Nearly 40% of teens in the US report not receiving the emotional and social support they need. High student absenteeism, staff turnover, and uncertainty around Medicaid funding has left many school leaders feeling overwhelmed and under-resourced to meet these needs.

In 2024 — for the first time in history — American youth were less likely than adults to experience daily laughter and enjoyment and more likely to experience loneliness, sadness, worry and anger.

More than just affecting individual students, this has had a negative impact on school culture as a whole; high levels of stress, burnout, and frustration have been reported among teachers as well as senior leaders, and the academic performance of most students in the US is still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels.

Tapping into your existing resources, re-evaluating how much of your budget can be allocated to these efforts, and exploring different grant options are important steps you’ve likely already taken — you can build on these efforts by taking deliberate steps to strengthen school culture.

Here are three quick and simple ways to build positive school culture and ensure your students feel emotionally and socially supported at school.

1. Incorporate Gratitude Into Student Routines

What is Gratitude?

Gratitude is a practice through which we recognize something good and beneficial, and express thankfulness for it. It helps us focus our attention on what is going right instead of the all-too-common what is going wrong. In doing so, we help elevate our own mood, and when we share gratitude, the positive impact ‘spills over’ to others. 

Research has found that among adolescents, those who are more grateful are also “more interested and satisfied with their school lives, are more kind and helpful, and are more socially integrated.”

Practicing Gratitude in Schools

Verbal recognition: Adjusting our language is the easiest way to model how students can express gratitude in school. 

Show appreciation for something positive or helpful that a colleague or student has done, by:

1. Verbally acknowledging their behavior
2. Calling out the care and effort they put into it
3. Sharing how that impacted you and made a difference

Journaling “The Three Things:” If your students are hesitant to express their gratitude face-to-face (and many digital natives are) they can start off by writing a note to themselves highlighting the three things they are grateful for today.

2. Encourage Students to Practice Kindness in Concrete Ways

What is Kindness?

Kindness, when shared in an authentic way, equals care. When students feel cared for, they feel valued, and when they feel valued by others they are far more likely to value themselves. 

This has a profound impact on how they conduct themselves inside and out of the classroom, and how they perform academically. Research has shown that practicing kindness on a daily basis (even over relatively short periods of time) boosts happiness and in turn, makes people even kinder. It can also help make stressful transitional periods easier for older teens.

How to Practice Kindness in Schools

Remembering kind acts: The simplest of all research-backed kindness practices is to invite students to remember a time when they bought or did something nice — however small — for someone else, and share some details about the experience.

Time-limited kindness challenges: Inviting students to experiment with short (e.g. 7-10 day) kindness challenges can be a great way to initiate the virtuous cycle of positive emotions that kindness generates. There are many different activities to choose from, like:

• Helping out a classmate
• Hearing someone out
• Doing a favor for a family member
• Offering to help a parent or caregiver with grocery shopping
• Asking a teacher or other staff member how to make their job easier

3. Model Active Listening to Help Students Feel Connected

What is Active Listening?

Active listening is the key ingredient in positive relationships, and positive relationships among staff and students contribute towards “psychological safety” (a concept first championed inside Google’s offices).

In practice, what this looks like is teachers, students, principals (and others within your K-12 community) feeling safe to share their thoughts on what could be improved, not fearing mistakes, and being comfortable taking risks knowing that they will still be respected and valued. 

Students thrive in this type of environment and build stronger relationships because they feel motivated to reach out to others, and pursue their curiosities and out-of-the-box ideas with confidence.

How to Practice Active Listening in Schools

Rethink listening: We all tend to think about our own response even as our conversational partner is speaking. Active listening asks us to rethink this habit, and hold back our reflexive response - an important perspective shift for us and our students.

Paraphrase: Encourage students to start by reflecting back to their partner what they said, using phrases like:

• “What I’m hearing is that…”
• “Let me know if I understood this right...”
• “This sounds like…. Is that right?”

Withhold judgement, express empathy: Swapping the two can be challenging at first, but can be perfected by:

• Not interrupting
• Not sharing advice
• Expressing empathy by reflecting the other person’s emotions: “I can see that this situation is causing you a lot of anger.”

As K-12 leaders and educators, you can take simple steps over time to foster a positive learning environment where the feelings of trust, support and belonging are cultivated, and your students thrive. Harness the power of gratitude, kindness, and active listening by not only teaching these practices to your students, but modeling them as well.