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Summer Institute 2012

The National School Climate Center present the 15th Annual Summer Institute

Promoting Safe, Healthy, Engaged and Democratic K-12 School Communities

July 10-12, 2012
The NSCC Summer Institute is the best intensive learning experience I am aware of with regard to creating a positive climate for safe, caring, and supportive schools that promote the academic and social-emotional competencies of students. The Summer Institute creates the kind of learning climate for attendees that it teaches you to create in your school settings. You will carry the learning back with you and become part of a network of caring educators and Summer Institute alumni dedicated to putting children first.
Maurice J. Elias, Ph.D.
Rutgers University, Psychology Department

This three day Institute is designed to support school, district and state teams, as well as other school, family and community leaders, in developing school climate improvement plans to promote safe, caring and civil schools that support positive youth development, democratic school communities, student learning/achievement and up-¬stander behavior (the inclination and ability to say “no” to bully-victim behavior). The Institute is grounded in the notion that effective and equitable school reform needs to honor and support the whole child and the whole school community.

The goal for the Institute is to support the development of a school climate improvement plans that will support school’s actualizing School Climate Standards that support K-12 school communities working and learning together to address three essential questions:

(1) What is your school community’s vision for what kind of school you want yours to be?
(2) How can you develop school policies and/or rules that Support our shared vision? And,
(3) How can you develop practices and programs as well as mapping community supports that will sustain the shared vision, rules and policies?

The Institute will provide research-based school climate and instructional guidelines, and resources for school teams and individuals to reflect on current practice while developing new plans to promote healthy and democratically informed schools in general and reduce bully-victim-bystander behavior in particular. Research shows that when schools engage in these processes over time, student achievement, civic engagement and positive youth develop¬ment significantly increase, and both school violence and student dropout rates decreases.

Attendees will receive a number of practice and policy resources, which provide guidelines and tools to support leadership teams and school communities in addressing the tasks and challenges that define each of the five stages of the school climate improvement process.

Strand meetings: For the first time, this year there will be three strands for: building level teams (classroom leaders, mental health leaders and administrators), district teams (from Central office and school boards), and State Department of Education teams: supporting learning, connections, and teachings that promote effective school climate practice and/or policy efforts. Your strand group will become a “home base” for you to explore and share challenges, strategies and effective practices with others in similar organizational roles.

For past attendees: This summer’s Institute will be of ad¬ditional value to past attendees. Building on our past work in social emotional learning/character education and school climate improvement, this summer’s Institute provides an even richer array of sessions on core practices to promote safe, supportive and civil schools, including detailed guidelines on how to promote UPstander behavior. It provides a series of new practice and policy tools to support effective school climate measurement and sustaining imple¬mentation efforts.

Throughout the Institute, four essential questions are asked:

(1) What are we doing now and how does this overlap with what is being presented?
(2) What are the possible next steps that build on past and current efforts?
(3) How can I/we learn from others?
(4) How can we develop SMART goals that support effective next steps instructionally and/or systemically?

Specifically, participants will learn about:
  • A school climate improvement model and implementation strategy that recognizes and mobilizes the whole school community to support the whole child.
  • Recent research and best practices in social, emotional, and civic education and school climate improvement efforts that support effective bully prevention, pro-upstander behavior and academic achievement.
  • Practical and helpful classroom, school-wide, and school-home-communi¬ty interventions and tools that support safety, engagement, supportive and respectful relations and democratically informed communities.
  • What other classroom, building, district and state leaders are doing to support evidence-based school climate reform (strand meetings).