- [Narrator] One of the most powerful practices in the implementation of social and emotional learning is the cultivation of a supportive school and classroom climate.

School climate is the quality and character of school life.

When schools foster an environment where all students and adults feel safe, supported, and connected, students are more likely to develop the social and emotional competencies they need to be successful.

(bell chimes) - Oftentimes there's a connotation for social emotional learning that is solely residing in an individual person, right?

And everybody has a sense of control or responsibility for the way they're moving through the world.

What we have to acknowledge, however, is that that can be supported or discouraged by what's happening around us, and that's what we think about when we think classroom climate and school climate.

It tells us that if we are encouraged or expected to behave kinds of ways to interact collaboratively and solve problems with one another, that should be in all that we kind of see and experience throughout the day, from the moment we walk into the building, and until we depart.

What we advise here at CASEL is that we want to be explicit, right?

We want to let people know that healthy relationships, development of self, healthy identity, and all of that is actually something we're deliberately working toward, and so paying attention to classroom climate and school climate is a way of letting everyone know that that's, in fact, what we're doing.

- When we're thinking about a supportive school climate, we're really thinking about how do you feel when you enter a space, and the goal there is for people to feel connected to each other, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel like they are known, that they are liked, that they are part of a bigger community in that building, and that could look like a number of different things.

You would see people greeting each other by name, you would see student work on the walls, you would see school spirit and lots of spirit wear, you would see smiles, you would see high fives, you would see classrooms where kids are routinely in groups and in partners getting to know each other and building that sense of belonging and community.

All of those are strategies for creating a positive and supportive climate, and in order to do that, schools and classrooms have routines and structures that promote that kind of connecting.

- [Presenter] One school district that displays these practices is Miamisburg City Schools, just south of Dayton, Ohio.

Miamisburg has made school culture, safety, and the sense of belonging part of its strategic plan and mission.

- I think an overall positive culture and climate atmosphere in any work environment just creates more productivity for our learners, and also our staff and our educators.

We want school to be fun, we want school to feel safe, and then, hopefully, that just fosters a positive climate where there's many successes and we're learning along the way, and it's okay to make a mistake.

- I think it's really important for schools to focus on their climate, find out what their students are feeling, and then use that student voice to hear from them what it is it's missing, why is it that they're not happy to be in a building?

- [Narrator] To capture those voices, the schools use climate surveys and questionnaires to gauge student perception.

Staff are also surveyed in a similar way with that data building level teams that are then empowered to make adjustments that fit their school, while continuing to reinforce the district's overall philosophy.

- Students, aren't going to learn if they don't feel like they're in a place that wants them there.

- [Narrator] Rebecca Huber's the principal for Kinder Elementary.

The K-5 grade school has a multi-layered approach to its SEL work, including efforts to build and sustain a strong sense of culture and community.

- At the school level, our norm is that everybody's greeted, everyone feels excited to be there.

We say goodbye to every student the same way.

In the classroom, I think the norms that have helped build a community the most, and to build this climate is every day has to start with the morning meeting, and every day ends with some kind of check in, checkout, whether the kids are just giving a high-low, or "Today I learned this," or even writing on a post-it note something great about their day - [Narrator] Nearby at Mark Twain Elementary, culture and community are built with the same tenets and themes as Kinder, creating district-wide consistency.

However, implementation and the approach are flexible.

Each building shapes culture and practices in a way that fits their students and staff.

- One of the biggest things for us that's new is a soft start and it's fabulous.

- [Narrator] Rather than beginning instruction as soon as the bell rings, a soft start gives students flexibility when they arrive in the morning.

During this time, they can settle in and prepare for the school day using any number of welcome check-ins, centering or calming activities.

- Our teachers do check-ins with their students.

It's very important to see what level everybody's at.

We try really hard to do a circle in the morning.

They're encouraged as well to do another check in at the end of the day where they're showing a quick video, doing movement breaks and activities.

