EDITOR'S NOTE: In an Aspire Project post last week, Chris Overtree, a psychologist with the University of Massachusetts, described why improving a school’s social climate is key to reducing instances of bullying. Today, he suggests specific steps to take.

By CHRIS OVERTREE

AMHERST — Reforming a school’s climate must be both top-down and bottom-up.

Reducing bullying and promoting a more positive social climate means seeking consensus amongst leaders at the top and the bottom of the system, the superintendents and kindergarten students, the teachers and the bus drivers and the parents.

We are all leaders in this process. School boards dismiss student and teacher opinions at their peril, as changing school climate is not something that can be decreed or legislated.

A process can be put into place, funding can be secured, but change happens on the ground.

With the support and encouragement of high-level administrators, teachers, students and parents quickly become the most important pieces of the puzzle.

A broad consensus about even something as simple as “it is a good idea to try to improve our school” can be the first essential step. (Chris Overtree photo by Gordon Daniels.)

In the same way that becoming motivated to change unhealthy eating habits can be the beginning of a successful diet, developing community consensus about the value of striving for school improvement can be the beginning of change.

Nurture student leaders

Too often, systems try to change students without involving them, and without recognizing the value of placing them into leadership roles.
Rather than trying to change students, we need to use students to promote change.

Several years ago, I worked with a high school that had seen the improvements accelerate after their third year focusing on climate.

We realized to our great pleasure that the student leadership programs implemented in the middle schools were starting to impact the high schools as students moved up the grades.
When I asked one high school student why he decided to join the Respect and Leadership Team, he said simply, “I have always been part of that team.”

In our climate reform work, we actively seek a diverse student leadership team, broadly representative in all possible ways, something we often refer to as “drawing leaders from every table in the lunchroom.”

Well-meaning people often forget to include others who, because of their status or standing, are more forgettable. Student leaders, with the help from and permission of their teachers and principals, can do much of the legwork themselves.

And just the very act of being given a voice can begin to effect real change.

But it is not enough to highlight student leaders; they need jobs.

Using transparency

Understanding the problem is the next step, and this is where data becomes invaluable.

Good school climate reform relies on standardized but anonymous student, teacher and parent data, with the results compiled and shared broadly and transparently. By looking at data first, we generate consensus around the issues that are the most prominent in a school.

We can garner our resources to tackle the biggest problems, and figure out which ones students and teachers have the most energy to try and solve. Student leadership teams can lead the charge, by administering the survey to their classmates.

In doing so, they impress upon their fellows the importance of improving the school and the unique opportunity that every student has to really tell what they know about their school.
Student leaders are more effective at emphasizing this point, and also give credibility to the protection of anonymity needed to convince students to be truly honest.

But this transparency has a price, and members of the media and community must share in the burden.
For schools to be more transparent about areas of concern and difficulty, we need to be more understanding that school climate is not a goal, but a process.

Schools don’t finish teaching math, nor should they ever finish working on school climate.
And when schools are courageous enough to identify problems and strive for solutions, we need to be as supportive and understanding that sustainable change is a gradual process.

Setting plans

Using data to drive the process, actions can be planned. In the example in last week’s article, changing the staffing procedures for recess and literally asking the snowplow to move piles of snow to the other side of the parking lot did the trick.

You may be surprised to learn that some solutions to big problems are actually quite small. This is why data is so important. It keeps us from wasting effort and allows us to put our resources where they are needed most.

A middle school in Tennessee I worked with a few years ago realized that one of the central themes emerging from their student data was an underdeveloped or undervalued sense of empathy for others. While there are formal curricula that can be used to promote empathy, they chose another route.

An enterprising teacher wrote a small grant to purchase about 50 handlooms, which kids could use to learn to knit.
Then she created a school-wide project to knit warm hats for every newborn baby in the county and every patient on the children’s oncology ward. In the truest sense of the word, the idea went completely viral.

By the end of the school year, knitting was easily the most popular privilege that children chose when they had finished their work or had otherwise earned a reward.

And sure enough, students and teachers noticed subtle improvements in the climate of the school over time. Children were learning, and doing so in such a fun way, to think about things greater than themselves and to put their efforts into helping another.
This subtle change paid large dividends for the school as a whole, and was much more effective than detentions and rules at promoting respectful behavior.

Build on what’s right

Perhaps more important than what we decide to change is our decision to embrace the process of change. We often respond to incidents of bullying in schools by asking “what is wrong with our children.”

We should be striving to recognize all that is right about them, and nurture these strengths further. Then we need to look for the same attributes in ourselves and strive to embody the values we hope to see displayed by our children.

Disrespectful discourse in poisonous blogs or hostile public meetings can contribute strongly to a culture of disrespect in a community. Our students and teachers are part of their community, and are not immune to the effects.

Bullying need not be physical; academic degrees or financial wealth can be used like fists to intimidate or silence valuable voices in our community. People matter more than the opinions they possess, and no amount of power or status can change this.

Our most valued community leaders and politicians understand this fact, and are humble in their service, rather than patronizing or hostile.
By speaking up, and inviting our neighbors to do so as well, we get a broader and more accurate snapshot of our community strengths and weaknesses.

By doing so respectfully, we teach our children that conflict need not be hostile, and disagreement need not lead to conflict.

Christopher Overtree is a clinical psychologist, school consultant and professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the director of the Psychological Services Center and specializes in treating children, adolescents and their families. As co-founder of the Center for School Climate and Learning, he works with schools to develop comprehensive school improvement strategies. He is the father of two boys and lives in Florence.