Promoting trust and community building: the foundation for effective school climate improvement and upstander efforts
Jonathan Cohen and Kim McLaughlin
Time: 2:45 pm - 4:15 pm
This workshop is designed to support individuals and teams reflecting on and developing action plans that support effective ‘Stage One: Preparing for the next phase of school climate improvement efforts.
[Read More...]- To consider the tasks and challenges that characterize and shape this stage of the school climate improvement process;
- To assess ‘readiness’ for the next phase of school climate improvement;
- To consider the barriers and challenges to (a) creating representative leadership teams that include students, parents/guardians and community leaders;
- To consider how challenging it is to move from a school culture of “blame” and distrust to a “no fault” culture;
- To develop action steps that you can use when you return to school that will further effective Stage One work;
- 6) To consider how this work will aid your school’s bully-victim-upstander efforts in particular and school climate reform in general.
There are four major tasks and challenges that shape Stage One work and learning: (1) Building on past efforts: Building organizational capacity, administrative support and a multiple stakeholder school climate improvement team; (2) Building support for school climate improvement by educating students, parents, and school personnel about the continuous process of school climate improvement; (3) Assessing ‘readiness’ to ensure that there are adequate resources to support the process—personnel, materials, space, and time; and, (4) Working to promote a “no fault” framework that recognizes the importance of accountability, the toxic effects of “blaming” and, the importance of learning from mistakes as well as successes to support “the whole village” working to support students positive youth development and learning.
At the end of this session:- Participants will have an understanding of the tasks and challenges that color and shape this phase of the continuous school climate improvement process;
- Participants will have assesses their schools “readiness for change;
- Developed preliminary action steps to address these tasks and anticipated challenges
Comprehensively evaluating school climate: A springboard for community building, understanding and action planning
Darlene Faster
Time: 2:45 pm - 4:15 pm
In this workshop, participants will engage in a discussion of how to develop a more systematic understanding of school climate assessment and how school climate findings can be used to develop plans for improvement.
[Read More...]- The range of ways that climate can be evaluated and the tradeoffs they entail
- How climate can be measured via a survey, such as CSEE’s Comprehensive School Climate Inventory, and what insights about school climate have resulted from conducting the survey in numerous schools to date
- The challenges of school buy-in and strategies for involving all members of the school community in the evaluation and improvement effort
- The ways in which school climate data can be leveraged for school improvement
- The ways in which a data-driven process itself can support staff cooperation and action
Note: All Wednesday July 8 workshops repeat in the morning and afternoon sessions.
Social Crisis Preparedness Planning: Institutionalizing Upstander Behavior
Bill Eyman
- to prepare participants to understand that bullying is a crisis, not merely a problem and
- to expose participants to exemplary practices and structures that make prevention and intervention permanent features of a school’s mission
- what it is
- its impact on improving school climate
- how to teach it
- how to institutionalize and sustain it.
The challenge is well-known. How do we link our knowledge to our practice in order to create a healthy and democratic school community? In this workshop we will explore the rationale for viewing bullying as a crisis and then take a visualized journey through a school. This is a school that has improved its school climate, measured with the CSCI, by building school-wide community and particularly by enhancing the status of upstander behavior.
At the end of this session participants will:- understand the importance of terminology, in this case, the “crisis” of bullying;
- be able to communicate this understanding to other;
- be familiar with a definition of upstander behavior;
- be familiar with specific skills that can be taught, e.g., “showing interest in others,” and “moving from silence to action;”
- be familiar with specific structures that can be established, e.g., School Climate Committees with student/family participation, “Safe Ambassadors,” “Gentle Warriors,” and “Peer Helpers;”
- identify actions they will take immediately in their schools (tactics) and ideas for longer-term consideration (strategy).
The facilitator will use a multiple intelligences approach in the workshop, interweaving lecture, reflection, group discussion, problem solving, visualization, art, music and physical movement.
