Positive Schools Center

The Positive Schools Center (PSC) employs a strategy to proactively and restoratively transform school climate, acknowledging the challenges at play.

The PSC exists to develop adults inside school buildings so they are prepared to support the children to learn and develop and to create an environment that reflects and supports restorative culture. Because the PSC is led by people who have worked in schools for decades and who know and can empathize with the problems and challenges school leaders face, PSC can credibly offer an alternative space for school staff and leaders to air their difficulties with little judgment and qualified peer support. 

The success of the PSC can be measured in the positive climate and restorative culture inside Baltimore schools. We ask school leaders to consider – How are visitors greeted? How are students and educators developing strong relationships with each other in those buildings? How do people talk with each other? How do they feel? What happens when students have a fight with their friends? How do they restore the connection between one another? Are there children running through the hallways? Are parents engaged? 

Through coaching and staff development, community school programming, and policy recommendations for Maryland schools, PSC offers peer support and empathy for teachers, principals, and other school leaders to create positive, supportive, and mindful learning communities where students and school staff connect, develop, and grow. 

Baltimore schools have historically seen disengaged students, low attendance, and fights. Suspending students has not worked to solve these challenges because it has not addressed structural racism. Implicit bias and racism directly shape everyone’s perception of themselves and others. PSC disrupts these dynamics by facilitating people to be actively aware of how historical and contemporary structural racism impacts schools and to take action. 

If schools are restorative and safe places, children show up. PSC works with school leaders on these issues at the micro and macro levels.  From having a community school coordinator visit a child’s house to supplying uniforms for children to wear, to ensuring children have food or clean clothes laundered and ready for school, there is no limit to what PSC will do to ensure that children attend. Community school coordinators might notice that a child looks unusual when they come in and work with the family to help them through an underlying health concern or other issue. 

The PSC places the development of a restorative culture at the heart of its work. From offering morning circle prompts for educators to doing school walkthroughs in partnership, being restorative means developing strong relationships with people that allow for a way to move through conflicts and restore the flow of community.

Through building close relationships with school teams, the PSC collaborates to shift perspective and transform the places where people teach, learn, and live.