How Schools Create Nurturing Communities in a World That Needs Them
The world feels heavy right now. As we scroll through our feeds, we are met with headlines of global conflict, political bickering, and a digital landscape that often feels like an echo chamber of frustration.
How do we get the human experiment back on course?
As an educator and school leader, I feel like these answers come from a deeper understanding of how generations pass down their assumptions about life. Schools are a big part of this for sure. However, biology has built a key neural wiring in young brains that allows them to carefully observe and imitate the thinking and behavior of the adults and older kids around them. This unconscious imitation is the primary way we carry on all of our cultural practices, advance technologies, and pass on our wisdom to the future.
When the adults are intentional, we call this modeling. Unfortunately, with this process happening 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it’s mostly not. When we model phone scrolling instead of talking, our kids pick it up. When we are interrupted by our kid with an urgent question, we are sending a clear message.
This phone possesses a mysterious importance beyond most things in this life.
Over the past 20 years in schools, I’ve seen how the smartphone age has been passed down. It has pulled kids away from meeting up after school to ride bikes. Now they run upstairs to get into online spaces where “group text” drama thrives.
The current level of isolation felt by kids is not normal. According to the CDC, the suicide rate for the 10–14 age group tripled between 2007 and 2020. Then COVID-19 stamped this behavior even deeper in the next cohort of students, as it replaced their vital window of learning how to socialize with learning apps. At schools, we can see how many kids haven’t learned how to find their identity within a group.
Now here comes some good news…
While the adult world continues to dive deeper online and struggle to coexist, school systems are taking a stand. The education systems have actually spent the last few decades combating these trends. They have designed systems to build resilience, empathy, and a sense of belonging. I believe there is a way to replicate this for any community, with members of any age.
The Three Pillars of Modern School Communities
(Warning: Minor educational jargon ahead)
Social Emotional Learning gives one the tools to understand their emotions and develop empathy for others.
Positive School Climate builds a healthy ecosystem for one to handle issues and help each other reach their best.
Restorative Justice develops a community understanding of how to handle someone who is harmed or makes a mistake.
Unlike adults, kids are now being taught this as regularly as science or social studies. As we look a bit deeper into these concepts, let’s explore how this might apply to a 40-year-old working parent who is stressed out by 2026. The irony here is that our children can be a great resource to help model these strategies for you!
Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
The Skills required to be Human
Social Emotional Learning standards were first developed in 1994 by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). This broke down emotional learning as a set of skills to be mastered, much like in math or reading.
They began with the following 5 core competencies:
Self-Awareness: Identifying emotions and recognizing personal strengths.
Self-Management: Managing stress and controlling impulses.
Social Awareness: Developing empathy for others’ paths.
Relationship Skills: Practicing clear communication and active listening.
Responsible Decision-Making: Identifying problems and finding equitable solutions.
At home, these lessons would be easy to integrate into dinner tables and car rides. In dealing with moral values in public school, there is a need to stay clearly on a secular path, but at home, your religion would greatly reinforce this.
As a teacher, one of my favorite programs, Second Step, is one of the first pioneers in the field. This program gives pictures of students in “what-if” situations, and facilitates discussions from the class on what would be the right next moves.
Let’s try one for you.
Imagine this:
You are reading an email from a client who feels like the service you offered wasn’t satisfactory. You realize he has included your boss in the message to ask for a partial refund.
Ask yourself:
How would I feel inside my body?
What might I do if I try to respond before I use a calming strategy?
What information must I get from my client to resolve this situation?
What email could I respond with that would begin to solve the problem?
The answers to these questions are not easy. Being able to calm one’s emotions is required for the brain to take a measured approach. Your initial response can make all the difference. These soft skills are what employers will be looking for as technology takes over skills and expertise.
These moments come up many times in a week. Finding time to reflect on your day’s ups and downs allows you to see the places where you can improve your relationships the following day. We teach our students to form a cycle of continuous improvement through reflection and change.
POLL
Where do you spend your best time reflecting on SEL in your life?
Car
Shower
Before Sleep
Excercise
Other
2 VOTES · · SHOW RESULTS
Positive School Climate
Intentionally creating the world we want around us
Zooming out to a more macro view, we have School Climate. While there is a cumulative effect of developing every individual’s social-emotional learning, more is required to sustain a nurturing environment for everyone. I have observed that schools can develop negative cultures fairly quickly, but it can become quite hard to shift it positive.
The same is true in Adult World. While it may be easy to be nice if you live in a cozy neighborhood or a vibrant city, it is exponentially harder to develop your SEL skills if you are in an unsafe or toxic environment.