[Close]Infusing social, emotional and civic learning into existing curriculum
Jonathan Cohen
The goal for this workshop will be to support teachers learning to infuse social, emotional and civic learning into existing lesson plans or until.
Note: Teachers are strongly encouraged to bring a lesson to the session with them that represents your efforts to do infuse social, emotional and civic learning into an existing language arts, social studies, history, service learning, athletics-related, science or other content area.
This workshop uses a backwards design model: beginning at the end and considering what social, emotional and civic goals or learning outcomes you want to focus on. Given the focus for this institute, we will encourage participants to focus on some aspect of bully-victim and/or upstander behavior as a learning outcome. Participants will learn about resources related to social emotional learning-related scope and sequence, evidence-based curricular options. Participants will work individually and in small groups to refine, revise and develop learning activities, social, emotional and civically informed assessments and follow up activities that support the intentional integration of social, emotional and civic learning with existing lesson plans and units.
At the end of the session:- Participants will understand a process that supports infusing social, emotional and civic learning into existing lesson plans and units;
- Participants will appreciate some of the inherent challenges involved with this work;
- Participants will have revised, refined and/or developed at least one and perhaps two lessons that we will invite you to share with others.
Learning from multiculturalism
Chana Zweiter
- Building awareness of the dynamics and challenges of multiculturalism and the impact that they pose to society and citizenry in general and to school climate in particular.
- Providing strategies for schools to promote respect for diversity and understanding of multiculturalism as essential elements of citizenship and school climate as well as values and skills of bullying prevention.
- Offering practical approaches and methods of intervention, helping the upstander to assertively respond and diffuse bulling.
- Participants will have a better understanding of the challenges of multiculturalism and how they affect school climate and bullying.
- Participants will have practical preventive and intervention strategies to introduce to their schools, promoting school environments founded on respect for diversity and empowering and encouraging upstanding responses to bullying children who are “different.”
- Participants will have understanding and tools with which to encourage co-workers, parents and students to develop their individualized approach to bullying and its response.
Using socio-moral dilemma discussion to promote student engagement, social, emotional and civic learning and enhance school climate
Ann Higgins- D'Alessandro
This workshop focuses on the use of socio-moral dilemma discussion technique as a strategy for actively involving students in thinking through and role playing socially difficult situations, such as how to be upstanders and in thinking through the purpose of rules and the norms they represent, as well as how rules and norms form one part of the structure of school climate. Socio-moral dilemma discussions are also effectively used to teach subjects from language arts to science. In this workshop participants will learn about a series of research-based steps and processes that allow teachers to utilize this method as part of any course, in service learning, and in sports and afterschool programs. teachers will work on writing and infusing socio-moral dilemma discussions into their fall 2009 lesson plans and units.
Reaching every child: Developing Advisory Programs that support positive youth development and pro-upstander behavior
Rhia Hamilton
This workshop is geared to middle and high school educators. This workshop will support participants developing plans for an Advisory Program or build on existing Advisory practices. Advisory program provide important opportunities for educators to “connect” with all students: an essential foundation for risk prevention efforts in general and bully prevention efforts in particular. Participants will learn about a series of Advisory activities that support comprehensive bully prevention and pro-upstander efforts.
The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program: Purpose and Possibility
Andrea Fallick and Kim McLaughlin
Drawing on research and theory and the SAMHSA model program, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, this workshop will help participants to understand how to identify a wide range of bullying related behavior, how to intervene to help children who are the targets of bullying, who bully others, who are provocative targets, and/or bystanders and how to access related support in New York State and beyond. This session will offer clear definitions related to bullying and the long term effects of bullying. We each play an important role in reducing bullying, but need up-to-date research based information to make sure we are utilizing evidenced based strategies; good intentions do not always result in good outcomes. Learn the myths and misconceptions about bullying which can lead us down the wrong path.
[Read More...]- Participants will learn about the importance of a school-wide, researched-based, comprehensive approach to prevent and reduce bullying.
- Participants will consider steps their schools have taken to address bullying and what further research-based steps they can take when they return to school.
