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Tap-In / Tap-Out: Giving Teachers Time to Recharge

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Mindset Monday-Share a growth mindset aha!
Touch-Your-Toe Tuesday-Opportunity for brain breaks through-out the day.
Workout Wednesday-Be ready to squat and do jumping jacks.
Thoughtful Teacher Thursday-Share a thoughtful moment.
Spirit -Wear Friday: Show your spirit!
All ideas begin to scratch the surface of school-wide self-care.

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https://www.edutopia.org/article/restoring-joy-teaching?fbclid=IwAR3Mc4X090qVNEvS4rayLkpy9WQAbyXP8ZXX4yNvufCcDFfY8fF66Zf1x5M&mibextid=qIFLSC&fs=e&s=cl

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It can be tough to find a way toward joyfulness when you’re overwhelmed, but you can reset and reignite your energy for teaching.

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Educator Well-Being - We Need Systems Change (Part 1)
By Mark Greenberg Emeritus Bennett Chair of Prevention Science, Penn State University, Chair of CREATE (www.createforeducation.org) Supporting educators social and emotional lives
"Without well teachers, we will not have healthy schools and successful students"

Even before the world pandemic, teachers/educators faced very challenging situations that have led to high levels of burnout and many teachers leaving the profession across the world. Even under the best of conditions, teaching is a highly demanding profession. Teaching places high demands from a physical, emotional, and cognitive standpoint. Learning soars when students and teachers develop trusting and caring relationships. If there is one thing we have learned during the pandemic, it is how important the teacher-student relationship is to learning.

Supporting teachers social and emotional development on the job

Reforming teacher training to better prepare teachers for the job they face

Making educational reforms at the district and school levels to systemically support teacher well-
being.
In each of three blogs, I explore one of these three approaches.

Supporting teachers social and emotional development on the job
Yet, this is nothing new. As the highly respected Lee Shulman reflected in 1983 ".... the teacher must remain the key. The literature on effective schools is meaningless, debates over educational policy are moot if the primary agents of instruction are incapable of performing their function. "

Don't you as a reader find it is at least somewhat surprising that teacher wellness has not become a central policy issue - at least until now? If we are to take seriously the task of supporting teacher's well-being, there are three key approaches that need to be integrated into school reform for the sake of teachers as well as students and their families. They are:

During the past decade there has been increased attention to supporting teachers social and emotional competence ( Klingbeil & Renshaw, 2018). There is substantial data that teacher's social and emotional competence and well-being both influence student behavior and achievement ( Schonert-Reichl, 2017). In fact the field of social and emotional learning (SEL) has recently (and finally) placed a focus on the social and emotional needs of teachers and the report of the National Commission on Social, Emotional & Academic Development (2018) shined a spotlight on the importance of adult SEL. The CASEL School Guide to systemic SEL places a major focus on adult SEL and even recommends the possibility that school consider focusing on adult SEL before implementing evidence-based SEL Programs for students.

What Have We Learned So Far re Teacher SEL Research?
A recent meta-analysis of teacher mindfulness/SEL programs indicates significant effects on teacher well-being and psychopathology (Klingbeil & Renshaw, 2018). There are now a number of Adult SEL Programs that have been carefully studied in randomized trials and two of the most prominent, CARE and CALM are recommended as potential teacher interventions in the CASEL School Guide.

These programs have been shown to improve teacher well-being, their efficacy and enjoyment of teaching, and to lower burnout and negative affective symptoms such as anxiety and depression. In addition, CARE has shown effects on the quality of classroom instruction (Jennings et al, 2017) and longer-term effects in the next school year (Jennings et al, 2019). Further, a number of studies have produced in-depth qualitative studies that provide the voice of participants on how CARE enables teachers to respond more compassionately with students and colleagues (Schussler et al, 2016, 2018; Sharp & Jennings, 2016; Taylor et al, 2015). Findings from CALM have shown positive effects on physiological indicators of teacher health (i.e., improvements in cortisol/stress response and blood pressure).

The fact that evidence-based Adult SEL programs have led to such broad improvements should be of great interest to administrators, school boards, and unions - all of whom are deeply invested in teachers being well and successful. Yet, professional development for teachers focused on their own social and emotional competence is a rare event. As Seymour Sarason reflected decades ago "It is virtually impossible to create and sustain over time conditions for productive learning for students when they do not exist for teachers"

Although supporting teachers own social and emotional awareness is only one of three parts of an integrated solution to teacher well-being, the time is now.

