Creating Safe and Civil School Climates to Address the Non-Academic Barriers to School Success

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Creating 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

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Goals

• 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

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A safe and civil school

• What is it?
• A challenge!

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A 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.

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On 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/

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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.

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The context Ongoing process of school
improvement

Planning (community engagement assessment
action planning)

Evaluation
Implementation
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Five 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
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Instruction 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

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Instruction 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)

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Instruction 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

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Instruction 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)

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Systemic 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.

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Systemic 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/

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Systemic 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

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Crisis 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

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Measurement

• 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.

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Aligning 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?

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Aligning a CSLSs with these five practices?

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Next steps?

• Based on these remarks, what are the most
  important questions and next steps that seem
  most important to you?

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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/
  

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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
• .

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Thank You!

• Jonathan Cohen
• President, Center for Social and Emotional
  Education
• 1841 Broadway, 1212
• New York, NY 10025
• [phone] www.csee.net jonathancohen_at_csee.ne
  t
• Adjunct Professor in Psychology Education,
  Teachers College, Columbia University