- Participants will reflect on how they can integrate their existing bullying prevention and school climate improvement efforts utilizing comprehensive research-based strategies gleaned from the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program to prevent bullying.
- Participants will learn about resources, trainers and supports available to assist them.
- Participants will be able to cite the research-based definition of what bullying is and the characteristics and correlates of students who are bullied, students who bully others, students who are provocative targets and bystanders.
- Participants will have increased skills in intervening in bullying situations and the importance of a systemic approach and the use of consistent language in prevention efforts.
- Participants will have an increased understanding of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, a SAMHSA and SDFSCA model program, which provides a comprehensive systemic approach to preventing and reducing bullying in schools.
Walking Our Talk: Changing the climate of the adult interactions in our schools
Cat Greenstreet
Time: 9:15 am - 11:00 am
"Most of us become teachers for reasons of the heart. We teach because we care deeply about our students and about some subject. But the demands of teaching and the conditions in some schools cause too many of us to lose heart as the years go by. Is it possible to take heart once more so that we can continue to do what good teachers always do – which is to give heart to our students?"
—Parker J. Palmer, Courage to Teach
How can we adults create a hopeful climate among us that fosters honesty, respect, and change, the very capacities we want to cultivate in our students? Mustn’t this be an essential aspect of school climate change? Based on the touchstones used in the Courage to Teach® renewal retreat model, this workshop invites participants to experience these guidelines for creating welcoming, safe spaces in which we might begin to hear the other as well as the voice of our inner teacher, a quiet voice of guidance and wisdom within each one of us.
Participants are invited to speak honestly about their lives, and to listen and respond to each other and to themselves with encouragement and compassion. The guidelines we will explore, however, allow each participant to feel completely comfortable not speaking at all since silence is welcome and honored. Each individual speaks out of his or her own experience, agreeing to squelch the desire to fix anyone else or to set anyone else straight. This is a time for self-reflection, small group sharing, and large group sharing.
Outcomes:- Participants will be able to articulate guidelines for being together that foster deep listening and healthy speaking without fixing, saving, advising, or setting anyone straight.
- Participants will be able to communicate their experience of these guidelines.
- Participants will be able to articulate how these guidelines might support their work with their colleagues and their students.
Modeling of Moral Character by Teachers:
What are the behaviors, characteristics, and dispositions that may be taught and assessed?
Merle Schwartz
Time: 9:15 am - 11:00 am
Participants in this interactive workshop will “unpack” what is meant by the assumption that through teacher modeling, teachers affect the character (social, emotional, and ethical) development of students, enabling them to develop skills and dispositions necessary to support the democratic society in which they live. Modeling moral character will be reframed from the eyes of the student, focused on teacher persona and actions—what the teacher says, how the teacher acts towards others, and how the teacher does his or her work. A surprising finding will be shared about the degree of alignment between what the teacher believes they are modeling and what the students perceive their actions to mean. Lively discussion is expected around this concept and how to elicit feedback from the recipients of the modeling—the students.
[Read More...]This workshop is based on this new research that shows a high correlation between the qualitative characteristics for modeled moral character and the qualities of emotional competence and transformational leadership style—qualities that have behaviors, characteristics, and dispositions that can be taught, assessed, and modeled.
Learning Objectives:- Participants will be introduced to a skill-based definition of moral character.
- Participants will understand how emotional competence may be measured in an adult, reflect on their own degree of emotional competence, and understand the relationship this has to modeling moral character.
- Participants will understand what transformational leadership is and how it relates to teaching as a profession.
- Participants will reflect on the degree to which they are transformational leaders and understand the relationship between transformational leadership and the modeling of moral character.
- Participants will be introduced to seven attributes found to be connected to the modeling of moral character.
- Participants will be introduced to tool that can be useful in helping teachers develop professional goals which include intentional modeling as a contributing factor for positive school climate.