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Educator Well-Being - We Need Systems Change (Part 1) - CREATE For Education

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Educator Well-Being - We Need Systems Change (Part 1) By Mark Greenberg Emeritus Bennett Chair of Prevention Science, Penn State University, Chair of CREATE (www.createforeducation.org) Supporting educators social and emotional lives " Without well teachers, we will not have healthy schools and successful students" Even before the world pandemic, teachers/educators faced very challenging situations that have led to high levels of burnout and many teachers leaving the profession across the world.

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Teacher Well-Being - We Need Systems Change (Part 2)
Reforming teacher training to better prepare teachers for the job they face
By Mark Greenberg Emeritus Bennett Chair of Prevention Science, Penn State University, Chair of CREATE (www.createforeducation.org)
" In the current national focus on teacher quality, the essential role of teachers social and emotional competencies is often overlooked. But ask educators when they need those competencies and they'll likely respond everyday." Jones, Bouffard & Weisbourd, 2013, p.62

Teaching is a highly rewarding but emotional exhausting profession. Teachers give their heart and soul to their jobs and while relationships with their students are often very rewarding, teaching requires high emotional labor. What this means is that teachers often need to manage their own emotions in order to support the authentic emotions of their students. As a result, teachers often experience vicarious trauma from their support of the many needs of their students. As my colleague, Marc Brackett has noted " Educators have always known that emotions play a key role in teaching and learning, yet few systematic efforts have been made to train teachers and educators on the skills associated with emotional literacy. "(Brackett & Kremenitzer, 2011)

No one has captured this better than Linda Darling-Hammond who reflects about great teaching " If you think about what kids say about great teachers, what they are really saying, quite often, is that great teachers are socially and emotionally intelligent; they interact well; they are able to be centered, and fair, and they have good relationship skills; they make the other person feel attended to, and important; they pay attention to students' learning, and are able to be responsive (2014)." .

The Current State of Teacher Training and SEL
In seeking to support teacher well-being, one of the major concerns is the nature and quality of their preservice training. So, it is at least somewhat surprising that in teacher pre-service training it is a very rare College of Education that requires teachers to take a course on social and emotional learning, either in regard to students, or for teachers, themselves. In fact, in many Colleges of Education, there are no courses offered in this topic. As a result, t here is an enormous gap between the preparation teachers receive and the situations in which they find themselves when faced with their own classroom. It is no wonder that teachers suffer very high rates of stress and burnout.

CASEL commissioned a comprehensive research study on pre-service courses led by Kimberly Schonert-Reichl at the University of British Columbia. After detailed review of 3,916 courses from 304 Colleges of Education, they found there was very little explicit content in required coursework focused on providing teacher candidates with information on SEL of Teachers or SEL of Students. The study found that few teacher education programs covered the five SEL competencies outlined by CASEL. For example, only 13 % had at least one course that included information on relationship skills. For responsible decision-making, self-management, social awareness, and self-awareness, the numbers were between 1 and 7 %. Further, most pre-service programs do little or nothing to support teachers own self-care. This lack of preparation leads many new teachers to feel unprepared to manage their classrooms and the secondary impact on their own well-being often leads to teacher turnover. In 2010, the costs of teacher turnover was estimated at 7 billion dollars per year in the U.S. and the cost of each teacher departure is estimated to cost between $10,000 and $25,000.

Teacher Education Reform: Next Steps
If we want teachers to succeed and schools to thrive, we must address changes needed in the preparation of the next generation of teachers. This requires that we develop quality preparation programs that give teachers a deep understanding of child development, peer relations, equity, and systemic issues that affect identify and belonging. Such coursework can help teacher candidates set the stage for SEL by teaching them to develop safe, inclusive, and supportive classroom environments. Teachers should also learn the science and practice of evidence-based SEL. In addition, by helping teachers to explore their own social and emotional awareness we can support their own well-being and teach skills and habits to support the emotional labor of teaching.

To make these essential changes, faculty will need to reflect on their own teaching and integrate practices that support SEL effectively in their coursework. This will require new training opportunities for faculty (online, summer institutes, etc.). Finally, there is a need to conduct research on the effectiveness of such efforts to build more effective preparation programs with outcomes that include teacher instructional quality as well as teacher well-being, satisfaction, and retention.

Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best...
Bob Talbert

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Educator Well-Being - We Need Systems Change (Part 2) - CREATE For Education

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Teacher Well-Being - We Need Systems Change (Part 2) Reforming teacher training to better prepare teachers for the job they face By Mark Greenberg Emeritus Bennett Chair of Prevention Science, Penn State University, Chair of CREATE (www.createforeducation.org) " In the current national focus on teacher quality, the essential role of teachers social and emotional competencies is often overlooked.

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District and school systemic reforms By Mark Greenberg "Without well teachers, we will not have healthy schools and successful students" What Organizational Factors Impact Teacher Well-being? Emeritus Bennett Chair of Prevention Science, Penn State University, Chair of CREATE (www.createforeducation.org)
to support teachers social and emotional lives
Teacher turnover is estimated to cost about 7 billion dollars per year in US. In addition, there are "hidden costs" including reductions in student achievement. In part 3 in this series of blogs on teacher/educator well-being, I explore the need for systemic reform at the level of the school and district school to support teachers and students. In and , I explored the importance of nurturing teachers own resilience and social and emotional competencies to support them in the challenging role of teaching at both inservice and preservice levels. As Lee Shulman noted almost two decades ago, " Classroom teaching . . . is perhaps the most complex, most challenging, and most demanding, subtle, nuanced, and frightening activity that our species has ever invented."
What Does Research Tell Us About Healthy Organizational Change?
However, there is a prevailing and widespread belief that teacher stress and burnout is the individual responsibility of each teacher, e.g., if teachers were only more resilient then the problem would disappear. This thesis places the burden on the teacher and has the risk of "blaming the victim (i.e., the educator)" rather than looking at the systemic organizational issues that are often responsible for teacher burnout and attrition. In part 1, I discussed the importance of supporting the individual skills and resilience of teachers (just as we all can profit from increased social, emotional, and cultural awareness), here we turn to organization and socio-cultural changes that schools and districts can make to increase educator well-being. To read the research on the role of organizational factors that support teacher well-being go here.
Individual-Organizational Interface Interventions
School Organization: Leadership, School Climate and School Culture. Higher teacher job satisfaction and well-being are linked to supportive school culture, strong principal leadership and a collaborative environment. High teacher trust in both colleagues and leadership is related to lower stress and burnout. Teacher turnover is also related to principal turnover. Frequent principal turnover results in lower teacher retention; leadership changes are particularly harmful for high poverty and low-achieving schools, and schools with inexperienced teachers.

Mentoring and induction programs for beginning teachers can improve teacher satisfaction and retention, as well as student achievement. Research shows teachers who had a subject-area mentor, common subject- area planning time, and regular communications with their principal had higher retention rates. More comprehensive, and longer, induction supports are more advantageous, and particularly effective in retaining teachers in high-need districts.

Workplace wellness programs address teacher's health and well-being by targeting lifestyle changes to reduce health-risk behaviors and costs. Workplace wellness programs have resulted in reduced health risk, health care costs, and absenteeism among teachers. Although few programs have been studied, most are likely to be cost-effective.

Social emotional learning (SEL) programs that improve behavior and promote SEL among students may reduce teacher stress. Teachers trained and supported in implementing SEL programs have lower job-related anxiety and depression, higher quality interactions with students, greater teacher engagement, and greater perceived job control. Teachers in schools implementing multi-tiered approaches such as school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) also reported lower levels of job-related burnout and higher efficacy.

Mindfulness and SEL training for educators. There are numerous careful randomized trials that have shown that nurturing teachers own awareness, communication, relationship skills and mindfulness can improve teacher's well-being (see part 1 of this blog series)

Supporting Principals to Support Teachers. What is most surprising in making systems change is the dearth of research on how principal training can improve teacher well-being. While much has been written regarding howprincipals' supportive behaviors are associated with higher levels of teacher emotion regulation ability and job satisfaction, and well-being, there is very little research to demonstrate how, what and when models of principal training and coaching improves the well-being and retention of teachers.

In part 4 of this series I will discuss the potential role of teacher's unions in supporting well-being.

Job Demands. High demands on the job are associated with teacher stress both before covid and presently. High-stakes testing at the state and district levels have exacerbated this problem by limiting teachers' control over the content and pace of their work, and increasing threats of school closure. Managing students with behavior problems also produces chronic stress.

Work Resources: Autonomy in Decision-Making. When leaders create opportunities for decision making and teacher collaboration, they feel empowered and have higher satisfaction. The % of teachers who report low job autonomy has increased over the past decade. Retaining high quality teachers is heightened when they have a voice in school-level decisions.

