“IS CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION as important as CULTURE AND CLIMATE?”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2009) recommends school climate reform as a data-driven strategy that promotes healthy relationships, school connectedness, and dropout prevention. The Institute for Educational Sciences includes school climate as a sound strategy for dropout prevention (Dynarski et al., 2008). The U.S. Department of Education (2007) has invested in the Safe and Supportive Schools (S3) grant program to support statewide school climate measurement and the study of school climate improvement efforts. A growing number of divisions within the State Departments of Education are focusing on school climate reform as an essential component of school improvement and/or bully prevention.
“Relative to culture and climate work within a few of our schools. The results at our freshmen center have been awesome and the work is beginning to pick up at our high school.”
Principals
“As I reflect on my first interaction with the FFES crew, it was amazing. The FFES’s professionalism, knowledge, and delivery was awesome. The transition process with your administrative cabinet changes almost immediately and the buy in starts. From the first 5 minutes, I was sold. Positive interactions and a workable plans allow you to transform Climate and Culture within any building.”
“This process so far has engaged me in Team Building at new levels. This process produces an “All hands on deck” mentality which has allowed me to build capacity within my building using the available resources.”
“The culture and climate work around VISIONEERING has helped me as the principal in framing and communicating the vision of the school for faculty and staff in order to move the school forward. This work created a process that supports ownership in the entire school staff creating an environment for teaching and learning. Without this process, we would not have a clear direction; we would not have standard operating procedures and students and staff would not know what to expect. This work supports clarity and team work.”
“Thanks to the help of FFES, I am no longer the CEO of foolishness. In my experience as an administrator, I have always had the luxury of having assistants and coaches but not so in my current location.”
“I was both impressed with the information on actually teaching the establishment of routines and procedures. I have routines and procedures but I missed my mark by not teaching them and making assumptions that students should already know.”
– Middle School Band
“This session was very beneficial for my team because what I have found is that everyone is not on the same page with classroom management that fosters a positive atmosphere. Therefore, with this training I feel having a blueprint with effective ideas & examples can build a more unified operation for all to adopt or gravitate towards.”
– 5th Grade Elementary
“I thoroughly enjoyed the session today! I can’t think of a better way to start my school year. She gave practical information that can be easily implemented into my classroom.”
– ” 9th-12th Grade High School
“I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation. As a veteran teacher, it captured my undivided attention and reinforced my desire to remain an educator. I took away one very important fact: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
– 9th-12th Grade High School Spanish
“Awesome presentation!! Please come by our school and do some administrator/teacher workshops! More in-depth with entire faculty.”
– 6th Grade Middle School