Transforming School Climate and Learning: Beyond Bullying and Compliance

Creating safe schools from the inside out

This book details a comprehensive process for empowering students and teachers as school improvement leaders and “experts.” Bill Preble and Rick Gordon explain how schools can use the SafeMeasures™ collaborative action research process to:

• Collect and analyze school climate data
• Develop improvement goals
• Create exciting and inspiring action plans to dramatically improve their school’s climate and student engagement

Each chapter features success stories from real schools, strategies and implementation activities, and book study questions that help all stakeholders transform both their school climate and student learning.

Bill earned an EdD from the University of Maine in Curriculum & Instruction and Youth Political Socialization and his MEd in Social Studies Education from the University of Washington. Bill is a Professor of Education at New England College in Henniker, NH where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Educational Psychology, Curriculum and Instruction, Educational Leadership, and School Climate Research, Leadership, and Facilitation.

He created Main Street Academix in 2001 and founded The Center for School Climate and Learning in 2010. These centers provide school climate research and evaluation services and professional development on school climate leadership to schools and state departments of education throughout the country. Bill and his colleagues offer schools on-site school climate improvement services and support for implementation of the SafeMeasures™ Process: which offers a systemic, data-driven approach to preventing bullying and improving school climate and learning.

Bill has made hundreds of presentations on his research and school climate work at schools and professional conferences. He is the co-author of two books, Beyond Bullying…Beyond Compliance: Transforming School Climate and Learning (2011) Corwin Press, and the Respectful School: How Educators and Students Can Conquer Hate and Harassment, with Stephen Wessler (ASCD, 2003) and several articles on school climate leadership and bullying prevention.

Rick Gordon has a PhD. in Social and Multicultural Foundations of Education from the University of Colorado-Boulder, a MEd. from University of Minnesota in Political Science with a Focus on Organizational Theory and Public Policy and graduated from Stanford University with honors in Political Science. He was Founding Director of Compass School, a grade 7-12 school that has scored highest on a national survey on Respect, Safety, and School Climate. Rick co-directed The Critical Skills-Education by Design Program at Antioch New England Graduate School, where he also was on the Education Department faculty, and has worked extensively with schools and higher education on Service Learning (including editing the well received Problem Based Service Learning Fieldguide:Making a Difference in Higher Education). Rick has been a Humanities teacher, run several small businesses, and had the honor of visiting thousands of classrooms as an educational ethnographer and consultant over the years. He continues to be involved in teacher development and teaches courses in School Leadership in various locales. Rick has long experience in Experiential Education with Outward Bound and Interlocken, and has traveled extensively around the globe leading programs for youth. Rick played college soccer, and continues his commitment to learning through sports as a coach of youth soccer and nordic skiing.