This year my campus received a new principal, as the previous one retired after being

principal for the past 12 years. Due to discussions amongst colleagues, as well as administration,

there was worry about school morale and campus climate remaining high due to recent changes

in leadership. The purpose of this project was to decide how the school climate was under the

new leadership and find ways to either maintain or improve school climate and culture. After

working together with my principal and one of our counselors, we created a survey to be

distributed to the teachers and staff. Through the teacher survey, we were then able to identify

areas of concern regarding school climate. After conferring with the team, which was made up of

my principal, two assistant principals, dean of instruction, a counselor and myself, we chose 3

ways to address the results found in the survey. During this meeting, we came up with a plan

which included three areas to focus on to improve school climate and morale; peer coaching new

teachers, providing feedback during informal observations and teacher incentives/acts of

kindness.

For the first part of this project, known as Task 2, we decided to focus on working with

teachers who were new to our campus, and provide them with peer coaching. We went further

and decided that for this semester it was most important to place the most support with teachers

who were not only new to the campus and grade level, but who also did not start the school year

at our campus. Since we started this after the 2nd semester, we decided to use it as a trial run and

starting point for what will hopefully become a new initiative for new teachers at the start of the

following school year. I worked with a teacher who was new to our campus, and grade level, and

who has only been at our campus for a few months. I gave him a survey to find out what needs

he would like to be addressed, and we met twice a week for 6 weeks. During these meetings, I

provided training on content areas in the classroom, specifically phonemic awareness, and
provided peer teaching by working on lesson plans together and by observing and coaching him

through his lessons. At the end of the 6 weeks, he took a post survey to reflect on if the peer

coaching was successful or not.

For the second part of this project, known as Task 3, we decided to focus on improving

school climate through providing immediate feedback after informal teacher observations, and

by providing teachers with incentives, acts of kindness, etc. Through the survey we found that

many teachers did not feel like they were being recognized for all they do in the classroom, and

that administration was taking too long in providing them with feedback. To address these issues,

I created a form to be used during informal observations that lets the teachers know what you

enjoyed from their lesson. I was able to accompany my administration during observations, fill

out these forms and leave them with the teachers. I also created other incentives like a tag out

form, where administration would give that form to teachers so that they could use it to go

observe another teacher, or to simply take a quick break, while administration takes over the

class. This gives administration time to get to know the classrooms and students, and gives the

teachers time to learn from their colleagues. Since I am not an administrator, I was only able to

provide my fellow teachers in my grade level with tag outs. However my principal did have an

amazing response to the tag outs, when he was able to do it. Besides the tags outs, and the

feedback forms, we also created a committee that was focused on provided teachers with acts of

kindness, such a surprising them with lunch one day, or with snacks and a drinks on another day.

We created a post survey to check if teachers felt like the feedback and acts of kindness had a

positive effect on school morale. The feedback from the survey was overwhelmingly positive.