What is School Climate?

Within the past 20 years, research has made it increasingly clear that school climate, defined as “the quality and character of school life,” profoundly affects student learning and achievement. According to the National School Climate Center, a safe and caring school environment is one in which students feel positively connected to others, feel respected, feel that their work is meaningful, and feel that they are good at what they do. School climate is a group phenomenon that reflects the school community’s norms, goals and values, and school climate emerges based on ways in which students, parents and school staff experience school life.

EducationWorld invites you to explore the following articles related to school climate. As this new content section grows, we invite you to offer your ideas for topics you’d like to read about in the future.
 

Character Lesson: Making a Good Apology
Students explore serious misdeeds in history, learn about the art of making an apology, and then write or critique an apology statement.

Public Speaking Lesson: The Impact of Bullying
Students in grades 9-12 gain public speaking and presentation skills as they educate peers about the important topic of bullying.

Creating a Safe and Connected School Climate
The following excerpt shows teachers and administrators how to create a safe and connected school climate while concurrently implementing a threat assessment program.

Bullying and Cyberbullying: Six Things Teachers Can Do
Author Franklin Schargel offers common-sense advice that empowers educators to reduce future occurrences of bullying and peer mistreatment.

Defusing a Power Struggle
This book excerpt suggests ways in which educators can deal calmly and effectively with tense situations involving angry students.

Compassion and Empathy: School Climate Essentials
Learn about easy ways in which educators can build compassion and empathy into their everyday routines, in order to benefit colleagues, students, the larger school climate and even themselves.

Racial Inequities: What Schools Can Do
During Black History month, don't stop at teaching students about important contributions of African Americans. Consider whether your district is doing all it can to promote equity at the systems level.

Racial Inequities: What Schools Can Do, Part 2
Explore more systems-level strategies--including those related to professional development and instruction--that can eliminate racial inequities in schools.

Accommodating Student Sensory Differences
Dr. Jane Bluestein, expert in school climate and effective instruction, offers helpful tips on adjusting instructional style to ensure the success of every learner.

Survey: Is Your School an Emotionally Safe Place?
Try this powerful exercise for reflecting upon whether school practices--both intentional and unintentional--are helping or hurting your students.

A Lesson in Character: Connect With Yourself
Students learn about the importance of good character and express desired character traits through a personalized art activity.

Lesson to Celebrate Diversity: The Unity Necklace
Students use the activity of building a necklace to learn more about each other and explore diversity.

Be the Boss: A Lesson on Managing Feelings
This charming K-6 lesson creates a safe environment in which students can identify and share their feelings.

Join the Discussion on Bullying
Our educator community featured a lively discussion on the topic of bullying. Learn about best practices and junp inot the conversation.

Jump-Start Your School's Program Evaluation: Part 1
Why waste time and money? With this guide, plan a quality program evaluation to determine what works in your school.

Jump-Start Your School’s Program Evaluation: Part 2
Put your staff's critical thinking skills to the test regarding an often-neglected area of school programming: school climate and social-emotional interventions.

Is Your School Doing "Real" Youth Mentoring?
Mentoring program quality varies widely. Are you doing what it takes to benefit kids?

Simple Advice Takes Aim at Bullying
Here are three key tips for administrators, teachers and parents to prevent bullying and make school a safer and happier place.

Beyond Icebreakers: Building Student Connectedness
Students need to form bonds not only with their classmates, but with the school at large. Those who do show higher achievement.

Bullying Prevention: What Your School May be Missing
In this excerpt from Bullied Teacher: Bullied Student, Les Parsons explains how school bullying prevention approaches fall short.

Bullying Prevention: Understanding Adult Bullying
Part 2 of our excerpts from Bullied Teacher, Bullied Student address adult bullying and how it can impact a school’s culture.

Site Review: Center for Mental Health in Schools
For administrators who want to take a systems-level view of student supports, this site offers extensive resources.

Facebook Joins Team to Banish Bullying
The partnership calls for Facebook and Time Warner to use their clout to raise awareness about online bullying and encourage more people to report abuses when they see them.

Motivating Students: Principals Share Best Ideas
How do savvy administrators keep students motivated to do their best all year? Here are some tried-and-true tactics that principals shared with EducationWorld.

