Creating a Positive School Culture

Schools have a school culture, a set of traditions and beliefs that are shared by teachers, students, parents, and administration. Everyone seems to understand why they’re there and who they’re there with, and students and faculty treat each other accordingly. Academics recognized the critical importance of school culture as soon as they began studying the social aspects of schools in the late twentieth century. In a famous article for Teachers, edited by Philip Schwabe and Roger W. Johnson, the two academics noted, “School culture is a product of the school’s history, culture, and environment.” They continued, “The present day school has evolved from an informal and intuitive community into a formal and highly regulated one, governed by a set of values and beliefs which are understanding to shape the learning, acting, and relating behaviors of students.” They went on to note that the “history of schooling,” which documented the development of a school culture over time, “also reveals the fact that it has changed significantly over time… The aim of this article is to describe some of these changes and how they have affected the school environment.”

One of the clearest influences on a school’s culture is the climate that exists within the classrooms. What is the general climate of student achievement? How are the climate’s relationships with teachers and administration shaped? What kinds of social activities exist within the school? These questions and others like them to help us identify what kind of school culture we’re talking about. Here are some common characteristics of school cultures that have consistently shaped student achievement:

Recognition and Support. Recognition and support are the most tangible manifestations of school culture. After all, the people who shape and manage our practices, values, beliefs, and actions are called teachers, counselors, administrators, and other staff members. Teachers are at the top of the food chain; their behaviors affect student achievement. A teacher who respects their colleagues and treats them with respect helps student performance, and likewise facilitates student achievements through the opportunity to develop and practice skills, helping other staff members to do the same, and facilitate communication between students and teachers.

Setting Learning Goals and Expectations. Students gain confidence in their ability to learn by participating in school culture. This involves students’ beliefs, expectations, and motivation about what they can and cannot do as learners. For example, if a student believes that he or she cannot be an excellent singer, then the teacher’s behavior will most likely not encourage student learning.

A Positive School Year. A positive school culture can have a huge impact on student achievement during the school year. It is not uncommon for many schools to have negative behaviors during the school year–such as unexcused absences, tardiness, substance abuse, violence, bullying, and other negative school-wide behaviors–but a school-wide effort to change these behaviors and instill a positive school culture can have enormous benefits for students’ achievement during the school year.

Creating a positive school culture means more than just creating a “positive” climate for teachers and staff. It also requires creating a space where teachers, administrators, parents, and other staff members can thrive and where students can thrive to their fullest capacities. A healthy climate promotes a healthy educational environment.

Understanding Habit Formation

Habits are habits that we have developed over a lifetime. A habit is a repetitive pattern of everyday behavior and tends to take place unconsciously. One might classify such a behavior as “automatic”. Habits can be unlearned, but the work is usually in training the individual to get rid of their old habits rather than consciously making new ones.

People tend to go through routines on a daily basis, such as going to work, brushing their teeth, sleeping at night, eating breakfast in the morning, and so on. All these behaviors are routine and often unconscious. When a person is faced with an upsetting situation, a habit may trigger a negative automatic reaction such as avoiding the situation in the future, trying to avoid similar situations in the future, or imagining that the person is avoiding the event rather than seeing it as an opportunity. In this case, simply avoiding the trigger does not resolve the problem. The trigger needs to be removed to prevent the same thing from happening again.

Habits are also related to specific actions. For example, if a person is into heavy petting, they will continue doing it because it is a familiar behavior. However, if this behavior becomes a regular occurrence, this may become an unhealthy habit. It is necessary to break habitual behaviors in order for them to be changed. One example of this is changing from heavy petting to only doing it when one feels like it, for example, if the person is ill or too tired to pet.

Many habits have nothing to do with the physical body. However, they are a result of a person’s will power. These habits work because of the person’s stronger desire to do something over the course of their day. A person with a strong will power can change their entire life by using their willpower to overcome their habits. This is not to say that will power does not come with a price.

Habits work because of habit formation. It takes a lot of will power and determination to change behaviors. However, there are some habits that can be changed without too much effort if the person is willing to put forth the effort required. For example, if a person wants to stop smoking, then they must make a conscious effort to overcome their current habits first.

There are a few habits that can be easily changed by a change in will power or a change in environment. However, the person must be willing to change and understand how the new routine will affect their lives. In addition, they need to be able to recognize a certain trigger that will activate a certain behavior. When they recognize the trigger, they can take steps toward breaking the bad habit.

Cultural Evolution – The Theory of Cultural Transmission

Culture is a large umbrella term that cover the collective social behavior and attitudes found in various human societies, and the beliefs, traditions, arts, laws, skills, customs, skills, and aptitudes of the people in these cultures. Cultures differ in many ways. They can be arranged in a cultural matrix by regions or cultures, depending on political conditions or ethically driven. There is no universal culture, as each culture has to adapt to the environments in which it finds itself. Still, some generalizations about cultures may be made.

