Creating a Culture for Learning

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Creating a Culture for Learning

• Laurie Frank

Download www.goalconsulting.org
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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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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
childs 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
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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

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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
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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
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Culture Based on Fear
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The faces of the students expressed the school's
culture more eloquently than any vision statement
displayed in a lucite frame. A sense of
wholesomeness and kid-centeredness wrapped itself
around me as soon as I entered the building. Too
often, the opposite is true. In some schools,
students walk in straight, silent lines monitored
by stern teachers. The art on the walls is more
likely to come from the photocopier than from the
creative energy of children. The main office is
dominated by warning signs about name badges,
security checks, and sign-in procedures. EDUCATIO
NAL LEADERSHIP School Culture An Invisible
Essential, Joanne Rooney February 2005 Volume
62 Number 5
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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
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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_at_ucla.edu
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• 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
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Personal Structural Bias
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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
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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.
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Bias
Personal Generally come from ones own
experience, frame-of-reference, culture,
etc. Structural Where a process, or a system,
is set up to favor or hinder someone or something.
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The Container Concept
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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)?
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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 PERSEVERE
NCE RESOURCEFUL PROBLEM SOLVERS GOOD
COMMUNICATOR
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Frees the Brain for Learning
Caine and Caine refer to relaxed alertness as
when the brain is at its best for learning.
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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.
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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/casel
study.html)
http//www.casel.org/downloads/metaanalysissum.pdf
Collaborative for Academic, Social and
Emotional Learning
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Helps Youth Gain Assets Life Skills
From The Search Institute www.search-institute.o
rg
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Moving from whats wrong with them to whats
happening with me and/or us.
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People and Environments are never neutral. They
are either summoning or shunning the development
of human potential. Purkey Novak, Inviting
School Success
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Container Models
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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/Safe20and20Sound/
2B_Performance.pdf
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Three Inter-Locking Strategies (Creating a
Climate of Respect)
RELATIONSHIPS
ENVIRONMENTS
COMMUNITY
Adult Consistency
Source Koenig Frank
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Ideas Actions
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All learning begins with the simple phrase, "I
don't know". I don't know
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For more information, please contact Laurie Frank
at LSFrank_at_mac.com 608-251-2234 www.goalconsultin
g.org