Site Review: InterventionCentral.org
Implementing Response to Intervention well is no small feat, but InterventionCentral puts this complicated model within reach.

Free Bullying Prevention Training for Bus Drivers
The National Association for Pupil Transportation and U.S. Dept. of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools made free professional training available to the school bus industry.

LGBT Adults Serve as Role Models for Students
The Homecoming Project urges successful lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) adults to join its campaign to provide positive role models for LGBT high school students.

Prom Season: Lessons Learned
The stories of students James Tate and Craig Cassey can teach us all something about effective discipline and celebrating diversity. Resource links for administrators and students included.

Site Review: National School Climate Center
As the authoritative voice on all things school climate, the site is definitely one educators can use to plan their school, district’s or state’s next steps.

Prom Playbook: How Schools Can Keep Kids Safe
When it comes to keeping prom safe, not all strategies are created equal. The key is keeping as close an eye on teens as possible and ensuring that they understand the dangers.

Is MTV’s “Teen Mom” Welcome in your Classroom?
What goes through the mind of a teen as he or she watches a television show that shows the hardships—as well as the “star treatment”—experienced by celebrity teen moms? Can a TV show help open fruitful discussion in the classroom?

Lesson Plan Booster: MTV’s “Teen Mom”
This discussion guide for high-school students helps teens think critically about “social norms” messages expressed by “Teen Mom,” a popular television “reality show.”

Your Drug Prevention Program Probably Isn’t Working
Many prevention approaches used—and loved—by schools simply don’t help to change students’ behavior when it comes to using alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. We need to think differently about prevention, and here are a few places to start.

The Best Bullying Prevention Schools Aren’t Doing
We forget to examine the underlying causes of student bullying, says teacher educator and bullying expert Dr. Lyn Mikel Brown. Educators and kids need to get beyond talk of “perpetrators” and “victims” and embrace the complexity that characterizes student-to-student mistreatment.

Stan Davis: Ask Bullied Kids What Helps Them
Bullying prevention expert Stan Davis reminds us that if we want to know what helps kids who have been bullied, we need to ask them. Often the typical adult advice, such as “pretend the bullying doesn’t bother you,” actually does more harm than good.

Lesson Plan Booster: How Can Students Help a Bullied Peer?
This discussion guide for middle- and high-school students helps youth consider the impact of bullying on the school as a whole, and learn about safe ways to help a student who has been mistreated.

Elementary School Gets Flak for ‘Slavery Simulation'
Would students in your school speak up regarding perceived injustice? When a teacher at one school used a “mock slave auction” to make history come alive, some believe a line was crossed. Learn about student leadership practices that might have prevented the “auction” from ever happening.

Michigan On-Court Tragedy Tests School Coping Skills
Following the death of a teen moments after his game-winning basket, faculty, teammates and students in Michigan provide a lesson in coping for schools nationwide. This article discusses best practices for helping students deal with grief.

Stanford University Expert: Effective School Response to Student Death
A Stanford University expert in youth stress reactions offers tips for educators to help them manage the aftermath of a student death. A school’s relationships with local and regional mental health providers are key.

Don’t Just Sit There: Use Detention Wisely
What should students be doing in detention so that they are less likely to end up there again? Ask teachers, and their opinions may be as varied as students themselves. There do seem to be some best practices, however. Educators who spend time actively generating discussion with students and teaching positive behaviors seem to be on the right track.

CT Voices for Children: Do Detentions and Suspensions Work?
Knowing that out-of-school suspensions aren’t effective, a Connecticut-based nonprofit studied alternatives and gathered some great ideas that are working for local schools. The consensus seems to be that if punishment must be given, kids should at least remain in school for it.

 

More resources

Read about the Responsive Classroom approach to connecting with students, parents and the community.

Addressing students’ physical health can also boost academic performance.

Social, emotional and physical safety are hallmarks of positive school climate.

Motivating kids is an ongoing challenge. Explore some great ideas here.

Check out this comprehensive guide that helps elementary school educators as well as school and district administrators develop and implement effective prevention and intervention strategies that promote positive student behavior.

Got classroom behavior challenges? Visit our Classroom Management 101 section for help.

We offer 60 volumes of tips to help teachers manage classrooms effectively.

This tip archive provides helpful advice for dealing with a wide variety of classroom situations.

Read a collection of articles explaining the benefits of smaller class size.