School Climate, Student Empowerment, Relationships, Oh My!

By Sandra A. Trach

Principal Roth of Williams Elementary School in Mitchell, South Dakota and Principal Van Regenmorter of Laura Ingalls Wilder Elementary School in De Smet South Dakota, shared numerous ways that each of their elementary schools built positive school climate among students, staff, and parents.

Several ideas for building a climate of professional learning were shared:

• Learning Walks: The principal facilitates opportunities for teachers to visit each other’s classrooms to learn new ideas and strategies.
• Partnering with a nearby university: Student teachers take over classrooms for part of a school day, while the principal and teachers engage in professional development together.
• Got Talent: Staff write down areas of their own expertise on an index card at the beginning of the school year, and the principal holds onto them.  Over the school year, the principal asks staff to share out their areas of expertise to the staff at faculty meetings.
• Hold a book study: Invite staff to read together! Titles such as A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby Payne, Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess, and What Great Teachers Do Differently by Todd Whitaker were recommended reads.
• Make a video trailer that celebrates your school using iMovie.
• Bring and Brag: Partner staff together to share their best ideas briefly and rapidly, and then switch partners.  Staff keep a checklist of new ideas.

Several ideas for building a positive climate for staff and students were shared:

• Create a “STAR” group (Students Taking Active Roles: encourage a student group to engage in service learning.
• Create a “guess who” bulletin board of staff baby pictures.
• Create a teambuilding exercise by having staff write 5 random facts about themselves and invite others to guess who those staff are.
• Create a character leadership team to plan monthly school assemblies for students.
• Create a buddy mentoring group where older students mentor younger students.
• Identify a student leader of the month who exemplifies one of The 7 Habits of Happy Kids.
• Hold a contest to have students to design a school logo for t-shirts, bags, and water bottles to recognize Students of the Month or Character Kids of the Month.
• Offer students an opportunity to engage in problem-based learning strategies.
• Change your fifth-grade graduation to be a more student-led ceremony and celebration.
• Support teachers and students to engage in “Mystery Skype.”
• Start a before or after school club on computer coding (Code.org) or use Minecraft to have students build a scene from a book.
• Video students reading Monday messages, upload to a private YouTube channel, and send the link to teachers to share in their classrooms.
• Use Voki (an app) to create an announcement message to your staff. 
• Create a mail system among classrooms, where students can write letters to one another
• Paint an old chair in bright colors. Teachers can give these chairs as special “character chairs” that students get to sit in for the week.
• Hold a parent education evening where students and parents scan QR codes to see and hear students’ learning experiences.
• Partner students with local nursing home residents and schedule visits at a local bakery.
• Use Remind.com to send home short messages to parents about school events.
• Use Smore.com as an, e-newsletter which can incorporate pictures, links and surveys.
• Foster relationship building games for students.

Principals Roth and Van Regenmorter recommended three books to help leaders build and improve school climate:  The Leader in Me by Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey, and School Culture Rewired by Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker. 

There is no shortage of helpful ideas that can be readily implemented to help foster a positive school culture.

—Sandra A. Trach, principal of Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington, Massachusetts

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