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Creating a Culture for Learning

Creating a Culture for Learning. Laurie Frank. Download: www.goalconsulting.org. Agenda Flow. Introduction/s School Culture Culture based on fear The role of Personal & Structural Bias The Container Concept Container models Ideas and actions.

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Creating a Culture for Learning

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  1. Creating a Culture for Learning Laurie Frank Download: www.goalconsulting.org

  2. Agenda Flow • Introduction/s • School Culture • Culture based on fear • The role of Personal & Structural Bias • The Container Concept • Container models • Ideas and actions

  3. I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized. Haim Ginott

  4. Ground RulesGoal: Creating common ground – Inviting dialogue • Summon disagreement • How we say something is important • Acknowledge biases and be willing to explore (even challenge) the biases we carry • Assume good intentions • Ouch/Oops • Choices and the right to pass

  5. Definitions of School Culture “…school culture can be defined as the historically transmitted patterns of meaning that include the norms, values, beliefs, ceremonies, rituals, traditions, and myths understood, maybe in varying degrees, by members of the school community. This system of meaning often shapes what people think and how they act.” How Schools Improve Steven Stolp ERIC Digest

  6. Definitions of School Culture One definition of school culture submitted by Phillips (1993) states that it is “the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors which characterize a school.” Center for Improving School Culture www.schoolculture.net Literature about good schools defines culture as the context in which everything else takes place:“the way things are done around here.” Educational Leadership

  7. Culture Based on Fear

  8. The faces of the studentsexpressed the school's culture more eloquently than any vision statement displayed in a luciteframe. A sense of wholesomeness and kid-centeredness wrapped itself around me as soon as Ientered the building.Too often, the opposite is true. In some schools, students walk in straight, silent lines monitoredby stern teachers. The art on the walls is more likely to come from the photocopier than from thecreative energy of children. The main office is dominated by warning signs about name badges,security checks, and sign-in procedures. EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP School Culture: An InvisibleEssential, Joanne Rooney February 2005 | Volume 62 | Number 5

  9. “Based on my experience in schools throughout the nation, I would suggest that it is highly likely that the perpetrators were reacting in an extreme and pathological manner to a general atmosphere of exclusion… If this is the case, then instituting a significant change in the social atmosphere of the classroom might succeed in making the school a safer place… This might also succeed in producing the kind of social environment that will make the school a more pleasant, more stimulating, more compassionate and more humane place for all of the students. This is our ultimate goal.” Elliot Aronson Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine

  10. Zero Tolerance • Beginning in the late 1980s, rigid “zero tolerance” policies were adopted by many states… By the mid-1990s, zero tolerance became federal policy partly as a response to highly publicized school shootings. • In many schools, these policies have led to harsher punishments for first offenses and to the use of suspensions and expulsions for minor school code infractions, as well as serious ones. • Although the school shootings that triggered “zero tolerance” policies involved white students at predominantly white schools, students of color are suspended and expelled at rates far higher than white students. • There is little scientific evidence showing that suspension and expulsion are effective in reducing school violence or increasing school safety. UCLA IDEA: Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access http://www.idea.gseis.ucla.edu/ idea@ucla.edu

  11. School officials and the criminal justice system are criminalizing children and teenagers all over the country, arresting them and throwing them in jail for behavior that in years past would never have led to the intervention of law enforcement. • Behavior that was once considered a normal part of growing up is now resulting in arrest and incarceration. • Kids who find themselves caught in this unnecessary tour of the criminal justice system very quickly develop malignant attitudes toward law enforcement. Many drop out - or are forced out - of school. In the worst cases, the experience serves as an introductory course in behavior that is, in fact, criminal. • As zero-tolerance policies proliferate, children are being treated like criminals for the most minor offenses. School to Prison Pipeline By Bob Herbert The New York Times Saturday 09 June 2007

  12. Personal & Structural Bias

  13. Bias Mirriam-Webster Dictionary:  an inclination of temperament or outlook; especially a personal and sometimes unreasoned judgment  an attitude of mind that predisposes one to favor something  implies an unreasoned and unfair distortion of judgment in favor of or against a person or thing

  14. Bias • Dr. Sondra Thiederman, president of Cross-Cultural Communications: • ”…bias is simply an inflexible belief about a particular category of people — positive or negative.” • Dr. Thiederman explained bias is an attitude and not a behavior.

  15. Bias Personal: Generally come from one’s own experience, frame-of-reference, culture, etc. Structural: Where a process, or a system, is set up to favor or hinder someone or something.

  16. The Container Concept

  17. Think about young people (between 2 - 20 years of age) with whom you work or come into contact with on a regular basis. What skills, qualities, and attributes do you want them to have 20 years from now (when they are between 22 - 40 years of age)?

  18. VISION •LOYAL • RESILIENT •CARING • PATIENT •HAPPY • AT PEACE •INTEGRITY • RESOURCEFUL •SUCCESSFUL • CONTRIBUTOR • FORGIVING •GOOD PARENTS •POSITIVE ATTITUDE •WELL-INFORMED •GET ALONG W/ OTHERS •GOOD SELF ESTEEM •CRITICAL THINKER •COMPASSIONATE •PRODUCTIVE CITIZENS •HONEST    • CREATIVE •EMPATHETIC    • RESPECT •RESPONSIBLE    • MOTIVATED •SELF RESPECT    • RELIABLE •LITERATE    • EMPLOYED •CONFIDENT    • HEALTHY •SELF SUFFICIENT •SENSE OF HUMOR •INDEPENDENT •PERSEVERENCE •RESOURCEFUL •PROBLEM SOLVERS •GOOD COMMUNICATOR

  19. Frees the Brain for Learning Caine and Caine refer to “relaxed alertness” as when the brain is at it’s best for learning.

  20. Supports Academic Learning From: Zins, J.E., Weissberg, R.P., Wang, M.C., and Walberg, H.J, eds. (2004). Building Academic Success on Social and Emotional Learning: What does the research say? New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

  21. CASEL Study* … four-year study confirming that school-based social and emotional learning programs that help students build positive relationships, develop empathy, and resolve conflicts respect-fully and cooperatively also have a positive effect on academic performance. (from article by International Institute for Restorative Practices:www.safersanerschools.org/library/caselstudy.html) http://www.casel.org/downloads/metaanalysissum.pdf * Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning

  22. Helps Youth Gain Assets & Life Skills From: The Search Institute: www.search-institute.org

  23. Moving from “what’s wrong with them” to “what’s happening with me and/or us.”

  24. “People and Environments are never neutral. They are either summoning or shunning the development of human potential.” Purkey & Novak, Inviting School Success

  25. Container Models

  26. How SEL Supports Good Outcomes for Kids Safe, Caring, Challenging, Well- Managed , Participatory Learning Environments Greater Attachment, Engagement, & Commitment to School Better Academic Performance and Success in School and Life • Teach SEL • Competencies • Self-awareness • Social awareness • Self-management • Relationship skills • Responsible • decision making Less Risky Behavior, More Assets, More Positive Development http://www.casel.org/downloads/Safe%20and%20Sound/2B_Performance.pdf

  27. Three Inter-Locking Strategies (Creating a Climate of Respect) RELATIONSHIPS ENVIRONMENTS COMMUNITY Adult Consistency Source: Koenig & Frank

  28. Ideas & Actions

  29. All learning begins with the simple phrase, "I don't know". • I don't know

  30. For more information, please contact Laurie Frank at: LSFrank@mac.com 608-251-2234 www.goalconsulting.org

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