Full Value

A Full Value Community is a framework for social-emotional learning in schools. It is a culture and climate where students and faculty interact with each other to create and maintain a focused, productive, and collaborative community. The community utilizes effective skills and practices to encourage meaningful participation in the life of the school. Specific tools include experiential learning, the activity based process,adoption of Full Value Agreements, calling group, control to empowerment, integration of mindfulness, and the use of SMART goals

The community is formed around six foundational principles:

Be Here: Fully engaged in all aspects of the learning process

Be Safe: Be careful with each other’s emotions and well-being

Be Honest: Act with courage and integrity

Set Goals: Define and commit to measurable, achievable goals

Care for Self and Others: Nurture the development of empathy and compassion

Let Go and Move On: Resolve conflicts and accept that mistakes can lead to growth

• Provides a safe and effective learning environment co-created by staff and students
• Utilizes a group based process for addressing community issues and celebrating its successes
• Promotes the practice of abstract reasoning which supports student understanding of complex academic areas
• Can be taught and reinforced through academic content areas including language arts, science, social studies, mathematics, art and music
• Empowers students to self regulate with faculty supervision and encouragement
• Supports social-emotional learning methods that already exist in the school
• Provides continuity of methods and language across grade levels and schools
• Teaching this approach can be integrated into the daily classroom routine or taught using Full Value activities
• Supports development of ethics, empathy and compassion
• Meets state requirements as a primary prevention program to address harassment, intimidation and bullying

A survey commissioned by the Collaborative for Academic Social Emotional Learning found that found 93 percent of teachers want a greater focus on social and emotional learning in schools. Educators call for schools to prioritize integrating SEL learning practices and strategies into the curriculum as well as the school culture.

Activity Based Learning: Group activities designed to address specific growth areas, as well as to teach Full Value. Activities may take the form of games and initiatives or the daily instructional process in the classroom. Aside from using activities as a teacher, reflection is employed to integrate the experience with learning outcomes.

Calling Group: Groups are the focal point for maintaining the Full Value community. Groups are called for specific purposes, initially by the teacher and then (using the control to empowerment scale) implemented increasingly by students as they demonstrate readiness. The types of groups are Information, Celebration, Check In, Conflict, Feedback, Feelings, and Planning. The Calling Group process is a targeted and time efficient. Every student has a voice in the group.

Control to Empowerment: A teacher led process to allow for students to take increasing responsibility for their role in creating and maintaining a Full Value school community. A scale is used to assess the ability of students to do this.

Full Value Commitment: Students and their teacher develop a set of agreed upon behavioral norms and detractors that may arise in achieving those norms, guided by the six Full Value norms. This agreement is tangible and may take whatever physical form the group decides upon. It is a physical representation of their commitments.

Mindfulness: Attention, awareness, being non-judgmental, being in the present, stress reduction, focus, empathy, and compassion are all components that are woven into the Full Value commitments.

Challenge of Choice: This element guides how students choose to participate in an activity. It asks students to “go for the perfect try.” This means finding a way to participate in any sort of group activity that assures authentic contributions, and that stretches students out of their comfort zone.