♪ Have a good day ♪ ♪ Have a good day ♪ ♪ Have a good day ♪ ♪ Have a good day ♪ - But that reflection then at the end of the day about, "What was good about my day, what went well?

What goal do maybe I have for tomorrow?

", for them to kind of look back on their day.

- [Narrator] Being able to check in each day with students and staff has been imperative for these schools to react and make improvements.

- And that student-to-student interaction just still is an area of focus for us, and we're always looking at ways that one can recognize another individual, whether it's through kindness chain links that we're putting up throughout the building and they're filling out tags, or they're circling somebody who did something kind and putting those up, and then not only just putting them up, but reading them back using our morning announcements.

(bell dings) - [Student] Information from bedroom.

- Where we recognize our student of the month over our announcements for the whole building to see, just that positive tone has gone so far.

- [Narrator] Building that student-to-student interaction can take on other forms as well, including creating situations for older students to naturally engage with younger learners who often look up to them.

- Some of our older students walk our younger students to class in the mornings, walk our kindergartners out at the end of the day, they help the little ones loading them into their cars, saying, "Have a good day" to the families.

You will see them helping with projects within classrooms.

We do clubs where the students then are cross-grade levels.

- [Narrator] The Mustang Clubs, as they're called, mix grades one through five together in order to foster relationships through gardening, playing sports, making cupcakes, and more.

- The fifth graders, they're kind of like the role models in the clubs, so they can help out, or even sometimes first graders help out.

- It makes me feel like I have something to do and not just do schoolwork every day.

- What I like about the cupcake club is that I get to meet new people.

There's like this one fifth grader, she's my best friend.

- The other day, I had a fifth grader helping a second grader learn how to cut lettuce.

And you would think, "Okay, that's not a big deal," but you know what?

It is.

- [Narrator] From the rhythm of the school to how you see its spirit reflected on the physical walls, embodying that student voice and identity wherever possible is key to creating an inclusive culture, especially when it comes to setting classroom expectations.

- Every classroom in my building has a poster up where the kids and the teacher have work together to create a classroom vision, and it's written, it also has visual cues, and it's things that the teachers and the students want to see more of, or want to see less of, or want to hear more of, or hear less of.

And we revisit this model four to five times a year.

So the students can evaluate how they're doing with their own vision and make adjustments.

It's usually referred to in the morning meeting.

The teachers will say, "Yesterday I saw a lot of this.

What did you see and what can we do about it?"

And then it involves the students and makes them a partner in the discipline and the school climate.

- [Narrator] As this indicator's name implies, it takes the whole school community to create a safe and supportive culture.

In that way, both the practices and the perception of staff members are key to sustaining it.

In Miamisburg, they pride themselves on continuing to create a work environment that supports and engages staff while also creating a bit of, what they call, surprise and delight.

- Any time you have a feel-good moment at school or work, I feel like it's impactful to how the overall climate of the building is.

Surprise and delight, we've we've incorporated that feature of making school fun.

So for our staff members, we've encouraged them to seek out ways to just make a staff meeting fun, and for the last 25 years in Miamisburg, you had your back-to-school welcome day for the staff, so we did surprise and delight on a grand scale.

We had food trucks for lunch, we had a DJ, we had Olympic games, and it was a team-building event versus a three-hour really dry meeting.

We wanna encourage people to provide different love languages for how staff and humans respond to appreciation.

So as a district, we're trying to encourage our adults to provide surprise and delight to their colleagues, but also in the classroom.

So if a staff member plays the piano and maybe one morning they play all Disney songs as the students walk in the building, so they're hearing their favorite Disney song as they're coming into their morning, to their soft starts.

So I think those have been ways that we've incorporated making our schools feel more just caring and understanding of one another, and just taking that time to recognize the importance of feeling a sense of belonging and having fun while they do it.

- The key for climate is relationships, relationships among the adults, relationships among the students, relationships between students and adults, all of those positive relationships and friendships are what will promote a positive climate.

And as educators, we wanna help our students create those relationships so that they can feel that way not just in school, but in life.

(logos whooshing) (gentle music) (logos whooshing)