36 Tools for Building Spirit in Learning Communities

In this participation guide directed at teachers and administrators, consultant Williams offers ideas about building school spirit, understanding it as going beneath the surface to heartfelt core realities. He believes implementing a participating process leads to illuminating visible achievements, developing common understanding, and guided reflections, which themselves lead to proclaiming victorious stories and the aforesaid positive rituals to develop powerful symbols. With the constant change inherent in today's schools in mind he describes a series of techniques and activities that administrators, teachers and students can use together to build a school up after a major crisis or period of adjustment or to make a good school even better. He focuses on the practicalities of building school spirit, including the inevitable need to justify costs, and grounds each activity in results-based research. Annotation c2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)