The California Department of Education takes positive school climates very seriously with school and district leaders. They began monitoring data using the California Healthy Kids Survey in 1997 as part of this new wave of SEL. This pressure on public schools pushed educators to design practices so schools could proactively build positive communities. In this moment, almost every educator turned to a seminal educational theory called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
In the 1940s, Psychologist Abraham Maslow found that basic human needs must be met before the brain can open up the centers for learning and emotional growth. Personally, I can say this theory guides 90% of what I do as a school leader.
Here is how the brain builds towards Self-Actualization:
Maslow’s Theory is a major reason why we give students free lunch and make our school campuses so secure. As you move up the list, it becomes difficult to design systems that will meet students’ needs across any campus.
Teachers see this play out in classrooms every day, because unmet needs aren’t quiet. They show up as disruptive behavior. They show up as disengagement. They show up as students underperforming. In Adult World, we might see the analogy with the trolls online or the guy behind you honking his horn.
Creating a campus that ensures all students feel like they belong, have self-esteem, and are ready to self-actualize may be the hardest thing a principal has to do. Here are two ways that have become widely viewed as best practice:
A Shared Set of Community Values
Most schools have a banner somewhere on the side of the school with an acronym like PAWS, WAVE, or CLIMB. These letters stand for a set of character traits the school emphasizes with students. I might be a C for Collaboration or P for Perseverance. This is a shared moral language. These simple letters bind the community in ways of understanding their journey together through life.
If we all believe in perseverance, then at any point in the day, if we see another person struggling, we pat them on the back and urge them to fight on. If we all believe in innovation, then we probably host science fairs and fill the calendar with student empowerment activities.
The power of the collective mind is real. At its best, schools build the capacity of families to use the same language at home. Principals use Coffee and Chats as training grounds for big-person moral discussions, so the adults around the village are all modeling at their best.
Ask yourself:
What are the shared values or “norms” in your workspace?
Do people follow them? Do any resonate with you?
Are they clear and objective enough to apply in real life?
Activity:
Try to create an acronym for your workplace with your favorite letters. (ie. Self-control, Collaboration, Innovation, Accountability
Leave them in the comments!!
Positive Behavior Intervention
Another best practice in reaching the highest levels of Maslow is Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). This movement traces back to research at the University of Oregon in the 1980s and was formally included in 1997, alongside other school climate legislation.
At its core, PBIS intentionally “stacks the deck” toward positive choices by emphasizing reinforcement over punishment. A key principle is training staff to narrate the expectations they want to see in students as much as possible.
“I like the way that this table is working quietly.”
“I like the way this person helped that person clean up!”
By the early 2000s, PBIS spread rapidly through schools across the country, as suspension data dropped. According to a study in 2025 by Alexander Eser, schools that consistently implement PBIS see 20–30% fewer disciplinary incidents and up to a 50% reduction in suspensions.
According to the research, students should hear at least five positive acknowledgments for every corrective one. Teachers are also expected to communicate more positive feedback to families than negative, which goes a long way in building trust and partnership rather than defensiveness.
Inside classrooms, PBIS often shows up as intentional community-building woven into the daily routine. Many teachers begin the day with activities like Circle Time, which give students regular opportunities to practice empathy, accountability, and problem-solving. These structured conversations help students learn how to listen, reflect, and take responsibility for their actions.
Over time, students begin to see themselves as citizens of their classroom, and they might begin discussing issues they want to resolve themselves. Students begin to take ownership, not just for their behavior, but for maintaining a respectful, supportive environment where everyone belongs and matters.
At the schoolwide level, most public schools now have a PBIS team formed from teachers, administrators, and often parents who work beyond the school day to shape campus climate. These teams organize assemblies, guide professional development to create shared moral language, and create avenues for student voice through leadership groups, student government, or school newspapers. In many ways, they help sustain the moral standard of the school community.
Think of what an Adult World PBIS team could do to!
Ask Yourself:
In your workplace, have you recognized a colleague’s hard work publicly?
Try this at work.
For the next week, focus on “catching people being good” rather than dwelling on the negative, and send positive emails.
Restorative Justice
Moving Beyond “Good” and “Bad”
Restorative justice in schools grew out of broader restorative justice movements in the 1980s, which emphasized repairing harm and rebuilding relationships rather than relying on punishment alone. Educators began adopting these ideas as a response to zero-tolerance policies that often led to suspensions, expulsions, and fractured school communities. By the early 2000s, restorative practices were increasingly used in schools to address conflict and encourage accountability.
To understand how these work, it may help you to imagine you just picked up your child from school in tears. As a parent, I know there’s nothing harder. Those drives home can quickly fill with emotion. Even with the best intentions, it’s easy to project your adult assumptions onto children’s conflicts in an attempt to protect them.
