Ways to Build and Improve School Community
Children want to attend a school they feel safe in, and parents want their children to attend a school that is supportive and can help them excel academically. A positive school community can impact all these aspects when implementing the most effective strategies. This guide explores the importance of community in schools and how educators can foster a positive school community.
Table of Contents
- What Is a School Community?
- Benefits of Fostering a Positive School Community
- How to Contribute to Your School Community
- School Community Tips for Educators
- Student Planners for Community Building
What Is a School Community?
School community refers to the relationship businesses, individuals, groups and institutions have with a school and the communities it serves. More specifically, it involves their willingness to maintain the vitality and welfare of the school.
Is there a sense of community among students, faculty, administrators and staff members? As an educator, this is an important question to ask to work toward a positive culture and strengthen relationships between teachers and students.
The school community is made up of various emotional and social attachments, including:
- Experiential: The experience current and past students had with the school
- Familial: Relatives of students who attended the school
- Professional: Those who work at the school and receive an income from it
- Socioeconomic: Local businesses that employ skilled graduates from the school
- Civic: People who volunteer their time and services or become elected to oversee a school
The goal is often to create a school community and culture that fosters inclusion, a shared purpose and collective investment. The involvement of more individuals and diverse perspectives can promote school improvement and continuity.
Benefits of Fostering a Positive School Community
Schools and communities that work together influence better student performance, improved qualification achievements, fewer skipped classes and less bullying and delinquency. Students may improve in their studies when parents are involved at school and at home. Parents should also work with teachers to find ways to help students improve in specific subject areas.
Better engagement within the school community empowers parents to advocate for their children, promote continued learning at home and contribute to academic goals. Teachers can develop personalized approaches to parent interaction to avoid harmful stereotypes. Additionally, parents can overcome cultural and language barriers.
A positive school community creates a more nurturing and supportive environment that motivates students to learn and makes them feel valued. It promotes their social and emotional well-being. Teachers also gain valuable benefits, like an enhanced collaborative space for educators to work well with colleagues, parents and students.
These positive experiences may allow the word to spread, helping attract new staff and faculty members, partners and students. This may improve enrollment rates and attract a more diverse talent pool of potential faculty members.
How Do You Contribute to Your School Community?
Here's how to build a positive school community with four effective strategies.
1. Improve School Communications
Make communication methods more accessible to all parents. You can do this by sending out paper flyers and newsletters to ensure each parent has access to the information. This can be particularly helpful for parents with crowded email inboxes.
You can also send bulk text messages or build a Facebook group for parents and teachers to exchange information. Communicate frequently, openly and honestly with parents to enhance trust and promote clarity.
2. Share Leadership
Schools can build a more engaging and positive community by involving parents, staff, teachers and community stakeholders in decision-making processes. The different perspectives of these groups can help give students more opportunities to achieve success. This can also improve the overall school culture because everyone has a say in implementing practices and processes that contribute to their happiness and satisfaction.
3. Incorporate Community-Building Activities
Schoolwide community-building activities can be a great way to form better relationships between parents, teachers and students. They may also improve inclusivity and responsibility while creating a fun new school tradition.
One idea is to make a “family heritage museum” where parents and students work together to prepare informational displays about their cultures and ancestries. Another option is a family movie night, allowing the families of students to watch a movie and discuss it at school. You can even do something out-of-the-box, like creating a neighborhood garden and partnering with local businesses that share similar interests.
4. Emphasize Common Goals and Ideals
To properly cultivate a respectful and supportive culture, school and faculty members should frequently express the importance of students developing good character, empathy, fairness and responsibility. Doing so can shape daily interactions and ensure everyone knows that this forms part of the school's values and standards. The school may then attract students and faculty members with these characteristics.
It also helps to emphasize common goals between parents and educators at parent-teacher meetings. For example, say an educator and parent would like to improve a particular student's success goals. As a solution, the teacher might incorporate a few classroom adjustments to enhance their focus, while the parent might source tutoring programs to help their child improve.
School Community Tips for Educators
If you're looking to implement practices to enhance the school community among students and parents, here are four valuable strategies to consider:
- Practice goal setting: Create regular class meetings to discuss goals and help students set specific ones. You can distribute student planners to ensure they stay on track with their goals and monitor their progress.
- Celebrate accomplishments: When students reach new heights or milestones, give them a shoutout or reward for their achievements. This contributes to continued success and engagement.
- Keep other teachers in the loop: Tell other staff and faculty members about the practices you're using that work for your students. This creates more thorough and consistent implementation when students receive the same treatment across classes.
- Ask for feedback: Ask parents and students about any issues they're experiencing or practices that might need improvements. These regular check-ins ensure that everyone is on the same page, and they help you improve the school community.
Build a Positive School Community With Student Planners From Success by Design
To begin establishing a positive school community, you need to build up school spirit. Whether you want to encourage this through fun activities that improve camaraderie or organized class lessons, school planners can help you stay on track and enhance motivation.
Success by Design offers various planners that help students commit to academic goals, personal commitments, after-school activities and homework assignments. There are also teacher planners to help educators map out the year, activities, important information and meetings. We customize planner covers with your school's logo, name, colors and mascot to match your school spirit.
To get started with solutions from Success by Design, browse our large selection of planners and custom school spirit planner covers today.
- SBD, Inc.