Much, but not all of the above factors are related to the quality of relationships that are promoted between teachers, and between teachers and administrators, parents, and students. Principals and administrators set the tone by the quality of relationships they promote, the trust that develops from strong communication skills. By listening with full attention, and approaching decisions with an open and accepting attitude, and creating an "ethic of care", principals can create caring school climates, and help teachers develop the skills necessary to exhibit these same qualities with their students. Principals who promote an ethic of care and intentionally develop authentic relationships and support teachers' emotional needs create a nurturing school environment. To read the research on the role of principals in supporting teacher and school climate go here.

Organizational Interventions. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of research on organizational-level interventions to change school's culture and work practices; programs that promote a participatory environment, open communication, supervisor/peer support, job redesign (e.g. reducing workload), training, worker health policies, etc. Although initiatives have created labor-management health and safety committees, there is no research demonstrating their effectiveness in improving teacher well-being or performance.

This approach focuses on building co-worker support and skills training for teachers. There are four types of programs that have been shown to help teachers reduce stress, improve well-being and student outcomes, and even save schools money. You can find more details here.

If we are going to create and nurture the kind of schools that provide a balance of caring and compassion balanced with high expectations, we need to consider all three components of change: organizational change, educator resilience, and pre-service learning. This requires leadership on the part of district leaders, school boards, unions, and teacher education programs. The time is now .

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Educator Well-Being - We Need Systems Change (Part 3) - CREATE For Education

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District and school systemic reforms By Mark Greenberg " Without well teachers, we will not have healthy schools and successful students " What Organizational Factors Impact Teacher Well-being? Emeritus Bennett Chair of Prevention Science, Penn State University, Chair of CREATE (www.createforeducation.org) to support teachers social and emotional lives Teacher turnover is estimated to cost about 7 billion dollars per year in US.

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Important consequences play out in the day-to-day social exchanges within a school community. Recent research shows that social trust among teachers, parents, and school leaders improves much of the routine work of schools and is a key resource for reform.

For example, Comer's School Development Project demonstrates that strengthening the connections between urban school professionals and parents of low socioeconomic status can improve their children's academic achievement (Comer, Haynes, Joyner, &amp; Ben-Avie, 1996). Meier (1995) argues persuasively that building trust among teachers, school leaders, students, and parents was a key component of the success of the middle school that she created in Harlem. The efforts of Alvarado and his colleagues to build learning communities in Community School District 2 in Manhattan also support the importance of the social dimension of school change (Malloy, 1998). And a longitudinal analysis of successfully restructuring schools concluded thathuman resources-such as openness to improvement, trust and respect, teachers having knowledge and skills, supportive leadership, and socialization-are more critical to the development of professional community than structural conditions. . . . The need to improve the culture, climate, and interpersonal relationships in schools has received too little attention. (Kruse, Louis, &amp; Bryk, 1994, p. 8; see also Louis &amp; Kruse, 1995; Newmann &amp; Associates, 1996)

In short, a growing body of case studies and clinical narratives directs our attention to the engaging but elusive idea of social trust as essential for meaningful school improvement. But what is social trust? What factors help to shape it? And what benefits does it produce?

To answer these and related questions, we conducted almost a decade of intensive case study research and longitudinal statistical analyses from more than 400 Chicago elementary schools. We spent approximately four years in 12 different school communities observing school meetings and events; conducting interviews and focus groups with principals, teachers, parents, and community leaders; observing classroom instruction; and talking to teachers about the progress and problems in their reform efforts. Differences between two of these cases, Holiday and Ridgeway Elementary Schools,help illustrate how the dynamics of relational trust across a school community influence its reform efforts.

Combined with this field study, we analyzed periodic surveys of teachers, principals, and students collected by the Consortium on Chicago School Research to examine the changing quality of relational dynamics in all Chicago elementary schools over a six-year period. We also analyzed trends in individual student reading and mathematics achievement during this same time period to assess the value that each school was adding to student learning and the extent to which this "value-added" measure was improving over time. This improvement in a school's contribution to student learning is a direct measure of its changing academic productivity. By linking evidence on the schools' changing academic productivity with survey results on school trust over a long period of time, we were able to document the powerful influence that such trust plays as a resource for reform.

Distinct role relationships characterize the social exchanges of schooling: teachers with students, teachers with other teachers, teachers with parents, and all groups with the school principal. Each party in a relationship maintains an understanding of his or her role's obligations and holds some expectations about the obligations of the other parties. For a school community to work well, it must achieve agreement in each role relationship in terms of the understandings held about these personal obligations and expectations of others.

