As an example, one elementary school partner that implements Community Building Sessions™, professional development workshops, and teacher coaching works with Frameworks to have its teachers fill out a simple online form about each student’s social and emotional skills three times per year. We then provide data at the classroom level and the school-wide level categorizing students as falling into one of three categories socially and emotionally: “Need,” “Typical,” or “Strength.”
Case Study
Spotlight on One School
Building social and emotional skills takes time and reinforcement, but even in one program year, we can see progress. As this graphic shows, the percentage of students rated by teachers as falling in the “Need” category decreased significantly, from 32% to 16%. The percentage of students in the “Strength” category increased significantly, from 19% to 35%.
Decreasing Suspensions
Meanwhile, the number of suspensions at the school has decreased in our years of partnership with this school. In year one, 14.7% of students were suspended at least once. By year three, this was down to 2.6%. As this correlational data suggests, when students feel safety and a sense of belonging in school and when they have the tools to handle challenges in constructive ways, they are more likely to stay on track academically and behaviorally.
Qualitative interviews at the school reinforce these successes. The principal shared, “We’ve seen children who weren’t able to express themselves and handle conflict as easily, to by the end of the school year they were helping others be able to problem-solve better.” A classroom teacher echoed this sentiment, sharing, “Once you have that sense of culture and family in your classroom, it makes everything run so much smoother.”