This article is about how schools build a “high-community” school and the advantages of doing so. The article suggests that building a sense of community in a school will lead students to achieve “increased academic motivation, social understanding and competencies, altruistic tendencies, appropriate conduct in school, and trust and respect for teachers.”
Schaps, E. 2009. Creating caring school communities. Leadership March/April, pp. 8-11.
The authors define a “high-community” school as one that is “an inclusive web of respectful, supportive relationships among and between students, teachers and parents.” (p. 9)
Some key points:
- supportive school relationships help parents take active roles in the school and in their children’s education
- emphasizing common purposes among the school and the parents is important to create a sense of community
- to maintain high-community schools, it is important to provide opportunities to students for autonomy and influence.
- strategies to create a community school include class meetings (home room effect), opportunities for students to collaborate then to reflect on that collaboration, and holding whole-school events.
- important to have strong buy in by the schools’ administration as well as at the district level.
