There are many words that come to mind when the words ‘school climate’ are mentioned: well-being, feel, health, learning environment, safety (physical, emotional, spiritual, social), openness and caring. When I checked the internet and entered the words ‘school climate’ I was faced with more than 5 million matches. When I define the climate of a school I primarily use organic metaphors. I believe that a school is a living organism; that is, it is individuals and relationships writ large and it is developmental in nature [it grows, declines, goes through life stages, can be nurtured and depleted, evolves and devolves, changes and transforms, etc.]. A school climate is also affected by the non-organic – the physical structure itself, the classrooms, the grounds, the parking lots, the amount of light, the non-human noise, chemicals, air quality. This combination of organic and non-organic directly and dramatically affects school climate and as a result the health and dis-ease of the members of the school community [some members are affected directly and others are affected indirectly]. Given all of this, I remain convinced that if there is one key to school climate it is directly related to the quality of relationships [the relationship one has with one’s self and the relationships one has with others and the relationships between the organic and non-organic]; this idea of ‘relationships’ itself is beyond the scope of this brief ‘Climate’ exploration.
If a school community believes in and is committed to continuous improvement, then a healthy climate for the holistic development of the person [Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Spiritual, Social] is best determined by those in the school community who draw from multiple sources of data and feedback and who respond to urgent issues and ‘aching questions’ [What are ‘aching questions’ – Consider: ‘Aching Questions’ for some it might entail the questions that focus on the tap roots that must be nurtured and sustained in order for all in the school community to be nurtured more than depleted; for one person it might be the question of life after death, for another person it might be the problem of suffering – ‘Why do bad things happen to good people?’ or it might be something deeply personal and immediate. An aching question, a question that is not just a matter of curiosity or a fleeting burst of emotion, cannot be answered with old thought. Possessed by such a question, one is hungry for ideas of a very different order than the familiar categories that usually accompany us throughout our lives].
Healthy ‘Climates’ nurture more than deplete each individual, each relationship and the School Community as a whole (depletion will occur because individuals and relationships are, at best, imperfect). Each individual, each relationship and each School Community has their favorite ways of nurturing and depleting the five dimensions that help define a School Community – the Physical, the Intellectual, the Emotional, the Spirit(ual), and the Social; the P.I.E.S.S.
How do we measure a School’s Climate? Next time we will briefly explore the ways.