Summer Institute 2012
Promoting Safe, Healthy, Engaged and Democratic K-12 School Communities
July 13, 2012 – Post Institute Workshop (optional): Creating a School Climate that Engages the Gifts and Talents of Students with Learning Disabilities
The National School Climate Center’s Summer Institute is grounded in the notion that effective and equitable school reform must honor and support the whole child and the whole school community.
This three-day Institute is designed to support school, district and state teams, as well as other school, family and community leaders, in developing school climate improvement plans. We will focus on how to create plans to promote equitable, safe, caring, and civil schools that support positive youth development, student learning/achievement and Up¬stander behavior (the inclination and ability to say “no” to bully-victim behavior).
The Institute’s overarching goal is to support the development of school climate improvement plans that actualize the National School Climate Standards. These Standards support K-12 school communities working and learning together to address four essential questions:
- What is our school community’s vision for the kind of school we want ours to be?
- How can we develop school policies and/or systems of support for the shared vision?
- How can we collaboratively develop practices, programs and community supports and sustain our shared vision, rules and policies?
- How can school communities ensure that equity issues are a vital, integral, and effective aspect of school climate improvement efforts?
A growing body of empirical research demonstrates that effective school climate improvement efforts increase student achievement, reduce high school drop out rates, prevent violence, and promote students’ healthy development. As a result, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention recommends school climate reform as a data-driven strategy that promotes healthy relationships, school connectedness, and dropout prevention. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) includes school climate as a strategy for drop out prevention. And, the U.S Department of Education recommends school climate reform as an evidence-based strategy to prevent violence.
Promoting equitable schools will be an explicit and new focus for our 15th annual summer institute. Although issues of equity and diversity have always been important aspects of NSCC’s work, this has been an implicit aspect of our teaching and learning. This year, we will focus on a series of explicit and essential questions throughout the Institute. These questions include: What is an ‘equitable’ school? If student, educational, parent and community leaders are truly committed to equity, how can and should this shape our understandings of the tasks and challenges within the five stage school climate improvement process? How do I interact with others in ways that either promote or interfere with their feeling empowered? How has my experience of privilege/lack of privilege in a variety of ways shaped the way I see policy and practice in schools? And, what civil rights laws (and their historical context) may play a role in understanding/ promoting, for example, "equitable school climate?"
The Institute will provide research-based school climate and instructional guidelines, “best practices”, and resources for school teams and individuals to reflect on and enhance current practice. We will support individuals and teams to develop new or enhance existing plans that promote equitable, healthy and democratically informed schools in general and reduce bully-victim-bystander behavior in particular.
Attendees will receive a number of text-based and on-line practice and policy resources, which provide guidelines and tools to support leadership teams and school communities in addressing the tasks and challenges that define each of the five stages of the school climate improvement process. Additionally, research resources and best practice materials from the educational equity community will be included.
Strand meetings: This year we will focus on four strands that emphasize (1) school safety; (2) promoting healthy relationships; (3) engaged learning/teaching; and, (4) advancing school climate improvement and social, emotional and civic (SEC) learning through individuals and/or teams. The first three strands incorporate core school climate dimensions. The last strand is designed for people who have attended a past summer institute and/or have been actively involved with this work for some time. Your strand group will serve as a “home base” for you to explore and share challenges, strategies, and effective practices with others in similar organizational roles.
Throughout the Institute, five essential questions are asked:- What are we doing now and how does this overlap with what is being presented?
- What are the possible next steps that build on past and current efforts?
- What does it mean to create and enhance equitable school? In other words, how can and should an equity focus shape our school climate improvement efforts?
- As I/we learn from and contribute to others’ learning, how can I/we integrate and sustain equitable school climates? (5) How can we develop SMART goals that support effective next steps instructionally and/or systemically?
- A school climate improvement model and implementation strategy that recognizes and mobilizes the whole school community to support the whole child.
- Formative assessments that support you – as an individual or a team – understanding “where are we now?” and “what are next steps that may be most useful to consider?” as you continue building effective school climate improvement efforts.
- Recent research and best practices in social, emotional, and civic education and school climate improvement efforts that support effective bully/harassment prevention, pro-Upstander behavior, and student engagement and academic achievement.
- Practical classroom, school-wide, and school-home-community interventions and tools that support equity, safety, engagement, supportive and respectful relations and democratically informed communities.
- The range of ways that we can and need to engage youth as leaders and how we—as adults -- can model strategies that support student engagement/ leadership.
- What other classroom, building, district and state leaders are doing to support evidence-based school climate reform (strand meetings).
- How school leaders embarking on or continuing school climate improvement efforts can promote equity within social, emotional and civic learning and democratically informed school communities.
This institute will support required training for school staff on state and federal laws designed to provide students with an educational experience free from harassment and discrimination. This includes state laws such as The Dignity for All Students Act in New York, and anti-bullying laws in New Jersey and other states.
This institute supports requirements of The Dignity for All Students Act, including training about anti hate and harassment policy development, staff professional development, student instruction on civility, citizenship and character education, and responding to equity-related violations of the code of conduct.
