On November 20, 2025, the National School Climate Center held our 29th Anniversary Celebration. At the event, our Co-Executive Director, Dr. Christian Villenas, opened the evening by sharing his experience with school and his motivation for getting involved in NSCC. We invite you to read Christian’s speech or watch it below.
Good evening, everyone.
It’s a joy to welcome you to the National School Climate Center’s 29th Anniversary celebration. Tonight isn’t just a milestone. It’s a recommitment to the promise that every child deserves a school that is safe, engaging, inclusive, and equitable.
My connection to this work began long before my career. I was born with a disability and raised in public housing to parents for whom English was not their first language. The assumptions tied to those labels placed me in a separate special-education setting, cut off in ways that shaped how I saw myself and what I thought school expected of me.
Even in such places, a single adult can change everything.
One teacher did. She saw possibility where others saw limits. She challenged me, and made learning feel alive after years of feeling sidelined. And when she realized the system’s view of me didn’t match what she saw in the classroom, she helped move me to an environment where I could succeed. It was the first time anyone in school responded to what I could do instead of what they assumed I couldn’t.
I didn’t have the language for it then, but I understand it now: a healthier school would have questioned the assumptions that put me there, mine didn’t. And once I was placed there, the environment deepened the harm. I didn’t belong, and it showed in the low expectations, the isolation, and the sense that no one was looking for what I could do.
That experience made one truth undeniable: the conditions a school creates shape who a student believes they can be. That’s what we now call school climate. It isn’t a program or a policy. It’s felt every day. It’s the way a school’s relationships, expectations, and supports shape whether a child feels they can safely learn, belong, and grow.
Those early moments stayed with me because they showed what the right conditions can create. Pursuing those conditions for every student has guided my work ever since and shaped my path to a Ph.D. It is also what makes NSCC indispensable.
Our partnership with Special Olympics is one example. Together, we’ve built one of the strongest bodies of research linking school climate and social inclusion. And for me, this isn’t abstract. My early education was shaped by exclusion. This work raises the same questions I wondered as a child: Who gets welcomed? Who receives support? Who is left behind? These questions drive our work at NSCC.
For nearly thirty years, NSCC has given the field something rare: a coherent, evidence-based way to understand how environments shape academic, social, and emotional development, and tools that help schools act on that knowledge every day. We’ve helped schools see that relationships, norms, safety, and inclusion are not just “nice to have.” They give learning its strength and stability.
None of this happens by accident. It happens because the NSCC team shows up with rigor, humility, and commitment. Their work is meticulous, often quiet, but transformative.
Without NSCC, educators would still care about belonging and safety, but without a guiding framework, their efforts would pull in different directions. Schools would measure different things, interpret results differently, and pursue programs without purpose.
Without NSCC, the bridge between research and practice would weaken. Few organizations stand in both worlds the way we do, grounded in evidence and responsive to what happens inside schools.
Without NSCC, the moral center of this movement would fade. For nearly three decades, we’ve reminded people that school climate isn’t an add-on. It’s the foundation for equity, engagement, and learning. When that truth is lost, schools slide back toward checklists and test prep, and the human conditions that make learning real fall out of focus.
We need that clarity now more than ever.
We’re living in a time marked by rising student mental-health challenges, polarization, and teacher burnout. With fewer resources, schools are being asked to rebuild trust, repair connections, and help young people navigate a fractured world. School climate determines not only how students learn, but how communities learn to live together. And that is why NSCC exists: strengthening communities, one school at a time.
Your support tonight is not just generosity. It is continuity. It sustains the movement Dr. George Igel, our co-founder and tonight’s honoree, first imagined: a movement where data and empathy shape the same work, where teachers feel valued, and every student feels seen, heard, and safe.
Tonight, we also celebrate a community that brings this vision to life.
The Capitol Region Education Council of Hartford shows what it looks like when school climate is a shared commitment. CREC’s educators and leaders bring climate to life every day, in how they welcome, listen, include, and model respect. Their students help define problems, shape solutions, and move forward with kindness and empathy. At CREC, student voice isn’t just a survey response. It strengthens their community. That is why they are this year’s School Climate Catalyst Award recipients.
Before we bring them up, we want you to see their story. This short video from CREC shows exactly why their work stands out, and why we are proud to recognize them tonight.
Thank you to all of our supporters and our tremendous board, thank you for believing not just in what schools teach, but in what they can become, and for helping ensure that twenty-nine years of progress anchors the next generation.
Please support this important work by making a contribution here.
