Unit Introduction and What You Will Learn

Week three is synchronous, with class taking place on Saturday (2/7). This week’s content focuses on school culture and strategies to develop an environment that fosters safety, health, and learning for all students. Students will read about essential practices and skills for school social workers in Jarolmen and Bautista-Thomas (2023). They will review the updated standards of practice for school social workers, as defined by the National Association of Social Workers (2025), and read about opportunities for leadership and collaboration in addressing school climate (Teasley, 2017). Discussion forums this week offer opportunities to further engage with the material and share additional resources, helping to connect social work practice in schools, school culture, and student wellbeing. During the in-person class session, we will explore schools as organizations and multi-tiered systems of support. The agenda for the person session this week includes:

• Understanding school climate and school culture
• Exploring what the climate is in your schools
• Multi-Tiered Systems of Support
• Exploring interventions within MTSS
• Diversity and inclusion within services

Learning objectives this week include:

• Understand and demonstrate knowledge of working within the culture of the schools, creating an environment that fosters safety, health, and learning for the students
• Explain the difference between RTI, PBIS, and MTSS
• Be able to assess school climate
• Identify potential interventions and what tier they are
• Develop insight into diversity and inclusion

Unit Assignments

Read

• Jarolmen and Bautista-Thomas (2023) Chapter 3: Introduction and Definitions: Discussion of the Skills, Techniques, and Essential Practices
• National Association of Social Workers (2025) NASW Standards for School Social Workers Services
• Teasley (2017) Organizational Culture and Schools: A Call for Leadership and Collaboration

W-02 A-01: Asynchronous Participation and Engagement: Please note that knowing that MyHeritage was down on Sunday, I extended the due date for last week to have completed your posts for that week by Friday Morning.

W-03 A-01: Asynchronous Participation and Engagement

The expectation is that each of your replies will be substantive and provide meaningful perspectives, contributing to the forum’s conversation and scholarship. They can be related to the prompts or building on conversations shared by peers. There are three forums for this week, and you are expected to make at least 3 replies across any of the forums and read all of your peers’ replies. These forums include the following:

• The Reflection on the Standards and Practices for School Social Work forum invites students to examine one of NASW’s updated 15 school social work standards and consider how it could be implemented in practice.
• In Practices Connecting School Culture and Student Well-Being, students explore the distinctions between school culture and climate and identify strategies to promote environments that support student success.
• Students can engage Chapter 03 Textbook Discussion Questions focused on the unique role of the school social worker and the impact of different practice settings.

Unit Resources

Last year, OSPI released guidance Protections for Immigrant Students in Washington’s K–12 Public Schools that is still just as useful to be aware of, given everything that is happening in our political climate.

During class, we will continue our discussion of school climate. The National School Climate Center has developed a School Climate Survey. We will explore the 14 Dimensions of School Climate Measured by the CSCI. The National Center for Rural School Mental Health provides a valuable tool, the Early Identification System Intervention Hub, a web-based system to identify, prevent, and intervene on student mental health concerns using a multi-tiered system of support. We will spend time in class exploring some of this system’s tools and discussing potential interventions at various levels.

While we aren’t going to review these tools in this session, many great online resources discuss tiered interventions. PBIS World allows you to select behaviors and helps identify interventions at each level. It is a bit more focused on classrooms than on school-wide interventions, but it has a lot of great resources. The Center on Multi-Tiered System of Supports provides in-depth access to and connections to resources for implementing MTSS. The National Center on Intense Intervention at the American Institutes for Research has a Behavioral Intervention Tools Chart that provides comprehensive information on evidence-informed practices. The Center on Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports also has a lot of great information. In particular, I like the topics and resources provided under each one.

I will post the presentation slides as we get closer to our class session.

The Lecture Videos tab in the MyHeritage course is where you will be able to find class recordings.

To-Do Lists

• Attend class Saturday
• Read Chapter three, and review material in unit resources
• Post at least three replies across any of the forums