School Climate
School climate refers to the collective experiences and feelings about the campus environment of the people who are part of the community. The strength of relationships among members of the community, the quality of their interactions, the values and norms they hold in common, and the structures in place that guide all of the above are part of what makes up a school’s climate.
General School Climate
- Implementing a School-Wide Mindfulness Program - This post discusses steps for starting a mindfulness program at a school.
- The National School Climate Center - This guide has lots of information on school climate and how to improve it.
- Safe Supportive Learning - This guide provides lots of resources on best practices for building safe learning environments.
- School Climate Walk - This tool provides an example of a way to document the climate at your school.
- Teaching Without Rewards - This article discusses how language can be used to reinforce positive behaviors.
- The Society for Safe and Caring Schools and Communities - This guide provides several resources on school culture, bullying prevention, and restorative practices.
- The U.S. Department of Education - This website provides a host of information on enhancing school climate and discipline.
This video discusses the importance of relationship building with students and provides strategies for doing so.
Discipline Strategies
Discipline has often been viewed as punishment, which does not provide the ment for people to understand how their actions affect others. Another way to look at discipline is as guidance for positive behavior, allowing people to take into consideration any harm they have committed and to make amends. These resources provide information on how to create discipline policies and practices that guide students toward building whole relationships and community.
- Addressing the Root Causes of Disparities in School Discipline - This toolkit aids schools in understanding their discipline data, including any disproportionalities, and coming up with an action plan to improve their discipline policies and procedures. This page provides additional resources for the toolkit above.
- Advancing School Discipline Reform - This report looks at the effects of punitive discipline policies and offers promising alternatives.
- DSC Model Code Comparison Tool - This guide provides the types of questions to ask about a school discipline code, as well as answers from the perspective of a model code.
- Fix School Discipline - This document provides lots of information on improving school discipline policies and procedures, with versions for educators and administrators.
- School Crime and Too Much Punishment - This Nick News segment looks at the failure of current punitive discipline policies and the promise of restorative discipline and practices in schools.
- The School Discipline Report - This report discusses discipline practices and how they affect students, and lists approaches for keeping young people focused on their education and out of the juvenile justice system.
Restorative Practices
Restorative practices in schools consist of policies and processes that focus on building relationships and community. They address harms that are committed in the school through bringing together everyone who has been affected to come up with solutions. This allows people who contributed to the situation to accept accountability and repair their harms.
Websites
- Discipline That Restores - This website provides information for implementing a program based on the Discipline that Restores model.
- Restorative Justice Programs - This website is created by the Oakland Unified School District and includes their personal strategic plan as well as additional resources.
General Overview
- Restorative Justice Practices and Principles in Schools - This guide provides methods and examples of restorative justice practices used in schools, such as circles, conferencing and mediation.
- The Restorative Justice Resource Guide - This guide provides a lot of information on restorative practices and the circle process.
- School Health Services Coalition of Alameda County - This website provides information on the benefits of restorative practices in schools and ideas for implementation.
Colorado High School Replaces Punishment with "Talking Circles"
Restorative Welcome and Reentry Circle
Restorative Justice in Oakland Schools: Tier One. Community Building Circle
Implementation Tools
- Community Circles in Kindergarten - This blog post provides advice on how to use community building circles with kindergarten students.
- Implementing Restorative Justice - This website provides guidance for implementing restorative policies and practices in schools.
- Peacemaking Circles: A Process for Solving Problems and Building Community - This guide provides information on how to hold community-building circle processes.
- Restorative Practices Training Manual - This manual provides information regarding how to implement a restorative justice program.
- Safer Saner Schools - This website provides information on how to implement restorative practices in schools based on the International Institute for Restorative Practices model.
- The Society for Safe and Caring Schools and Communities - These lessons describe the use of circles in the classroom.
Benefits
- Findings from Schools Implementing Restorative Practices - This report details the results and benefits of restorative practices in schools implementing programs.
- Restorative Practices in Schools: Research Reveals Power of Restorative Approach, Part I - This article discusses benefits of restorative practices instead of traditional punitive discipline.
- Transforming School Culture with Restorative Practices - This report talks about how restorative practices can benefit schools.
Classroom Management Tools
Classroom Management refers to the methods educators use to create spaces for students to learn. The following resources provide information on classroom management practices that promote safe and welcoming spaces for learning.
- Classroom Management: The Intervention Two-Step - This article provides tips on how to immediately respond when a challenging classroom behavior issue arises,
- How to Develop Positive Classroom Management - This guide provides advice on things educators can do to build relationships in their classroom and develop positive classroom management skills.
- Supporting and Responding to Behavior - This guide provides strategies for preventing and responding to challenging behaviors in the classroom:
- Ten Tips for Classroom Management - This guide provides tips for positive classroom management and relationship building in classrooms and schools.
Trauma-Informed Schools
Trauma-informed or trauma-sensitive schools understand the affects of trauma on brain development and use practices and policies on their campuses that promote effective and supportive interactions among students, educators, and parents/guardians.
- EdSource - This website talks about schools bringing the trauma-informed approach to their campuses and what that looks like.
- Grieving Students - This website provides comprehensive information on how educators can help grieving students.
- Helping Traumatized Children Learn - This guide provides frameworks for advocating for and building trauma-sensitive schools.
- Thrive Initiative - This website has free webinars on trauma-informed practices, including those in schools.
- Trauma & Resilience - This website is a comprehensive resource on trauma and resilience related to under 18.
- Trauma Module Videos - These nine approximately 10 minute webinars provide information on how trauma affects students at schools and methods for making classes and campuses trauma-sensitive.
- Trauma Sensitive Schools - This website has lots of information on how trauma affects learning and interactions at school, how to create a framework for building a trauma-informed and sensitive school, and other resources.
- Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Brain Development - This article talks about stages of brain development and how maltreatment can affect this development, as well as intervention strategies.
Social Emotional Learning
Social-emotional learning emphasizes the importance of focusing on relational and emotional understanding and management in schools as well as traditional academics. It addresses research that shows students learn best when they feel safe and welcome in their classrooms.
- Learning by Heart - This executive summary based on studies of high schools integrating social-emotional learning into their campuses discusses the main elements important for success in these endeavors, as well as implications for policy.
- Momastery - This blog post provides an interesting idea for teachers to keep track of how their students are doing social-emotionally.
Violence Prevention
Violence prevention looks at ways to prevent and intervene in violence. It often uses the public health approach, which views violence as a disease that can be studied and addressed in the same way as other illnesses.
- Veto Violence - This website focuses on the public health approach to violence prevention, and provides resources including a short online training.