Learning Center · Glossary

The shared language of school culture work.

Plain-English definitions your whole team can align on — from affective statements to universal screening. Each term links to the guide that explores it.

30 terms · updated with the Learning Center

4

4-D Cycle (Discover, Dream, Design, Destiny): The classic Appreciative Inquiry sequence: Discover what gives life to the organization at its best, Dream what could be, Design what should be, and Destiny (or Deliver) — sustaining the change. Some models add a fifth 'Define' phase up front (the 5-D cycle).

A

Affective statements: Short, honest 'I' statements that name how a behavior affected someone ('When you walked out, I worried about you'). The most basic, most-used restorative practice — they humanize the adult and invite repair instead of defensiveness.
Appreciative Inquiry (AI): A strength-based change methodology that improves organizations by studying what works at their best rather than dissecting deficits. In schools, it means building improvement plans from existing bright spots — the classrooms, routines, and relationships already producing belonging.

B

Belonging: A student's felt sense of being seen, valued, and connected at school — that adults and peers know them by name and story. Distinct from mere attendance or compliance; belonging is a leading indicator for engagement, behavior, and mental health.

C

Check-In/Check-Out (CICO): A common Tier 2 intervention: a student briefly meets with a chosen adult at the start and end of each day for goal-setting, encouragement, and feedback. Its power comes less from the point sheet than from the guaranteed daily dose of positive adult attention.
Climate audit (school climate & culture audit): A structured, data-informed assessment of what students, staff, and families actually experience — combining survey data, discipline and attendance patterns, focus groups, and walkthroughs into an honest picture with a prioritized action plan.

E

Exclusionary discipline: Any consequence that removes a student from instruction — office removals, in- and out-of-school suspension, expulsion. Research consistently links repeated exclusion to lower achievement, disengagement, dropout, and justice-system contact, without improving school safety.
Experiential learning: Learning designed around doing and reflecting — students (or staff in PD) act, reflect on the experience, draw conclusions, and apply them to the next attempt. Contrast with transmission-style instruction, where information is presented and quickly forgotten.

F

Fail forward: Treating a mistake as information and a starting point rather than a verdict — 'that approach didn't work yet' instead of 'I failed.' A teachable skill for students and adults that underpins risk-taking, resilience, and real learning.
Fidelity: The degree to which a program is implemented the way it was designed. Most 'this initiative didn't work' stories are actually fidelity stories — trainings without coaching, circles without preparation, or Tier 1 systems adopted by half the staff.

G

Growth mindset: The belief (from Carol Dweck's research) that ability grows with effort and strategy, rather than being fixed. In practice it lives or dies in adult responses to student mistakes — feedback, grading, and discipline either confirm or contradict it daily.

K

Kolb experiential learning cycle: David Kolb's four-stage loop: concrete experience → reflective observation → abstract conceptualization → active experimentation. Good experiential design walks learners around the full cycle — an experience without structured reflection is just an activity.

M

MTSS (Multi-Tiered System of Supports): The umbrella framework organizing academic and behavioral support into tiers: Tier 1 universal support for every student, Tier 2 targeted small-group intervention for some, and Tier 3 intensive individualized support for a few. Behavior-focused MTSS is commonly implemented as PBIS.

O

Office discipline referral (ODR): The formal record created when a behavior is sent to the office. ODR patterns — who, where, when, what time of day — are core Tier 1 data, revealing whether a school has a student problem or a system problem.

P

PBIS (Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports): An evidence-based, tiered framework for teaching and reinforcing expected behavior schoolwide instead of only punishing misbehavior. Backed by decades of research and used in tens of thousands of U.S. schools; ACES delivers a relationship-forward version (P2BIS).
Proactive circle (community circle): A restorative circle held before anything goes wrong — a regular classroom routine for connection, voice, and community-building. Proactive circles are the deposit; responsive circles draw on that account when harm occurs.
Project-based learning (PBL): An instructional approach where students learn content by working on an extended, authentic project with a public product — driven by inquiry, revision, and reflection rather than a checklist of activities capped by a poster.

R

Re-entry (reintegration): The structured process of welcoming a student back into the community after removal, conflict, or absence — naming what happened, what was repaired, and how the community will support success. The step most discipline systems skip, and where repeat incidents are prevented.
Relationship-centered discipline: A discipline approach that holds high expectations and high support simultaneously: consequences are designed to teach, reconnect, and repair harm rather than simply exclude. Accountability runs through the relationship, not around it.
Restorative conference: A formal, facilitated meeting after significant harm, bringing together the person harmed, the person responsible, and supporters to name the harm, answer for it, and agree on repair. The most structured point on the restorative continuum — and the one requiring the most preparation.
Restorative practices: A continuum of relational practices — affective statements, community circles, restorative conversations, formal conferences — that build community proactively and repair harm when it happens. Broader than 'restorative justice,' which usually names the reactive end of the continuum.

S

School climate: The experienced quality of school life — safety, relationships, teaching, environment — as reported by students, staff, and families. Climate is the weather you can measure now; culture is the deeper pattern of beliefs and habits that produces it.
School connectedness: The CDC's term for students' belief that adults and peers at school care about them as people and about their learning. A protective factor tracked in the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey and linked to lower rates of risk behavior and poor mental health — durably, even years later.
School culture: The shared beliefs, norms, and habits that shape 'how we do things here' — what gets celebrated, tolerated, and punished. Culture changes more slowly than climate and only through consistent adult behavior, especially from leadership.
SEL (Social-Emotional Learning): The process of developing self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (the CASEL five). SEL curricula complement — but don't replace — the schoolwide systems and adult practices that create belonging.
Strength-based leadership: Leading by identifying and growing what people already do well rather than auditing their gaps. In schools: staffing, PD, and feedback built around teachers' demonstrated strengths — which research ties to engagement and retention.

T

Tier 1 (universal support): What every student experiences every day: clear, taught expectations; consistent, warm reinforcement; predictable routines; and connection with adults. When Tier 1 is healthy, roughly 80% or more of students need nothing more intensive.
Tier 2 (targeted support): Small-group or lightly individualized interventions — like Check-In/Check-Out or skills groups — for the students (typically 10–15%) who need more than universal support. Tier 2 works only when Tier 1 underneath it is solid.
Tier 3 (intensive support): Individualized, function-based support for the small number of students (typically 1–5%) with significant needs — behavior plans built from a functional assessment, wraparound supports, and a team that meets regularly.

U

Universal screening: Brief, regular check-ups of every student's behavioral and emotional wellbeing (not just the ones already flagged), used to catch needs early and route support before crises. A hallmark of mature MTSS implementations.

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