Title: Creating Safe and Civil School Climates to Address the Non-Academic Barriers to School Success
1Creating Safe and Civil School Climates to
Address the Non-Academic Barriers to School
Success
- Coordinating and Sustaining Five Key Practices
- Jonathan Cohen, Ph.D.
- Center for Social and Emotional Education
- November 18, 2008 - Ohio Department of Education
Symposium on Safe and Civil Schools
2Goals
- 1) To consider how the following five practices
can promote safe and civil schools - Instruction
- School wide interventions
- Crisis preparedness
- Evaluation
- Aligning policy and practice
- 2) To consider how these five practices help us
to actualize the CSLS guidelines, protective and
risk factors - 3) To reflect on next steps that you may want
to take that build on your past efforts
3A safe and civil school
4A safe and civil school
- A suggested definition
- Safe and civil schools are characterized by
norms, values and expectations that support
people feeling - socially, emotionally and physically safe
- engaged and respected and
- collaboratively involved with
student-family-educator partnerships to develop,
live and contribute to a shared school vision.
5On the importance of safe and civil schools What
does the research say?
- I. Academic Achievement
- Positive and sustained school climate is strongly
correlated with and to some extent, predictive
of high quality teaching and student academic
achievement - II. Risk Prevention and Health Promotion
- Effective risk prevention and health promotion
efforts are positively correlated with safe,
caring, participatory and responsive school
climate settings. - III. Individual Experience
- A positive school climate affect students
self-esteem and self-concept in positive ways - IV. Teacher Retention
- Positive school climate is associated with
greater teacher retention - For a summary of empirical school climate
research as well as access to the School Climate
Research Data Base, see http//nscc.csee.net/rese
arch/
6 Promoting safe and civil schools
A suggested framework
- A sustained focus on coordinating
- Instruction designed to promote social,
emotional, civic and intellectual skills and
dispositions - Systemic interventions designed to create a
climate of safety and learning - Crisis preparedness that recognize socially as
well as physically dangerous moments - Evaluations that recognize social, emotional and
civic as well as intellectual development and
learning and, - Aligning State/district policy with building
practice.
7The context Ongoing process of school
improvement
Planning (community engagement assessment
action planning)
Evaluation
Implementation
8Five Stage Process of School Climate Improvement
(An overlapping model)
Stage 1 Preparation
Stage 2 Evaluation
Stage 5 Re-Evaluation
Stage 3 Understanding Action Planning
Stage 4 Implementation
9Instruction designed to promote social,
emotional, civic and intellectual skills and
dispositions
- The foundation for violence prevention as well as
school -- and life -- success - Self awareness
- Social awareness
- Self management
- Relationship building
- Responsible decision making
10Instruction designed to promote social,
emotional, civic and intellectual skills and
dispositions (cont)
- The foundation for violence prevention, positive
youth development and learning. When Social,
Emotional and Ethical (SEE) programs are infused
into school life over time - 23 improvement in students social emotional
skills - 9 improvement in attitudes about self, others
and school - 9 improvement in school and classroom
behavior - 9 decrease in conduct problems such as
classroom mis behavior and aggression - 10 decrease in emotional distress such as
anxiety and depression - 11 percentile point gain in achievement scores
- (CASEL, 2008)
11Instruction designed to promote social,
emotional, civic and intellectual skills and
dispositions (cont)
- Methods
- Adult behavior
- Creating a climate for learning in the
classroom - Pedagogic strategies (e.g.cooperative
learning, conflict resolution) - Infusing SEL/Character education into the
curriculum - Evidence based SEL/CE curriculum
- Infusing SEL/CE into existing curriculum
12Instruction designed to promote social,
emotional, civic and intellectual skills and
dispositions (cont)
- Common barriers
- Key learnings that staff need to understand
and be able to do - Tasks that need to be considered to actualize
this process - Reflecting and raising awareness
- Critically evaluating resources
- Skill building
- Indicators that a school is successfully
focusing on this goal and related methods - How to measure it Recommendations
- (To see these details for all of the practices
www.ode.state.oh.us)
13Systemic or school-wide, coordinated efforts
designed to create a climate for learning
- Safe and civil schools evidence norms, values and
patterns of behavior that support people feeling - Safe,
- Cared for,
- Connected and
- Engaged in learning and teaching together.
