Best Practice: Establish a vision for a positive summer culture and climate where students and staff feel a sense of belonging. 

Start by brainstorming with your planning team: What assets/ideas can shape your program’s culture? What can it grow from?  

• School-year values and norms

• Local points of pride, community connections

• Shared aspirations

• Themes from the program’s academic and enrichment content

• Themes from popular culture (books, movies, events)

Best Practice: Use common language to succinctly describe the program’s goals and values. 

Common language about the program’s goals and values are typically posted where all students and staff can see them each day and shared with program stakeholders during the enrollment and training period. Such statements describe who you are, what you do, how you do it. 

Best Practice: Develop a set of daily program rituals and traditions to create a sense of belonging and unity among students and staff.  

Belonging and inclusion are essential to a positive summer program culture and climate. Rituals and traditions should ensure that every student is “seen” and feels valued. They can also give students a sense that they are “in” on something special. Use traditions to add structure to the day and opportunities for recognition and celebration. Examples include: 

• 1. Warm morning welcome: Every student gets a fist bump when they get off the bus or walk through the door. Play fun music until classes start. Play a slideshow of program photos during breakfast. 

  2. Morning all-camp rally/meeting: Bring the whole camp together for a morning pep rally and showcase. Rotate leadership among grade levels and classrooms. 

  3. Spirit stick: Use a weekly recognition like a spirit stick to highlight a particular class or group and grant them special privileges and responsibilities. 

  4. Shout-outs or other visible recognition: Dedicate time for students and staff to give shout-outs to others, either written or verbally, for their role as culture keepers.

Best Practice: Establish strategies for recognizing positive behaviors that align with the program’s values and culture. 

Summer is a great time to continue and expand upon your Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) approach. A program’s culture and values offer many opportunities to reinforce positive behaviors. In this example from Rochester Summer Scholars, program leaders have clearly defined positive behaviors for the classroom, hallway, cafeteria, bus, and bathroom and established ways of recognizing them, such as “Gotcha Tickets” and Classroom Dojo.

Best Practice: Design a physical environment (building, classrooms, hallway, apparel) that reflects the culture, themes, student work, and program progress/milestones.

Reinvent the school space for the summer with decorations, props, signs, and showcases of student work. Rename key spaces like the Front Office, Cafeteria, and Gym to align with program themes or culture. Consider how physical representations like t-shirts, cinch sacks, lanyards, or bracelets might help to build a sense of belonging and unity in the program. 

Best Practice: Equip staff with a toolbox of shared songs, chants, brain breaks, games, and/or focusing strategies that serve to signal transitions, raise energy, focus attention, and have fun! 

Help teachers make the shift to summer by introducing a set of tools they can use to bring the summer culture to life. 

• Write your own chant based on your program’s culture and themes, or borrow from the many available camp songs and chants online (or in the memories of your students and staff!). 

• Consider having theme days for your brain breaks to keep them fun and interesting, for example: Mindful Mondays, Talent Tuesdays, Workout Wednesdays, Thoughtful Thursdays, Fun Fridays. 

• Use themed “challenges” to drum up spirit in individual classrooms. Through Grand Prairie ISD’s weekly bunk challenges (below), students could earn points for their classrooms by completing activities related to the program’s culture and themes.