Culture And Climate Assessment - Weebly



Culture And Climate Assessment

By Mary Roberts

The climate between staff and students at Wayne Community School District has been significantly improving for the past seven years after our district implemented M.B. Flippen’s “Capturing Kids’ Hearts” (CKH) philosophy. Flippen believes that “if you have a child’s heart, you have their head.” Thus building positive relationships has been one of our staff’s key areas of concentration. Teachers meet and greet students as they enter the classroom. This is an excellent opportunity for the teacher to “get a feel” of how each student is doing before class begins. Sick or upset students find that the teacher will send them on to the school nurse or discuss the issue that may affect their learning in the classroom.

If, during class, a student isn’t doing as the teacher expects, the teacher will simply ask 4 questions politely to set the student back on task. Our ITED results for 9th, 10th, and 11th grade students show that 61% maintained or showed 5 percentile growths this year. Wayne Community’s school climate is generally easy going and the classroom environment is conducive to the learning process.

Awards assemblies are held each semester to recognize students who increased or maintained their already high GPA, had perfect attendance, received contest awards, or any other positive recognition. It is wonderful to see a large cross-section of students receive applause for doing what is right in the learning process.

The climate between students continues to show improvement through team building activities during classes that help to develop camaraderie within each group. Students are also asked to create and sign a social contract for each class, holding themselves, their classmates, and the teacher, responsible for their thoughts, their attitudes, and their actions. Allowing students to have ownership in establishing the “rules/expectations” builds trust and respect and has nearly eliminated most discipline problems for our school district. Since implementing CKH, our high school’s disciplinary referrals have dramatically decreased from 125 referral incidents annually in 2000-01 to 68 during 2006-07. Although our data is up by 17 referrals from 2005-06, 20 of the referrals were by freshmen or new students to the district. Name-calling and “dramas” still occur within the teenage community, however the frequency and severity has been greatly reduced. Students often share concerns with staff rather than burden the emotional load alone. As ever when working with children, it proves that even positive results are not static. To walk through our hallways between classes several visitors have stated they are surprised at the students’ self-control.

The climate between staff is primarily positive, caring, fun loving, and supportive. The full staff has received CKH training from the Flippen Group. New employees are sent to training soon after hire in order to implement the philosophy in their classroom and remain consistent with the other staff. New employees also have the support of a mentor during their first year that meets with them frequently.

The staff also develops and signs a social contract each year. If conflict arises, we like the students, are expected to hold our staff members accountable to the social contract, and we review the social contract frequently throughout the year during staff meetings. Our school has been implementing learning communities for several years. We have been trained in effective team collaboration and often use those methods/roles when discussing issues.

The staff celebrates “good things” at the beginning of each staff meeting or professional development meeting. At the end of each year we have an awards banquet for staff where 5-year increment awards are given. A teacher, support staff, and bus driver of the year award is presented based upon each buildings/departments in the district’s votes. Other awards and recognitions are also presented at this time along with multimedia presentations, joke awards, good food, and an overall congenial sense of another year well done. One of my committees has already begun planning the first three days of professional development. Plans to meet at the air-conditioned golf course meeting center with a stimulating guest speaker from the Flippen Group, a picnic lunch, and outdoor team building activities should help set a positive tone on the staff’s first day back. We were amazed ourselves at how excited we became when planning for this autumn kick-off on our last day of school this year. It is obvious that my district, with the implementation of Capturing Kids Hearts, is living its philosophy and improving our educational environment!

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