Jonathan Cohen, Ph.D. is the Director, Summer Institute, co-founder and President, CSEE; Adjunct Professor, Psychology and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University; Adjunct Professor in Education, School of Professional Studies, City University of New York; and co-author and editor of many papers and books including Making your School Safe: Strategies to Protect Children and Promote Learning (2007).
Maurice J. Elias, Ph.D. is a Professor, Psychology Department, Rutgers University, Academic Director, Rutgers Civic Engagement and Service Education Partnerships Program and Director of the Rutgers Social-Emotional Learning Lab and Developing Safe and Civil Schools. He is the author of many books and papers, including the recent volume The Educator’s Guide to Emotional Intelligence and Academic Achievement: Social-Emotional Learning in the Classroom (2006).
Bill Eyman is a member of CSEE’s consultation staff. He recently retired from the Rhode Island Department of Education after a forty-four year career in public education and children’s mental health. Bill has been a classroom teacher, alternative school director, co-founder and coordinator of a community-based children’s mental health program and educational consultant and trainer as well as a member of CSEE’s summer institutes.
Andrea Fallick, LCSW-R, CASAC, CPP is the Assistant Director for School Based Programs at Student Assistance Services Corporation in Westchester County. She has worked with adolescents and families for over 20 years and provides training for school based personnel, mental health practitioners and parents on issues related to substance abuse prevention, parenting, and bullying prevention.
Darlene Faster is the Director of Communications at CSEE. She holds an M.A. in English and American Literature from CUNY, Queens College, a B.A. in English from Hofstra University and is pursuing a doctoral degree in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, focusing on Educational Policy. Her research and policy interests include understanding and improving the social and emotional development of students with learning disabilities as well as implementing successful transitional supports for students from high school to postsecondary life. Darlene has done preliminary research in urban schools in Chicago and New York, and worked with the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) before joining CSEE.
Cat Greenstreet, M.A., M.Ed. is a Courage to Teach/Courage to Lead facilitator for the Center for Courage & Renewal. Cat has 18 years of experience as a Waldorf educator in elementary school and high school, and in teacher preparation.
Stephen Haff is an experienced teacher, journalist and theater director. He’s best known for founding the world-renowned Real People Theater with young people in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Rhia Oliva Hamilton Ed.D. is a senior educational consultant at CSEE. She is also CSEE’s past director of education. She is an experienced high school social studies teacher, curriculum developer, and school leader. She is particularly interested in how teachers can support students’ emotional and social development in advisory classes, social justice education, and team-based professional development for advisory teachers.
Ann Higgins-D’Alessandro, Ph.D. is a professor and the Director of the Applied Developmental Program at Fordham University. She is the author (with Clark Power and Lawrence Kohlberg,) of Lawrence Kohlberg’s Approach to Moral Education (1989), editor (with Katherine Jankowsky) of Science for Society: Informing Policy and Practice Through Research in Developmental Psychology (2002), and consultant/co-author of the US Department of Education’s publication Mobilizing for Evidence-Based Character Education (2007).
Kim McLaughlin, MS Ed, M Ed, C.A.S. is Executive Director of the New York State Student Support Services Center. Kim is a school administrator, educator, capacity builder and learner who has worked with K-12 school communities and as higher education faculty to develop, enhance and sustain healthy, safe and supportive schools and classrooms through the meaningful involvement of key stakeholders. She is the lead for the NYS Supportive Learning Environment Leadership Initiative, NYS Health Education Leadership Institute and the NYS Olweus Bullying Prevention Program Initiative.
Merle Schwartz, Ed.D. is the director of Education and Research at the Character Education Partnership. She is the editor of Effective Character Education: A Guidebook for Future Educator (2007).
Chana Zweiter is Founding Director of The Rosh Pina Mainstreaming Network, the organization that created the Kaleidoscope approach, dedicated to promoting caring learning environments and the social and emotional competencies that they are made up of. She shares the approach internationally as a facilitator of in-service workshops for educators and parents, in Israel and abroad.
