School Culture Standard 1

The school culture reflects norms, values, standards, and practices that reinforce the academic, social, emotional, and relational growth of each student and a commitment to the professional growth of all educators.

SC 1.1 School Culture Supports Academic Achievement of Learners

SC 1.2 School Culture Supports Social Growth and Development of Learners

SC 1.3 School Culture Supports Emotional Growth and Development of Learners

SC 1.4 School Culture Supports Relational Growth and Development of Learners

SC 1.5 School Culture Supports Professional Growth of Adults

ELEMENTS--Operational Descriptors for This Standard

• a) Learning focus – The school mission, vision, goals and beliefs are obvious in the school and it is evident that the focus of the school is learning for students and adults.
• b) Awareness of academic culture – Adults and students in the school practice the core beliefs and values of the school, the mission, and the vision.
• c) Expectations – The expectations held for students and staff are high, but attainable. There is an expectation for assuming responsibility for one’s own learning and there are high expectations for staff professionalism.
• d) Academic growth - Students demonstrate continuous progress in learning, extending, and refining their mastery of GPS and acquire and integrate growing levels of conceptual understanding and a capacity to use what they have learned with levels of independence.
• e) Social growth - Students demonstrate a growing capacity for meaningful and mature social interactions with peers and adults representing diverse populations, including self-monitoring, self-control, empathy, and perspective.
• f) Emotional growth - Students demonstrate growing levels of maturity as they progress through their education, including a maturing capacity for understanding their own motivation, evaluating and observing their emotional reactions, expressing and regulating emotions appropriately within varying contexts.
• g) Relational growth - Students display a capacity for interacting positively and maturely with peers and adults, forming relationships as they mature that are increasingly productive, supportive, and positively nurturing and mutually enhancing.
• h) Professional growth - Adults in the school as a learning community take advantage of opportunities offered by the school, district, community, and state to enhance their academic knowledge, insights into accountability initiatives, their mental, emotional, and physical health to promote positive relationships with all stakeholders.
• i) Climate - Buildings reflect a feeling tone or atmosphere, created and sustained through the interaction of norms, values, relationships, structures, and interaction patterns among members of the learning community.
• j) Culture - Buildings are communities of learning. Like all communities, they have norms, standards, practices, and rituals that guide and inform the interaction patterns of the members of that community, including students and adults. Culture includes the climate of the building. Additionally, buildings can reflect multiple sub-cultures, which may have unique or distinct norms, practices, and values separate from mainstream organizational culture.

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