No kidding. And, to be honest, while we DO have a "fiduciary responsibility" to create a wholesome, safe, environment for students, we aren't given the resources and power to do so. We don't design the system. Politicians do that. Politicians create and fund a large, factory system in which the adult-student ratio, and the total size of the institution, severely limits the adults' ability to create that better environment.
Corporate think tanks, and politicians, with the general public's support, create an authoritarian, punishing system that "trickles down."
Schools do nothing more than reflect the society we serve. Currently, our society loves to hate schools and teachers.
Recognizing all of that, I can say that there ARE things we can, and do, do to create that culture of acceptance. It works pretty well at my school. Of course, my school is a small, close community where we are able to build relationships with our students and their families. Even in our district, there are bigger schools that this simply doesn't happen in.
One of the ways we do this at our school is with the hard work of our full time counselor. A full time counselor for a small school. Between the counselor and the efforts of teachers, our students have multiple opportunities to work in smaller groups to serve our school community, to be part of making our school a positive place, to get support in doing so from adults and teachers. It's so embedded in our culture that a "pink shirt" incident of any kind would have been handled by our students without adult intervention, unless they felt they needed help and brought it to us.
New students? It's a culture shock for them. Why? They come the first day with their guard up, and discover that the students at our school are thrilled to have them. They compete for who will guide them around the building, who will sit with them at lunch, etc.. They overwhelm them with friendship. As a matter of fact, most of the social tension that has to be addressed comes from new students, who aren't used to adults noticing everything they say and do, and addressing it all; aren't used to peers that don't fit in to the traditional social group roles. It doesn't take long before they've been indoctrinated by those peers and are functioning in a happier, healthier way.
We spend a great deal of time and energy focused on building that culture, in spite of the demands to document that all of our student contact time is spent teaching standards and drilling for standardized tests. We get away with it because we're small, we're off at the far edge of the district, and easily overlooked. All the focus is on the "big" schools. So we quietly keep our heads down and go about our business without asking district administration for permission.
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