An interrelated set of mutual dependencies are embedded within the social exchanges in any school community. Regardless of how much formal power any given role has in a school community, all participants remain dependent on others to achieve desired outcomes and feel empowered by their efforts.

The principal, for example, needs faculty support to maintain a cohesive professional community that productively engages parents and students. Teachers' work, in turn, depends on decisions that the principal makes about the allocation of resources to their classrooms. Parents depend on both teachers and the principal to create an environment that keeps their children safe and helps them learn. Such dependencies create a sense of mutual vulnerability for all individuals involved. Consequently, deliberate action taken by any party to reduce this sense of vulnerability in others-to make them feel safe and secure-builds trust across the community.

As individuals interact with one another around the work of schooling, they are constantly discerning the intentions embedded in the actions of others. They consider how others' efforts advance their own interests or impinge on their own self-esteem. They ask whether others' behavior reflects appropriately on their moral obligations to educate children well. These discernments take into account the history of previous interactions. In the absence of prior contact, participants may rely on the general reputation of the other and also on commonalities of race, gender, age, religion, or upbringing. These discernments tend to organize around four specific considerations: respect, personal regard, competence in core role responsibilities, and personal integrity.

Relational trust is grounded in the social respect that comes from the kinds of social discourse that take place across the school community. Respectful exchanges are marked by genuinely listening to what each person has to say and by taking these views into account in subsequent actions. Even when people disagree, individuals can still feel valued if others respect their opinions.

Without interpersonal respect, social exchanges may cease. People typically avoid demeaning situations if they can. When they don't have this option, sustained conflict may erupt. Such a situation existed at Ridgeway Elementary School, where interactions among parent leaders and professional staff got in the way of needed reforms. For example, parent and community leaders pressed school staff to implement a "respect program toward students," which included written standards for how adults should talk to students, guidelines to encourage increased sensitivity on the part of school professionals to the ethnic and cultural backgrounds of students, and procedures for handling student misconduct that refrained from punitive and demeaning adult behavior. But little of this same respect was evident in the social interactions among the adults. Parent and community leaders offered rude personal criticism of school staff with little recognition that their behavior was the exact opposite of the behavior that they desired to foster in the students.

Personal regard represents another important criterion in determining how individuals discern trust. Such regard springs from the willingness of participants to extend themselves beyond the formal requirements of a job definition or a union contract. The actions of the principal at another of our case study sites, Holiday Elementary School, offer strong testimony. Almost every parent and teacher we spoke with at this school commented effusively about the principal's personal style, his openness to others, and his willingness to reach out to parents, teachers, and students. His efforts helped cultivate a climate in which such regard became the norm across the school community. This climate, in turn, was a major factor in the high level of relational trust found in this most unexpected place-a 100 percent low-income, African American population in a school serving a public housing project, with a white, male principal.

School community members also want their interactions with others to produce desired outcomes. This attainment depends, in large measure, on others' role competence. For example, parents depend on the professional ethics and skills of school staff for their children's welfare and learning. Teachers want supportive work conditions for their practice, which depends on the capacity of the school principal to fairly, effectively, and efficiently manage basic school operations. School administrators value good community relations, but achieving this objective requires concerted effort from all school staff. Instances of negligence or incompetence, if allowed to persist, undermine trust. This was a major factor in the negative parent-school relations at Ridgeway, where some clearly incompetent and uncaring teachers were nonetheless allowed to continue to practice.

Perceptions about personal integrity also shape individuals' discernment that trust exists. The first question that we ask is whether we can trust others to keep their word. Integrity also demands that a moral-ethical perspective guides one's work. Although conflicts frequently arise among competing individual interests within a school community, a commitment to the education and welfare of children must remain the primary concern.

The principal's actions at Ridgeway offer a compelling example of how a perceived lack of commitment to students' welfare can undermine trust. Although members of the school community viewed this principal as a caring person, no one was sure where he stood on a number of internal school conflicts. When concerns surfaced about problematic teachers, he chose an approach sensitive to the particular adults involved. He visited their classrooms and demonstrated lessons, hoping that the teachers would adopt new techniques. When the teachers did not improve, however, he dropped the initiative and did not change the situation. In the end, no one interpreted his action as directed toward the best interests of the students, and these events further exacerbated the distrust across the school community.

The myriad social exchanges that make up daily life in a school community fuse into distinct social patterns that can generate organization-wide resources. Collective decision making with broad teacher buy-in, a crucial ingredient for reform, occurs more readily in schools with strong relational trust. In contrast, the absence of trust, as witnessed at Ridgeway School, provoked sustained controversy around resolving even such relatively simple problems as the arrangements for a kindergarten graduation ceremony.

