Culture and Climate

Helping schools guarantee excellent, inclusive, and equitable learning for all.

School Culture and Climate services are designed to facilitate the essential knowledge, skills, practices, and policies that empower all schools to develop school climates and cultures that support high levels of academic achievement for every student.

Culture and Climate Services

Culture is the collective beliefs, personality and practices (written and unwritten rules) that shape and influence every aspect of how an organization functions
Climate is the "feel" or general atmosphere of an organization that is determined by the collective mood, attitude, and morale of its people.

Culture

Equity, School Culture and Cultural Competence

In order to achieve an equitable and inclusive education system, we must identify, address, and eliminate the biases and barriers that cripple our students' cognitive and social development.

Educational equity is becoming a crucial goal for all districts.

"Educational equity is when educational practices, policies, supports, curricula, school resources, and school cultures are such that all students have access to, participate and make progress in high quality learning experiences in order to reach academic success and positive outcomes regardless of race, SES, gender, dis/ability, religion, or other characteristics."
-Fraser, 1998: Great Lakes Equity Center, 2012.

Equity, School Culture, and Competence Support

Equity, School Culture and Cultural Competence support is provided on three levels: district, school, and classroom through coaching, facilitation, and professional learning offerings.

District

Developing Equitable Systems
Seeking Educational Equity & Diversity (SEED)
Developing Critical Cultural Competence
District Equity Leadership Team Development

School

Developing & Sustaining Effective Professional Learning Communities (PLC)
Developing Building Equity Leadership Teams (BELT)
Developing Culturally Responsive & Inclusive Schools & Classrooms

Classroom

Culturally Responsive Instruction (Level 1 & Level 2)
Reaching & Teaching Students of Poverty
Academically & Socially Support African-American Males
A Call to Action: African American Girls in Crisis

Climate

School Climate Improvement

Students learn best when they are in environments in which they feel safe, supported, challenged, and accepted. In addition, environments that have strong school climates foster the social, emotional, and academic well-being of all students. Research shows that when schools and districts effectively focus on improving school climate, students are more likely to engage in the curriculum, achieve academically, and develop positive relationships; students are less likely to exhibit problem behaviors; and teacher turnover is lower and teacher satisfaction is higher.

Services are offered to guide schools and districts in developing and coordinating intentional, purposeful, and relevant strategies to improve school climate. Services have been developed to accomplish the following:

Engage teachers, students and parents in assessing and improving the school climate via the Comprehensive School Climate Survey (CSCI-developed by the National School Climate Center)
Offer opportunities to teachers, staff and non-district stakeholders to collaborate in creating a vision of student and teacher success.
Use relative school data to develop strategies to achieve teacher and student success, and own the process.
Assist teachers, staff and non-district staff in creating a socially just teaching and learning environment.

A positive school climate reflects attention to fostering social and physical safety, providing support that enables students and staff to realize high behavioral and academic standards as well as encouraging and maintaining respectful, trusting, and caring relationships throughout the school community.
-U. S. Department of Education, Office of Safe and Healthy Students, 2016.

How Services are Offered

School Climate Improvement Services can accessed through professional development offerings in our catalogue offerings, or pushed into buildings. Building services are offered via assessment, coaching, and professional developments.

School climate Assessment

School Climate Improvement Consultants use various forms of climate data to assess school climate. Basic assessments can be conducted via a School Walk-Through Survey, and by using trends in school office referrals, suspension, and attendance data. In addition, formal assessment tools are also used to measure school climate, such as the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory (CSCI) published by the National School Climate Center, as well as various self-assessment tools.

Coaching

The principal and school leadership or climate team meet with the consultant to plan survey logistics, develop a leadership framework of collaboration, unpack and understand school climate data, and lead teachers, staff in the implementation of foundational climate work in the building, and to support the work of the teacher - led teams.

Coaching is provided to the leadership or climate team to collect, assess and analyze school climate data and position them to lead the collaborative efforts the professional development opportunities provide all of the educators in their building.

Professional Development

On-site Offerings

There are four professional developments offered to ALL of the teachers, staff and professional stakeholders in the building. These sessions offer the opportunity to understand school climate work, skills that need to be developed, improved and/or engaged to achieve teacher student success, and the framework for engaging in this data-driven work.

“A Climate of Academic Achievement: Create a Vision of Success” (6 hours):
- Establish a common language for discussing school climate
- Identify and discuss variables that shape school climate
- Understand the significance of communication style and its impact on school climate
- Collaborate to identify the elements of a positive school climate for your school
- Participate in the Comprehensive School Climate Inventory (CSCI)
- Review the steps on the journey ahead!
“Unpacking Our Data: Encourage Community Dialogue” (4 hours)
- Participate in a Collaborative Process for Analyzing and Understanding the Implications of School Climate Data
“Action Planning: Strategize a Positive School Climate” (6 hours)
- Review the external implications of negative school climate and the significance of cultural competence
- Discuss how three predeterminations affect the “Will and Skill” needed to change the school culture and climate
- Prioritize and utilize school climate data to develop strategies that promote and sustain teacher and student success and academic achievement
- Connect our passion to school climate work
“The Culturally Competent School: Empower Teacher Led Teams” (4-6 hours)
- Utilize strategies that promote Team Collaboration
- Develop individual team Mission statement
- Provide tools for Effective Meeting Management
- Begin to identify strategies to implement Team Objectives
- Review Multi Levels of Supports and its relevance to everything teacher-led

Catalog Offerings:

Building an Effective School Climate Team
Using Data to Improve School Climate

Why Culture and Climate Matter

An effective school culture/climate is essential to ensuring that all students reach their potential. Ineffective climates diminish a staff’s collective efficacy and student learning. Inequitable cultures don’t allow ALL students to reach their educational goals. Understanding the difference between culture and climate is critical.