The purpose of this brief is to define school climate, identify its domains which provides a framework for identifying strategies, and practices; and provides recommendations for assessing school climate.
Brief
Calming Spaces in Schools and Classrooms
As the places where young people spend a significant amount of their lives, schools have an immense opportunity to attend to the social, emotional, and mental health needs of students on a regular basis. Calming spaces can be integrated as part of a school’s comprehensive strategy to provide nurturing environments that foster positive student development and prevent harmful and persistent distress.
This brief describes calming spaces and the potential positive impacts that offering such spaces in schools or classrooms can have on students’ mental health and learning. It features several examples of calming spaces and related resources from California and beyond, provides an explanation of how calming spaces align with other initiatives for supporting student well-being, and offers practical guidance for educators to consider when setting up their own calming spaces.
Restorative Practices Beyond the Classroom: Integrating Circle Practices Into Existing School Processes
This brief describes the need and rationale for expanding the use of restorative practices in contexts outside of the classroom.
Practical suggestions are outlined for incorporating these practices into existing school processes, which include Individual Education Plans/504 meetings, staff meetings, committee meetings, and online spaces.
These non-classroom spaces provide an opportunity for school leaders to model and teach the practices as well as build community among staff members. A short vignette at Ross Elementary provides an example of the material benefits of taking this approach to restorative practices implementation.
A Case Study of San Juan High School’s Safe and Supportive Schools Project
San Juan High School, a low-income, ethnically diverse school struggling to boost student achievement in California’s San Juan Unified School District, demonstrated consistent gains in its School Climate Index (SCI) over the three years of the California Safe and Supportive Schools Program implementation. This case study reflects on the programs and strategies that the school implemented and draws upon data collected as part of the program’s evaluation. Some of the key strategies discussed are:
- Stakeholder engagement and student voice
- Social-emotional learning
- Freshman mentoring
- Restorative justice
- Project-Based Learning
- Intervention efforts
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