Participate and share: Interactive session 
The purpose for this session is to encourage attendees to consider technology's impact on personal well-being and strategies for thoughtful use of digital tools. It is possible to create healthy school communities both online and off when we use digital tools. We will explore strategies and activities for doing both.
As a result of attending this session, participants will:
1. Consider the importance of a healthy school community (on and off-line).
2. Explore strategies for establishing healthy school communities.
3. Explore activities and resources that help educators and students create and sustain personal well-being which in turn increases the likelihood of creating healthy school communities.
4. Leave with resources they can use immediately to increase personal well-being.
1. Overview
A. Content: Overview of hands-on session, purpose and objectives, setting the stage.
B. Timeline: 10 minutes
C. Process: The last several years presented unanticipated challenges for K-12 education. What crucial lessons have we learned during this time about teaching and learning? To help participants focus on this question, they are invited to engage in a brief discussion and post their ideas in a shared online environment.
2. Building community on and off-line
A. Content: Educators have always acknowledged that healthy school communities are important in teaching and learning, but the last several years have shown us just how important they actually are. Instead of being ‘nice-to-have,’ healthy communities built on trust form the bedrock of effective learning environments. We explore this idea through information and supporting activities.
B. Timeline: 20 minutes
C. Process: Following a brief discussion about the role community plays in teaching and learning, participants will explore a framework designed to help educators, students, and families strengthen the school’s community both on and off-line. They are also invited to post ideas for related activities in a shared online environment.
3. Well-being’s role in this discussion
A. Content: Teacher wellness has been linked not only to teachers’ physical health, but also to stability in schools and to teaching effectiveness and student achievement. Additionally, the well-being of students and their families directly impacts their perception of students’ education experiences and their perception of how things should be as opposed to how they are. In this segment, participants have an opportunity to explore how a personal sense of well-being directly impacts their perception of the community through information and supporting activities.
B. Timeline: 20 minutes
C. Process: Following a brief discussion about why it’s important to pay attention to individuals’ sense of well-being, participants will consider multiple activities they can use personally as well as with others to build a culture that supports well-being. They will also be invited to post ideas for related activities in a shared online environment.
4. Wrap-up
A. Content: Time for participants to identify ways to apply this information in the workplace.
B. Timeline: 10 minutes
C. Process: During a debriefing discussion, participants share a personal action step they will use to apply today's information back at their own sites.
Here are a few examples from research that support the two focus areas of this session:
Building Community
- “How to Create a Community Culture in Your School,” Alicia Betz (2023). Also known as climate, the culture of a school is imperative to its success. The culture of a school is arguably even more important than the academic curriculum, as when students have a positive feeling toward their school, they tend to achieve better.
- “Tips for Building a Sense of Community in Your School,” Connor Gleason (2022). Your school’s staff, trustees, parents, and alumni all play an important role in school culture, so it’s critical your web presence reflects how everyone works toward creating an engaging, safe, and supportive environment for students.
- “BUILDING COMMUNITY,” Harvard Graduate School of Education (2023). For students to feel empowered to share ideas freely, instructors must work to foster a classroom culture that is both caring and challenging, safe and supportive. Such a culture seldom materializes by happenstance, and building it must be a sustained effort throughout the semester.
- “Framework of Six Types of Involvement,” Organizing Engagement (ND). First developed by Joyce Epstein and collaborators in the early 1990s, the Framework of Six Types of Involvement—sometimes called the “School-Family-Community Partnership Model”—has undergone revisions in the intervening years, though the foundational elements of the framework have remained consistent. Epstein’s Framework of Six Types of Involvement is one of the most influential models in the field of school, family, and community engagement and partnership.
Well-Being’s Role in Building Community
- “10 Powerful Community-Building Ideas,” Emelina Minero (2019). Teachers have long known that feeling safe and secure in school helps students focus their energy on learning and research bears this out. Review specific activities for building community with students.
- “Teachers have long known that feeling safe and secure in school helps students focus their energy on learning.,” Youki Terada (2018). In this study, when teachers started class by welcoming students at the door, academic engagement increased by 20 percentage points and disruptive behavior decreased by 9 percentage points—potentially adding “an additional hour of engagement over the course of a five-hour instructional day,” according to the researchers.
- “A Supportive Classroom Environment–Community Building” CASEL Guide to Schoolwide SEL (2023). By making the time to build the relationships that allow learners to feel a sense of community- that they are “in this together”- teachers create a safer, more equitable environment where all students participate and achieve.
- “The Importance of Strong Relationships,” Ed Trust and MDRC (2021). Strong relationships with teachers and school staff can dramatically enhance students’ level of motivation and therefore promote learning.
- “6 Strategies for Building Better Student Relationships,” Cicely Woodard (2019). In the classroom, positive relationships are the foundation for learning success. Yet as teachers, we sometimes neglect to take the time to learn about our students as people, which can create barriers to learning and make even small interactions (or conflicts) challenging to handle.
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