Strong relational trust also makes it more likely that reform initiatives will diffuse broadly across the school because trust reduces the sense of risk associated with change. When school professionals trust one another and sense support from parents, they feel safe to experiment with new practices. Similarly, relational trust fosters the necessary social exchanges among school professionals as they learn from one another. Talking honestly with colleagues about what's working and what's not means exposing your own ignorance and making yourself vulnerable. Without trust, genuine conversations of this sort remain unlikely.

Further, relational trust supports a moral imperative to take on the difficult work of school improvement. Most teachers work hard at their teaching. When implementing "reform," they must assume risks, deal with organizational conflict, attempt new practices, and take on extra work, such as engaging with colleagues in planning, implementing, and evaluating improvement initiatives. Teachers quite reasonably ask, "Why should we do this?" A context characterized by high relational trust provides an answer: In the end, reform is the right thing to do.

Our analysis of Holiday School provides strong testimony here, too. Both professionals and parents at Holiday shared a commitment "to go the extra mile for the children." Almost every person we interviewed spoke about the school community in these terms. Our longitudinal survey analyses provide strong evidence on this point as well. In schools in which relational trust was improving over time, teachers increasingly characterized their colleagues as committed and loyal to the school and more eager to engage in new practices that might help students learn better.

Not surprisingly, then, we found that elementary schools with high relational trust were much more likely to demonstrate marked improvements in student learning. Our overall measure of school trust, on the basis of approximately two dozen survey items addressing teachers' attitudes toward their colleagues, principals, and parents, proved a powerful discriminator between improving and nonimproving schools. A school with a low score on relational trust at the end of our study had only a one-in-seven chance of demonstrating improved academic productivity. In contrast, half of the schools that scored high on relational trust were in the improved group. On average, these improving schools recorded increases in student learning of 8 percent in reading and 20 percent in mathematics in a five-year period. The schools in the nonimproving group lost ground in reading and stayed about the same in mathematics. Most significant was the finding that schools with chronically weak trust reports throughout the period of the study had virtually no chance of improving in either reading or mathematics.

Relational trust entails much more than just making school staff feel good about their work environment and colleagues. A school cannot achieve relational trust simply through some workshop, retreat, or form of sensitivity training, although all of these activities can help. Rather, schools build relational trust in day-to-day social exchanges.

Through their words and actions, school participants show their sense of their obligations toward others, and others discern these intentions. Trust grows through exchanges in which actions validate these expectations. Even simple interactions, if successful, can enhance collective capacities for more complex subsequent actions. In this respect, increasing trust and deepening organizational change support each other.

Principals' actions play a key role in developing and sustaining relational trust. Principals establish both respect and personal regard when they acknowledge the vulnerabilities of others, actively listen to their concerns, and eschew arbitrary actions. Effective principals couple these behaviors with a compelling school vision and behavior that clearly seeks to advance the vision. This consistency between words and actions affirms their personal integrity. Then, if the principal competently manages basic day-to-day school affairs, an overall ethos conducive to the formation of trust will emerge.

In a troubled school community, attaining relational trust may require the principal to jump-start change. Typically, the principal may need to reshape the composition of the school staff by hiring strong people into staff vacancies and, where necessary, counseling out those whose practice remains inconsistent with the school's mission and values.

The principal at Holiday, for example, skillfully used his expanded authority under Chicago's school reform to hire new teachers of his own choosing without regard to seniority or bumping rights. This reshaping of his faculty was a key element in building relational trust. In contrast, the inability of Ridgeway's principal to remove a few problematic teachers undermined trust. Although other teachers were reluctant to directly confront their offending colleagues, the faculty generally did not participate in collaborative activities. Similarly, parents and community leaders became more distrustful because they could not understand how the professional staff could tolerate such behavior. The end result was a school community that was unlikely to garner the adult effort required to initiate and sustain reform.

Parents in most urban school communities remain highly dependent on the good intentions of teachers. To promote relational trust, teachers need to recognize these parents' vulnerabilities and reach out actively to moderate them. Unfortunately, many schools do not acknowledge this responsibility as a crucial aspect of teachers' roles.

