School Climate and Culture
A safe, supportive, inclusive and positive culture is essential to the ability of a school to serve its students and the community in which they live. Building and maintaining such a work culture requires consistent, careful and detailed planning. With this in mind, I have spearheaded numerous culture and climate initiatives over the course of my service to Emma Lazarus High School.
Building School Climate and Culture through Intervisitation
One of the most important factors in the success of a school is its teacher collective efficacy, a shared belief in collaborative capability to organize and execute the courses of action required to help students achieve great things. Building teacher collective efficacy requires different strategies, one of which is for staff to conduct regular intervisitations and sharing of best practices. As a teacher leader, I often led these intervisitation efforts, as the artifacts below show.
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​Interactive Intervisitation Calendar I created this calendar to easily allow any teacher in the building to offer to host visits. The host noted their classroom and a brief description of what they would be teaching that day. Visitors included not only other teachers but also administrators, guidance counselors, and social workers.​
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Intervisitation Note Catcher One cycle of learning that our school engaged in was around Habits of Mind in the Classroom. To further discussion of these habits, I designed this note catcher to ground intervisitation in objective observation and promote productive conversation afterwards during debriefs.
Supporting Social Emotional Learning
Social emotional learning (SEL) equips students with essential skills for thriving in school and life. Measuring SEL skills through high-quality assessments provides valuable data to guide each student's growth. By assessing SEL, educators can adapt their instruction and support systems to cultivate a positive learning environment that enables students to develop the necessary social and emotional competencies for personal well-being and academic growth. Below are SEL artifacts used in my classroom.
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​Student Self Reflection This assignment asked students to use Habits of Mind as a metacognitive, social emotional reflection tool.​
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Habits of Mind Student Discussion I used this conversation protocol to help students navigate a social emotional conversation with one another, using the Habits of Mind as an anchor for their discussion. At random, students drew cards with different Habits of Mind on them, then discussed their thoughts on how that habit helped them navigate difficulties and challenges in and out of the classroom.