==>Q1: How would YOU define “School Climate”?
- School climate is the quality of the day to day for students, parents, and staff
 - I think school climate is the feeling that you get in a school building. Feelings of safety and connection to people & school!
 - School climate takes the emotional temp of a community, including admin, teachers, students & families
 - School climate involves many dimensions, physical (appearance, etc) social (emotional relationships), academic (quality of learning)
 
- Harmony & Collaboration, teachers, students, staff members, and administrators create a positive school climate
 - Positive school climate feels welcoming! It's a place where you want to be!
 - Collaboration & respect especially when there are conflicting views on how to handle children's needs.
 - Willingness to communicate, work thru conflict, honor & value differences, support those who need a boost, and having fun!
 - Happy people, sharing ideas, resources, concerns.
 - All students feel comfortable, welcome, safe, wanted, and have caring people they can trust and it includes all stakeholders!
 - Principals that involve staff and exercise the principles of shared leadership are able to maintain a positive climate.
 
- People unwilling to listen and compromise.
 - Stress, tension & losing focus create neg school climate
 - Kids feeling unsafe. Fights, bullying, peer pressure, etc. All things that #schoolcounselors can combat!
 - Cliques (students and staff)
 - Lack of vision, no direction
 - School/Staff are unwelcoming, disruptions to learning by negative behaviors, no connection between families and school staff
 - No flexibility, those that are resistant to change and are not open to hearing different perspectives
 - I wonder if the key to a neg climate is a loss of focus on the children
 
- Gather data! Survey teachers, parents, students and evaluate results
 - By modeling for students, parents, and other staff the qualities that help foster a positive school climate
 - One idea-I put words of encouragement on the bathroom wall; treats and notes in boxes
 - Datadriven practices where you can make those nonbelievers believe, snowball effect, SC influence +change
 - Help to bring together all stakeholders to evaluate and improve the school climate.
 - It has to start with admin - a clear vision - shared leadership empowering all stakeholders
 - Some schools create compliment trees in the T lounge-teachers write positive notes to each other.
 - We have doing Olweus for about 4 years. The data shows it has really helped reduced bullying in our "hot spots"
 - How about inter-grade activities to help improve school climate...
 - Acknowledge/celebrate the behaviors that contribute to a positive environment... incl. staff, parents, and admin & students!
 - Mentoring & events like Mix-it-Up at Lunch Day
 
- We track PBIS slips for students and teachers - tells us who's buying in
 - Pre/post tests can be adapted to any age, qualitative: observations, more smiles, behavior changes
 - I attend as many grade level meetings as possible
 - I use the amount of students that come to see me. It shows me that students feel confident that I can help them
 - I love getting parent feedback too!
 - Informal-Staff hosting after school clubs, participation in PTA events
 - Our school does an anonymous exit survey for 5th graders before they go to MS, and we learn a LOT about our climate!
 - Eat lunch with grade levels- opportunity to informally get feedback
 
Were you unable to join us for our chat? No problem! Continue the conversation anytime using hashtag #escchat, or leave a comment here if you have thoughts or ideas to contribute! 
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