Elementary school teachers spend most of their time engaged with students. Little in their professional training prepares them for working with parents and other adults in the community. Moreover, because of the class and race differences between school professionals and parents in most urban areas, conditions can be ripe for misunderstanding and distrust. Effective urban schools need teachers who not only know their students well but also have an empathetic understanding of their parents' situations and the interpersonal skills needed to engage adults effectively.

A number of structural conditions facilitate the creation of relational trust in a school community. Although their existence does not ensure relational trust, the presence of these conditions makes it easier for school leaders to build and sustain trust.

Small school size. We found that relational trust is more likely to flourish in small elementary schools with 350 or fewer students. Larger schools tend to have more limited face-to-face interactions and more bureaucratic relations across the organization. Individuals often define their affiliations in terms of some subgroup and have weaker ties to the larger organization. In contrast, the work structures of a small school are less complex and its social networks are typically fewer in number. As a result, relational trust is likely to be sustained more easily.

A stable school community. The stability of the student body directly affects teacher-parent trust. Building and maintaining trust depends on repeated social exchanges. Teachers find it hard to develop and sustain direct positive engagement with all parents when the student population changes frequently. Moreover, in transient neighborhoods, parents find it difficult to share reassuring information with one another about their good experiences with teachers; lacking such personal communication, parents who are new to a school community may fall back on predispositions to distrust, especially if many of their social encounters outside of the school tend to reinforce this worldview.

Voluntary association. Relational trust is also more likely to arise in schools where at least a modicum of choice exists for both staff and students. Because participants have deliberately chosen to affiliate with the school, relations among all parties are pre-conditioned toward trust. If subsequent actions reinforce the wisdom of this choice, relational trust will deepen. In contrast, the forced assignment of individuals to schools fosters uncertainty and suspicion about the motivations and commitments of others and may create a formidable barrier to promoting trust.

Good schools depend heavily on cooperative endeavors. Relational trust is the connective tissue that binds individuals together to advance the education and welfare of students. Improving schools requires us to think harder about how best to organize the work of adults and students so that this connective tissue remains healthy and strong.

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Trust in Schools: A Core Resource for School Reform

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A longitudinal study of 400 Chicago elementary schools shows the central role of relational trust in building effective education communities.

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SCHOOL-WIDE SYSTEMS

Social and emotional professional development sessions: We’ve all experienced feeling tired, burnt out, or insecure about our efficacy. I know this from my experience to be especially true in schools serving at-risk populations.

In one of those schools, our leadership addressed these feelings directly through professional development sessions called Fill Your Cup, which incorporated social and emotional learning. We had staff members sign up to lead activities they enjoyed, such as yoga, cooking, running, biking, singing karaoke... really anything that brought them joy.

Then each staff member signed up for two of the sessions to “fill their cups.” These sessions were always highly rated by our staff, and the next day the school always seemed to have a lightness in the air. The sessions provided a chance for staff to get to know each other in new ways, to blow off steam, to build stronger connections with each other, and to break down barriers of mistrust.

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As a school, we did something every Friday to connect as a staff. Once a month on Friday we would do a larger scale event like a Potato Bar in the cafeteria with games. All events were the ideas of the staff, grade level teams, and through surveys. Each grade level would take a month to serve to share the responsibility.

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Administration & Leadership

If schools want a strong collegial atmosphere, they need to foster it intentionally-both across the school and on smaller scales.

Some of the best professional advice I've heard and keep returning to is "Designate time to what you want." If teachers want a stronger classroom community, they need to use instructional time to build it. If leaders want more collaboration, they must allot time in the master schedule. The same idea holds if a school wants a strong adult culture.

Speaking from personal experience, the more I know and trust my colleagues, the better I work with them. I'm fortunate to have worked in several schools that allotted time to building a strong adult culture. Here are some of the best strategies I've seen.

School-wide Systems

Social and emotional professional development sessions: We've all experienced feeling tired, burnt out, or insecure about our efficacy. I know this from my experience to be especially true in schools serving at-risk populations.

In one of those schools, our leadership addressed these feelings directly through professional development sessions called Fill Your Cup, which incorporated social and emotional learning. We had staff members sign up to lead activities they enjoyed, such as yoga, cooking, running, biking, singing karaoke... really anything that brought them joy.

Then each staff member signed up for two of the sessions to "fill their cups." These sessions were always highly rated by our staff, and the next day the school always seemed to have a lightness in the air. The sessions provided a chance for staff to get to know each other in new ways, to blow off steam, to build stronger connections with each other, and to break down barriers of mistrust.