-
14Systemic or school-wide, coordinated efforts
designed to create a climate for learning (cont.)
- I. Academic Achievement
- Positive and sustained school climate is strongly
correlated with and to some extent, predictive
of high quality teaching and student academic
achievement - II. Risk Prevention and Health Promotion
- Effective risk prevention and health promotion
efforts are positively correlated with safe,
caring, participatory and responsive school
climate settings. - III. Individual Experience
- A positive school climate affect students
self-esteem and self-concept in positive ways - IV. Teacher Retention
- Positive school climate is associated with
greater teacher retention - For a summary of empirical school climate
research as well as access to the School Climate
Research Data Base, see http//nscc.csee.net/rese
arch/ -
15Systemic or school-wide, coordinated efforts
designed to create a climate for learning (cont.)
- Methods
- Promoting a shared vision and authentic learning
communities - Using assessment findings to foster school
engagement - supporting educator-parent and mental health
professional partnerships - Develop positive social norms/codes of conduct
that support caring and responsible behavior - Identifying barriers to learning and addressing
them. - Coordinating risk prevention, health promotion as
well as teaching and learning is coordinated in
your school - School-home partnerships
-
16Crisis Preparedness Recognizing socially as well
as physically dangerous moments
- Preparing for a crisis can save lives
- Physical crisis preparedness and practice
- Social crisis preparedness and practice
-
17Measurement
- What is measured is what counts
- Ohios leadership in measuring school climate
- School climate as an assessment method that
recognizes the social and civic aspects of school
life. -
18Aligning state/district policy with building
practice
- Policy shapes practice guidelines
- What current educational policies support school
leaders recognizing the social and civic aspects
of learning and school life? How can we use and
build on these policies to support -- truly --
safe and civil schools? -
19Aligning a CSLSs with these five practices?
20 Next steps?
- Based on these remarks, what are the most
important questions and next steps that seem
most important to you?
21 Resources -
Organizations/web sites
- Center for Social and Emotional Education
www.csee.net - Character Education Partnership
www.character.org/ - Collaborative for Academic, Social Emotional
Learning (CASEL) www.casel.org - Ohio Department of Education/Safe and
Supportive Learning http//education.ohio.gov/GD/
Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEPrimary.aspx?page2TopicID
431TopicRelationID431 - Ohio Partners in Character Education
www.charactereducationohio.org/ - Ohio Resource Network/ www.ebasedprevention.org/
22 Resources - Books and papers
- Adelman, H., Taylor, L. (2005). The school
leaders guide to student learning supports New
directions for addressing barriers to learning.
Thousand Oaks, CA Corwin. - American Psychological Association (2003).
Presidential task force on prevention, promoting
strength, resilience, and health in young people,
American Psychologist, 58, (6-7) pg 425-490. - Beland, K. (2003). Eleven Principles
Sourcebook How to Achieve Quality Education in
P-12 Schools. Washington, DC Character Education
Partnership. - CASEL (2008). Social emotional learning and
student benefits Implications for the safe
schools/ healthy students. On www.casel.org - Devine, J Cohen, J. (2007). Making Your
School Safe Strategies to Protect Children and
Promote Learning. N.Y. Teachers College Press - Lickona, T., Davidson, M. (2005). Smart and
good high schools Promising practices for
building strengths of character that help youth
lead productive, ethical, and fulfilling lives.
Retrieved October 27, 2005 from
www.cortland.edu/character/highschools/ - Osher, D, Dwyer, K. Jackson, S. (2003). Safe,
Supportive, and Successful Schools Step by Step.
Longmont, CO Sopris West - .
23 Thank You!
- Jonathan Cohen
- President, Center for Social and Emotional
Education - 1841 Broadway, 1212
- New York, NY 10025
- (212) 707-8799 www.csee.net jonathancohen_at_csee.ne
t - Adjunct Professor in Psychology Education,
Teachers College, Columbia University