will want to set them often enough so you
track. Once you have your staff on
know if you need to re-evaluate your plan, but far enough apart so you board and you know what works
have the data you need to gauge the degree of success achieved. for your school, add more success
measures you want to track.
For example, if your goal is to improve the positivity ratio
(see sidebar) by the end of the school year, you may set a milestone to increase
the ratio by a factor of 1 at the end of each marking period.
Culture
Managing behavior data would be nearly impossible in real
time if you tried to track it using paper and/or Excel
spreadsheets.
Long-Term
real-time, actionable insights you will be fully
prepared to continuously monitor your school’s
progress toward your goals.
Success Tips
decisions. You can even add this focus to your
Professional Learning Communities.
ensuring the system you’ve behavioral data throughout the day. In doing so,
you’ll always be aware when positive and negative
implemented will work. behaviors are occurring, so you can intervene early
and prevent bigger problems later.