Cultural diversity refers to the differences in culture and its development across time and space. There are different cultures in different parts of the world. Different cultures may have different values, norms, and practices. There can also be a parallel development within different cultures. The existence of cultural differences has been noted since the beginning of human civilization, when early man migrated from the Old Stone Age to the New Stone Age.

A cultural group is usually a sub-set of societies having a common heritage, language, cultural practices, and social organization. In most human societies, however, there is significant local variation in cultural identities. Even within a single country, or even within the same city or town, the presence of various cultures is shown by the variations in cultural practices, languages, festivals, art forms, lifestyles, social structures, and modes of social organization.

Cultural interpretation or perception refers to the understanding of culture from the perspective of the social meaning of cultural transmission. The concepts of culture and meaning are the results of the interaction of culture in the environment, between the individuals who possess and interact with it, both consciously and unconsciously. It is based on the work of the cultural linguist who determines the nature of the patterns of language usage and the general conventions that affect the production and transmission of culture. The cultural linguist thus specializes in the study of language and cultural variation and is closely associated with the field of cultural studies. The study of culture therefore is intimately connected to the study of human history and social structure, and the work of the anthropologist who investigates the behavior of cultural groups or communities, especially the cultural diffusion of ideas and practices.

Culture is a vast area of diverse experiences and practices, with the history of culture going back thousands of years. The various types of culture are the result of different types of social interactions within human societies. Within a society, a specific culture can be identified when, over a period of time, its members develop similar patterns of interaction, including norms regarding family size, child rearing, rules concerning gambling, religion, sex, and other important matters, such as political power, property, and other issues. Such a culture can only disappear, over time, when the prevailing culture in a society completely disappears, as is the case in most human societies today.

Cultural evolution is the result of the natural selection that went hand in hand with the development of our species on the planet earth. Natural selection by itself is not enough to shape the character of a culture. It is the gene pool that determines the nature, scope and depth of a culture. And it is in this gene pool that we find such diversity and difference, which are the basis for cultural transmission. A wide range of theories to explain the process of cultural transmission, including social learning, genealogical history, cultural inheritance, incremental adaptation, cultural capital, and others.

What is it that defines a kind culture? A good question and one that need to be asked. I’ve read a book written by Robert Kaplan and this is his definition of a kind culture: “A kind culture is characterized by two attributes: low rates of violence and high rates of trust.” Indeed, I’d say that this is quite accurate as we seem to have become a violent society and trust in most people has declined, particularly in large cities. The question then, how can we create a kind culture where trust is high? I believe it comes down to creating a kind of a mindset that places the safety and security above all else, and I’d like to talk about what it means to be a kind person in this regard.

Now then, I’d like to define what it means to be kind, and this will also help to define a kind culture as well. To be kind to others means to show them respect, caring and empathy for what they have or don’t have, and to value all human life, even those who seem to have nothing much going for them. And to have this kind of mindset is something that I believe all humans have, and to the extent that the mentality is not internalized and embraced by the culture it doesn’t matter, because eventually it will seep out and infect all humans – it’s that simple. So it’s important to cultivate a kind mindset.

Now then, a kind culture will have high moral standards and a low tolerance for people who are morally irresponsible. This also includes a kind sex-focused outlook on sexuality and an overall rejection of sexuality in favor of a more puritanical approach to life. Also, a kind culture tends to view things in a very utilitarian manner, looking to the good of the individual and what will benefit the greater whole. It tends to be very focused on the here and now, and things in the present period, and things that will happen in the future. People who live in a kind culture also tend to value work as being the key to societal success and their own personal success, and so a kind person tends to value themselves by the pay that they get and how their work matters in the wider scheme of things.

A kind culture creates self-discipline in its citizens. People who live in a kind environment tend to be disciplined in all areas of their lives. The reason that this works is because the kind people know that they need to make choices and follow up on those choices, and that these choices will have long-lasting consequences. They also know that the end result of making bad choices in the here and now won’t just be lost, but will be remembered and will shape the future. It is a kind culture that make people work hard and produces winners.

But a kind culture also has its downsides. First, because the kind people aren’t too trusting of each other, and so there’s a certain kind of social isolation that occurs when you’re part of that kind of group. Also, the kind of logic that the kind people use in their arguments means that they have to come at the other person with their point of view, and there’s not much room for questioning or thoughtful dialogue.

A kind culture can lead to cronyism. A kind culture can lead to the silencing of opposition. This is because the kind people are not very open about their true feelings and are not very polite. If they were, they’d be out in the streets singing and dancing and making a revolution.