Public acknowledgements: Many schools start or end staff meetings with shout-outs, a beneficial practice. I've seen leadership go beyond this-one example is a practice I call "collective cards." My school's leaders had staff members with different roles sit together at tables. Each person wrote their name in the center of a card (a large index card or half sheet of paper will work), and passed it around the table so that each person there could offer a note of thanks or acknowledgement. This continued until everyone at a table had signed all the cards, and then they were returned to their owners.

This kind of practice allows people to offer a compliment they might not normally make the time for, and it also encourages staff to find the good in everybody they work with. A different approach is to end meetings by encouraging staff members to email a colleague a note of thanks.

Gatherings: We all know the cliché: the family that _____ together, stays together. This can apply to school communities as well. Create opportunities for social gatherings outside of the school day. Make sure they don't always include alcohol-find a variety of activities to meet the needs of many different types of people.

One person doesn't have to do all the work-try organizing a social committee. And offer opportunities for staff members' families to mingle as well.

Food: Need I say more? What meeting hasn't been improved by the addition of food? There's not always money in the budget, but potlucks and staff sign-ups can play a role. Either way, caring for a belly is caring for a heart, and that goes a long way.

Working on a Smaller Scale

Sometimes it's hard to start with school-wide systems. Here are two successful smaller scale initiatives I've experienced.

Door banners: Who doesn't want to walk up to their classroom and see wonderful things written about them? At one of my schools, the leadership organized door banners. We put chart paper on the teachers' doors and organized times to visit each other and write celebratory notes.

Not only was this beneficial to teachers, but it was also valuable for students to see the adults participating in a healthy, collaborative culture.

Positive classroom observations: So often when teachers are visited by observers, they tense up as they feel they're being judged on what's not good enough. Additionally, in our professional desire to be better, we forget to pause and reflect on what's going well.

As an instructional coach, one way I alleviated these deficit-based approaches was to visit teachers specifically to note effective moves. During these observations, I would take notes about all the instructional decisions that were to be celebrated... and there were many! Classroom visits focused on strengths shift a school away from a deficit model to an assets-based model.

I want to end with the importance of hearing the staff's voices. The most important element of a strong adult culture is that staff never feel like things are being done to them, but rather with them. Some of the ideas here might work for your school and some might not. The only way to know is to ask. Use surveys to gather feedback about your school's adult culture, suggestions for improving it, reflections on PD sessions, and other creative community-building ideas.

After all, a school where teachers know, trust, and honor each other is a school where students learn best.

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Building a Positive Staff Culture Takes Work

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Administration & Leadership If schools want a strong collegial atmosphere, they need to foster it intentionally-both across the school and on smaller scales. Some of the best professional advice I've heard and keep returning to is "Designate time to what you want." If teachers want a stronger classroom community, they need to use instructional time to build it.

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A wellness strategy helps ensure the highest possible health, academic and school climate outcomes for everyone in a school — students, staff and teachers.

To support the idea of creating a culture of wellness, Kaiser Permanente partner School-Based Health Alliance fashioned an innovative resource to guide health advocates as they create, implement and sustain schoolwide wellness efforts.

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Group 3- The phrase- can't pour from an empty cup, is really true. We do so much caregiving in our jobs, this is critical. Include reminders in staff newsletter. Need a staff member in each school to address staff needs. Also a dedicated space to address your own needs.  Lifting up self care is more important now than ever. Staff leaving, concerns about sustaining staff. High stress levels. Students watch staff, we need to model self care and regulation strategies to them. 

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Group 3- The phrase- can't pour from an empty cup, is really true. We do so much caregiving in our jobs, this is critical. Include reminders in staff newsletter. Need a staff member in each school to address staff needs. Also a dedicated space to address your own needs.  Lifting up self care is more important now than ever. Staff leaving, concerns about sustaining staff. High stress levels. Students watch staff, we need to model self care and regulation strategies to them. 

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Culture of Wellness Presentation from PBIS Leadership Forum

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Culture of Wellness Presentation from PBIS Leadership Forum

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The PBIS Leadership Forum is a two-day conference for school, district, regional, and state PBIS leadership teams. It is held during October in Chicago. The Forum is a place to learn about the latest PBIS research and strategies from leaders in field. Check out the presentations and materials from previous year's conference below.

Visit the PBIS Leadership Forum website to find our more information and to register.

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The PBIS Leadership Forum is a two-day conference for school, district, regional, and state PBIS leadership teams. It is held during October in Chicago. The Forum is a place to learn about the latest PBIS research and strategies from leaders in field. Check out the presentations and materials from previous year's conference below.