5 Tips for Creating a Positive School Culture

5 Tips for Creating a Positive School Culture

In any job or professional space, having a positive culture impacts the work experience. This is also true in schools. The student body, teachers, and administrators benefit from having a space that values their contributions and acknowledges their differences.

A positive school cultureprovides support through encouraging relationships and healthy communication among students, staff, and administrators. Having a positive climate impacts how safe students feel in the classroom environment, directly influencing their success.

What is positive school culture?

School culture describes staff and students' attitudes, norms, traditions, and beliefs that leadership identifies as a part of the school experience. School leaders are responsible for driving these efforts, supported by systems centered on student success. Having a school culture routine with clear rules, effective practices, feedback loops, and data planshelp educators deliver instruction in a positive environment.

Achieving a positive school culture does not happen overnight-it takes intentionality and practice. School leaders have the agency to build relationships with teachers and staff and include student voices when creating policies and procedures that promote student learning. This process is an intentional effort by leadership to connect the student experience to the learning environment and focus on instruction and systems to sustain a positive school environment.

Building a positive school climate centers on equity and focuses on diversity and inclusion of students and staff. These efforts impact how students engage and have an influence on their actions.

Here are statements that provide a measure of school culture, according to research and information on school experiences.

• Staff and students have strong, positive relationships which encourage students' social and emotional learning.
• Together, staff, students, and teachers inform the systems, school processes, and education.
• Because leadership clearly articulates the norms, traditions, and values system, each person involved must acknowledge and commit to it.
• Clear guidelines involve a feedback process or rewards system that avoids negative messaging and promotes praise and incentive plans.
• There are goals for a safe and welcoming learning environment for students, promoted by teachers who are also engaged and feel supported.

With these descriptions in mind, think about your school. Can you describe the components of your positive school culture? Your list might include students, systems for classroom culture, and school-wide goals for a positive culture. Perhaps you are thinking about ways to provide positive feedback or support for how students develop essential social skills.

School leaders need to develop robust data systems. Without rich data that provides a complete picture of the school culture or common student behaviors, it can be challenging to gauge the positivity of the learning environment.

Ultimately, leadership can use this information to shift to a focus on positive school behaviors. Then, teachers can spend more time focusing on instruction instead of managing student behavior.

5 Tips for Positive School Culture

1. Use School Data to Set a Goal

Knowing what the school datasays about school culture is vital for planning and implementation. As the school leader, spend time in the classroom and focus on the behavior and teaching practices, then use this information to determine the data you need to collect. Using student surveys to measure climate and perceptions can help plan a strategy for the next steps.

2. Engage Teachers and Administrators

Promote a shared vision, like valuing culture and instruction, by connecting with school staff on the school environment and academic expectations. School leaders can also engage teachersand administrators with professional developmentopportunities.

3. Advocate for Family Involvement

Establish clear and open communication with families. Encourage teachers to communicate often with families, like making a phone call or sending handwritten notes home. Promote family involvementin their student's education by keeping them looped into school policies and practices.

Connecting the school experience to the family environment creates consistency for students. This practice also gets others involved in reiterating classroom and learning expectations.

4. Involve Students

Building relationships with studentsis one way to keep them connected to the school community. When students feel engaged, they build relationships that affirm their safety and welcome them into a space that wants to see them learn. Additionally, they have a sense of focus in school and have more success.

Listen to new ideas and take risks that value the student's voice. Students have ideas about creating a supportive learning environment-leverage those ideas to build plans that promote a positive school culture.

Use praise and reward to provide positive experiences. Incentive programs allow teachers and staff to identify positive actions and reinforce those through praise. All students like to hear "good job!" The authenticity of this is grounded in the relationships they have with teachers.

5. Set Clear Expectations

Set positive school and classroom rules aligned to the school's goals and culture. These rules and expectations should be reiterated verbally and communicated with families. Positive reinforcements help encourage continuous positive behavior when students follow the rules that reinforce school culture.

Establish consequences for negative behaviors that are appropriate. Use a tracking system like Unified Classroom® Behavior Supportto collect data on the use of these consequences, what behavior they are associated with, and determine if there is a pattern or trend in the data collected. Provide clear guidelines for teachers and school administrators to follow when collecting data on student behavior and when implementing a consequence or reward. This process creates equity and ultimately contributes to positive school culture.

Create a Positive School Culture Today

Improving your school climate and culture begins with knowing what changes to make. Consider using a data-informed platformthat provides strategic direction in building positive school culture.

Involving students and families in changing the culture also shows how they are valued. Additionally, there are many ways for teachers to contribute to the culture, including building trust, offering support, and creating a space that encourages learning. There will be a beneficial change across the entire school with a plan that teachers can follow in the classroom, the gym, and the cafeteria, and clear expectations for student behavior.

While the school culture plan may differ across schools, these tips can help support any school environment. Creating a positive school culture can help students, teachers, and staff create a space that promotes learning and engagement for all.

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