Cultivating School Climate through Creative Leadership

Presenters

• Denisha Logan, Green Street AcademyFollow

First Presenter's Highest Degree Earned

EdD

Year First Presenter's Degree Was Awarded

2025

First Presenter's Field of Study

Education

Institution Where First Presenter Received Highest Degree

Walden University

First Presenter's Institution

Green Street Academy

First Presenter's Brief Bio and Description of Credentials for This Presentation

Denisha Logan is a proud Baltimore native who transitioned into education after 10 years in the private sector. With two decades of service in West Baltimore schools, seven as a principal and four in charter school leadership, she has dedicated her career to creating learning environments where scholars thrive creatively, educators grow professionally, and communities feel connected. As CEO and Executive Director of Green Street Academy, she expands opportunities for scholars through reimagined career pathways, industry credentials, and strong community partnerships that give students real-world experience and paid internships. Previously, she served as the founding principal of Billie Holiday Elementary, leading its renaming, rebranding, and arts-focused instructional redesign. An Arts for Learning principal fellow, mentor, and passionate arts advocate, Denisha equips leaders to integrate creativity into their schools to strengthen climate, deepen engagement, and support principal wellness. She earned her EdD in 2025, studying teacher retention and mentoring, and remains committed to developing strong school leaders who uplift educators, scholars, and communities.

Location

Percival

Document Type

Individual Presentation

Primary Strand

School and District Leadership

Relevance to Primary Strand

This proposal aligns with the School and District Leadership strand because it focuses on how creative leadership can directly improve school climate, culture, and safety. The session offers leaders practical ways to use the arts to build stronger relationships, support student expression, and foster a more positive, welcoming environment. It also shows how creativity helps leaders communicate more effectively, resolve conflicts, and support staff well-being. By treating the arts as a leadership tool and not just a class, leaders can empower teachers, strengthen collaboration, and create school communities where students feel safe, connected, and ready to learn. This session offers simple, actionable strategies leaders can bring back to their schools right away.

Alignment with School Improvement Plan Topics

Leadership / Development

Brief Program Description

This session shows how creative leadership can bring new life to school climate and culture by helping students, teachers, and administrators feel more connected and supported. Leaders will explore simple ways to use the arts to strengthen relationships, build trust, and create spaces where everyone feels valued. Aligned with School Improvement Plan goals for leadership development, this session gives practical, realistic strategies to empower staff, inspire students, and support principal wellness through the power of the arts.

Summary

This session introduces creative leadership practices that help school leaders strengthen school climate, deepen staff and student connections, and support their own wellness. Creativity is presented as a practical, accessible tool aligned with School Improvement Plan goals for teacher, student, and administrative development. The focus is on realistic strategies leaders can use immediately to improve culture, communication, and engagement without requiring additional funding or specialized training.

Participants will learn seven ready-to-use creative leadership practices designed to build climate, shared leadership, and leader wellness:

1. Creative Check-Ins: Short mood-mapping activities that start staff meetings, morning announcements, or advisory classes. These simple prompts help leaders build connection and gather quick emotional data that informs climate decisions.

2. Climate Walks with Creative Noticing: A reflective walkthrough method that uses sketching or jotting sensory observations to help leaders spot climate strengths, hotspots, and student needs before they escalate.

3. Collaborative Mural Moments: A student- or staff-created visual piece built over time to reinforce norms, school values, or collective goals—while encouraging shared leadership across grade levels and departments.

4. Restorative Art Circles: A structured strategy that uses drawing or visual reflection before discussion to support conflict resolution, emotional regulation, and healthier conversations.

5. Creative Leadership Pairings A shared leadership practice where teachers or student leaders co-facilitate short creative routines (like prompts, warm-ups, or reflection moments), expanding leadership capacity across the school.

6. Wellness Reset Stations for Leaders and Staff Quick 3–5 minute creativity-based wellness strategies with music cues, mindful sketching, guided breathing, or expressive writing that leaders can use themselves or embed into staff meetings to reduce stress and improve resilience.

7. Climate Creativity Tracker: A simple template for logging activities, noting reactions, and identifying climate shifts, helping leaders monitor progress and guide next steps.

Participants leave with a quick-start toolkit, practical templates, and an implementation plan that build shared leadership, support schoolwide wellness, and strengthen the climate through simple, creative routines leaders can use every day.

Evidence

This approach is grounded in national research showing that creative, arts-based practices strengthen school climate and support emotional safety. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) identifies expressive and visual routines, such as mood check-ins and reflective drawing, as effective ways to build communication, empathy, and emotional regulation. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reports that arts-integrated activities increase engagement, improve behavior, and strengthen students' sense of belonging. The Arts Education Partnership (AEP) provides additional evidence. AEP documents the effectiveness of collaborative artmaking, creative routines, and arts-integrated leadership practices in improving school culture. It also supports national leadership initiatives in arts education and works with partners across education, arts, business, and government to drive systems change and improve arts education policy and practice, reinforcing the value of these approaches for schoolwide improvement. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Supportive Schools also highlights expressive arts strategies as effective tools for promoting emotional safety, reducing conflict, and improving the climate. Practices such as creative check-ins, collaborative murals, restorative art circles, and creative wellness routines reflect these recommendations and are widely used in schools nationwide. Together, these sources show that creative leadership practices are research-supported, field-tested, and effective in strengthening relationships, improving communication, reducing conflict, and building healthier, more connected school environments.

Learning Objective 1

Participants will learn a set of simple, creative activities to help students and staff feel more connected, welcome, and supported throughout the school day.

Learning Objective 2

Participants will develop leadership strategies that use creativity to build shared ownership across the school, empowering teachers and support staff to take active roles in shaping a positive, connected school culture.

Learning Objective 3

Participants will learn easy, creative wellness practices they can use to manage stress, recharge, and model healthy habits for their teams, thereby contributing to a calmer, more positive school environment.

Start Date

6-1-2026 3:45 PM

End Date

6-1-2026 4:45 PM

Recommended Citation

Logan, Denisha, "Cultivating School Climate through Creative Leadership" (2026). Southeast Conference on School Climate. 32.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/secsc/2026/2026/32

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.