when I started this work about 13 years ago we were talking about school climate and at that time there were States and districts who didn't know what we meant by that they thought it meant like the ambient climate or just the climate overall and so it was a process of educating folks of what school climate is um School climate has been studied for ades and aspects of it as well as models of it for decades um but over the past I'd say 15 20 years there's been a real focus in um better understanding how to measure it um administering surveys to be able to get data using that data to understand the relationship between school climate and um and student outcomes and so they've learned a lot over these years so I think now the field does really know what school climate is or more people know what it is but especially when you explain what it is like I did earlier um it makes sense right because all of us it's a universal experience to go to school all of us have been there so we can all look back to our experience in school did we feel like we belonged did we feel safe were we was safe did we feel challenged were we challenged did we get the skills that we needed to be successful um did we get the the support that we needed so when we all reflect it it's it makes it a lot easier to understand all the aspects of school climate are interrelated so if there's anything that's happening in one area it will affect other areas we like to talk about school climate as basically a three-legged School three-legged stool where there's safety engagement environment those are the major pillars of what we how we describe School climate and if you lose one leg the stool will go down we know from research that when students are engaged when they are safe and when they have a conducive environment they do well so even though everybody is different every individual is different every experience is different what we can do is administer surveys to get a sense of using valid and reliable surveys to get the perceptions of what people the students and staff think about the school climate visit us online at ideast stream.org welcome for more web extras links to resources and to watch the documentary you are welcome creating safe and support of schools a production of idea stream public media