“Oh no, Johnny is doing that again… he’s the kid who always—”
This mental sorting of children into “good” and “bad” categories is natural, but can be damaging to the community. Before Restorative Justice, schools did this themselves. However, we learned that those labels stick. Kids internalize them, shaping identity and future choices for many years. This doesn’t lead to safe communities at any age.
There Are Only Choices
In Restorative Justice, we frame behavior as a series of choices made in a context. We all make hundreds of choices each day. Some are low stakes, but others can be pivotal.
What clothes should I wear?
What do I want for lunch?
How will I navigate this tension I am feeling with a loved one or coworker?
When students make good ones, we celebrate. However, when they make harmful ones, we must respond calmly and intentionally. We must explore the contexts that caused them. Yes, consequences still exist. But instead of shame, they are paired with reflection, accountability, and repair.
A key practice schools use to analyze student behavior is called Functional Behavior Analysis (FBA), which also emerged from the landmark legislation in 1997. FBA is a structured, problem-solving process designed to uncover why a student engages in a particular behavior by closely examining the context in which it occurs. Educators often use an “ABC” chart to guide this process. They look at each behavior in three stages:
Antecedent (what happens before the behavior)
Behavior (the observable action)
Consequence (what happens after).
Through this lens, teachers can identify the function the behavior serves. For example, missing breakfast or facing a challenging math assignment (antecedents) may lead a student to argue with peers or defy the teacher. The three most common functions of disruptive behavior are seeking attention, avoiding a task, or regulating emotions.
Once the underlying function is identified, the school teams can design targeted, proactive supports that teach replacement skills and adjust the environment to better meet the student’s needs. Rather than reacting to behavior after it occurs, educators can intervene in ways that prevent problems and promote more positive outcomes.
For instance, if a student is seeking attention, reprimanding them in front of the class may actually reinforce the behavior. Instead, a teacher might provide positive attention through classroom responsibilities, leadership roles, or special projects that meet the student’s need in a healthy way.
When used effectively, FBA shifts discipline away from guesswork and punishment and toward thoughtful intervention grounded in understanding and prevention. In many cases, students act out to gain attention from parents who may be distracted by work or other stressors. It’s important to keep an open door to listen to your child and student before they resort to acting out. Your supportive conversations will likely prevent them from making a bad choice at school.
Let’s reflect as a parent.
As a principal, I can tell your impact at home doesn’t stop when school doors open. Families are critical allies in modeling the shared values and behaviors we need in our community.
Please treat every student in your child’s class with empathy. Avoid labels like “bully.” They stick and limit any growth potential. Often, students labeled as “bullies” are carrying significant pain of their own. If given proper support and guidance, I have witnessed many develop empathy and become true leaders.
No child wants to be a bully
It is also important to see that the students who report sincere concerns are not tattling, but fulfilling their promise to the community with courage. There has been a rise in apathy in our recent generations, and it’s important that we encourage this. While a bystander in society might be passive, we want our children to be upstanders.
Lastly, it is important to trust the school when an incident occurs, even as the parent text threads and student stories might draw you into a conspiracy. Trusting the process doesn't mean being silent, but it means approaching the school as a partner rather than an adversary.
While there is a chance an adult staff member made a bad choice, it is much more likely that they are telling you the truth. The school may seem like it is hiding things, but most of the time, this is due to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which prohibits schools from sharing information about other students. Here is the typical process we go through to investigate a bad choice:
Statements are gathered to understand what happened and who was impacted
Responsibility is often shared once everything is unpacked
The group discusses how the harm should be repaired in the community
Students reflect and take ownership
POLL
How much do you trust your school to handle bullying?
My school has created a safe space
My child is scared to go to school
My kid is ok, but I am worried
1 VOTE · · SHOW RESULTS
Moving forward as a Partner With Your School
We appreciate you taking the time to complete this article. You are off to a great start!
Your next steps might be:
Identify moments where you can model SEL strategies and, when appropriate, share how you solved your own problems with your child
Make a new parent friend at dismissal
Learn the acronym on the poster at your child’s school and pledge that you will follow these moral values.
Catch your kids, coworkers, and spouse being good
Ask restorative questions about any conflicts at school or at work. Identify what might have been the functions of the choices made.
Interested in joining the Parent Potential community?
We are building a movement to help parents navigate raising kids in 2026. Each day, each car ride home is a chance to be a part of the solution! Like or subscribe to Parent Potential on the following platforms or visit our site for more tips, webinars, and other resources.
With 5 easy to learn routines and a toolkit of a notebook and grade-level cards, you can make a tremendous impact with 20-minute sessions that can fit right into your typical busy week. With budget cuts and AI tutors coming to school, we need parents to be the source of direct positive human attention that they need to survive.