Instead, creating and nurturing a positive school climate requires a Silver Buckshot approach. A wide variety of small strategies that together add up to positive school climate.
Here is most of what we do to ensure our school climate gets more positive every day:
Whole School Efforts (Tier I)
- Bear Cave: Weekly Whole School Meeting
- Daily Morning Meeting in each classroom (Responsive Classroom style)
- DENS: Doesn’t Everyone Need Support. Small group, like advisory, six students from K-8 with one staff member, 15 minutes each week
- Recognition and celebrations of meeting the school wide expectations, PBIS. We use a system of links to hand to the students. Then we fill a tube with spheres to track milestones around the building. We celebrate when the use is halfway and completely full.
- Positive Postcards home. We are working on making sure that every family gets some positive words from the school/teacher.
- Teachers eating lunch with students
- CLAWS, Community Leaders Advising With Support. A scheduled time for students to share their thoughts about the school.
- Social/Emotional Learning
- Second Step
- Teachings Kids to Thrive book study
For students who demonstrate some kind of need (Tier II/III)
- Increased counseling. From 0.0 FTE two years ago to 0.6 FTE now
- Student Support Supervisor/Para to work with students when they are sent out of class. Create behavior support plans
- PAWS: Positive Action With Support, a Check-in, check-out intervention
- Thorough investigation and reaction to reports of bullying and harassment
- Track some classroom-level discipline data in addition to office discipline referrals
Staff
- Staff raffles
- Woohoo! Board in Staff Room to share kudos or ideas
- Wellness Champions bringing staff wellness to the forefront
- Chocolate at every FLT/Faculty Meeting
- Sleuth Leadership Team: shared decision making
- Transparency and honesty
- Principal visibility: classroom visits of every teacher several times each month
- Improving communication
I did not come up with the phrase “silver buckshot.” I heard it mentioned on a podcast sometime in January 2018, but I cannot figure out which one (I listen to a couple dozen shows during my commute). So, as much as I’d like to give credit for the phrase, I cannot. I was able to find a reference to the phrase “silver buckshot” all the way back to 2000 in an article about cockroach control. More common usage seems to start with a 2006 climate article from Bill McKibben.
A “Silver Buckshot” Guide to Cockroach Control
By: LT Daniel Szumlas, Ph.D.
Date Posted: January 22, 2000
Welcome to the Climate Crisis
By: Bill McKibben
Date Posted: May 27, 2006
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