Over the last 10 years I have visited more than 1,000 schools, and I can usually tell if a school has a positive school culture within minutes of stepping on campus. Research has proven that a positive school culture creates safer school communities, connects teens, and results in better school-based outcomes for students, educators, and parents.
So what is the secret sauce to building school culture? It is your school’s commitment to its activity program.
How active and engaging is your campus? How involved are your students? Are you offering programs that reach ALL facets of your student population?
Schools with strong school culture focus their activities on a broad range of student issues. That may sound easy, but many schools struggle to inspire student council leaders to think beyond their social circle.
TEEN TRUTH’s answer to this problem is our Difference Maker Summit. A student leadership workshop that is focused on empowering student voice and making sure that your activity programs are reaching out to every single student.
Over the years we have worked with student leaders to find critical issues on campuses and develop action plans (or activity calendars) that present workable tactics that address the specific challenges of individual schools. For example, we worked with a school in California that had a big issue with divorce. The youth on that campus felt like divorce was crushing many of the students at school. So we sat down and worked with the students, and they came up with an amazing idea: family movie night — A cheap, easy, fun-filled activity that allowed the school to invite families into their multi-purpose room together. They showed a movie, gave out some popcorn and, at the end of the day, helped families spend just a little more quality time together.
Another group of student leaders felt like social media was a big problem on their campus. So they created a day called “Unplugged Day” where they encouraged students, educators, and parents to “unplug” for the day. It was such a success that tOver the last 10 years I have visited more than 1,000 schools, and I can usually tell if a school has a positive school culture within minutes of stepping on campus. Research has proven that a positive school culture creates safer school communities, connects teens, and results in better school-based outcomes for students, educators, and parents.
So what is the secret sauce to building school culture? It is your school’s commitment to its activity program.
How active and engaging is your campus? How involved are your students? Are you offering programs that reach ALL facets of your student population?
Schools with strong school culture focus their activities on a broad range of student issues. That may sound easy, but many schools struggle to inspire student council leaders to think beyond their social circle.
TEEN TRUTH’s answer to this problem is our Difference Maker Summit. A student leadership workshop that is focused on empowering student voice and making sure that your activity programs are reaching out to every single student.
Over the years we have worked with student leaders to find critical issues on campuses and develop action plans (or activity calendars) that present workable tactics that address the specific challenges of individual schools. For example, we worked with a school in California that had a big issue with divorce. The youth on that campus felt like divorce was crushing many of the students at school. So we sat down and worked with the students, and they came up with an amazing idea: family movie night — A cheap, easy, fun-filled activity that allowed the school to invite families into their multi-purpose room together. They showed a movie, gave out some popcorn and, at the end of the day, helped families spend just a little more quality time together.
Another group of student leaders felt like social media was a big problem on their campus. So they created a day called “Unplugged Day” where they encouraged students, educators, and parents to “unplug” for the day. It was such a success that they now repeat the event on a yearly basis, and they do it at every middle school in the district!
This is what happens when we focus our students on building school culture from the inside out. By empowering student voice through our leadership workshops, we afford students leaders the opportunity to move past events like “crazy hair day” and “pajama day” into activities that matter — activities that connect students to campus!
If you would like help building school culture on your campus, please feel free to reach out to us. We would be honored to bring our Difference Maker Summit to your campus.
To learn more, visit www.teentruth.net or contact us directly at 818.237.5082. It would be a privilege to work with you to build school culture and empower student voice across your campus.
Thanks for your continued support,
JC Pohl
President & CEO, TEEN TRUTH
