Improve Your District or School’s Approach to Physical and Psychological Safety
This tool is part of the Creating Conditions for Positive Student Behavior Resource Center. Visit the resource center and access our full diagnostic to identify opportunities for improvement and explore additional tools for your district.
Use the resources in this toolkit to help improve your district or school’s approach to physical and psychological safety, including bullying and discipline protocols. When students feel safe in school, they are more likely to behave positively, contribute to school culture, and connect with their peers.
Resources to support school safety
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Improving School Discipline Approaches
Use the tools in this resource if you responded neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree with any of the following statements:
- Teachers and/or staff at my school approach student behavior with a non-punitive mindset that encourages understanding, relationship building, and mediation.
- Our school uses alternatives to exclusionary discipline practices (e.g., suspensions and expulsions) except for required cases (e.g., violence, illicit drug use).
- Our school shares clear and detailed information with students, families, and community members on the school’s discipline policies and procedures, where they can find them, and how the policies and procedures are implemented.
- Our school publicly discloses school discipline data (i.e., via school website, state databases).
- Our school tracks discipline data (e.g., number of suspensions, expulsions, duration of disciplinary measures) annually that includes the demographic characteristics (e.g., race, sex, disability) of students.
- Our school uses analyzed discipline data (e.g., identifies trends, patterns, disparities) annually to ensure student consequences are administered consistently and fairly without regard to race, sex, disability, etc.
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Enhancing Students' Psychological and Physical Safety
Use the tools in this resource if you responded neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree with any of the following statements:
- Our school respects and embraces the voices, perspectives, and differences of students of all identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, culture, language, sexual orientation, gender, socioeconomic status, disability, religion).
- Our teachers and/or staff use equitable grading practices (i.e., not penalizing students for late work, missed assignments, or lack of participation if they can demonstrate subject mastery).
- Our school includes non-academic performance (e.g., behavior, effort, cooperation) in addition to and separately from academic performance on report cards.
- Our teachers and/or staff encourage students to share alternative viewpoints in class discussions/healthy discourse.
- Our teachers and/or staff create consistent and predictable routines (e.g., attendance, morning meeting, brain breaks, etc.) expectations, and procedures for students.
- Teachers and/or staff at my school appropriately intervene when incidents of bullying occur to ensure student safety.
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