Leading with Heart: Building Schools Where Every Student Belongs and Thrives

Presenters

• Ashley Bennetone, CharacterStrongFollow

First Presenter's Highest Degree Earned

M.Ed

Year First Presenter's Degree Was Awarded

2015

First Presenter's Field of Study

School Counseling

Institution Where First Presenter Received Highest Degree

University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill

First Presenter's Institution

CharacterStrong

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

Ashley Bennetone is the Director of School Supports at CharacterStrong with over 10 years of experience in education. She began as an elementary teacher and later served as a school counselor at both the elementary and middle school levels. Ashley has advocated for students and the counseling profession through district and state leadership roles and was named her district’s Middle School Counselor of the Year in 2022. She is passionate about helping educators foster character development and positive school climates.

Location

Scarbrough 1

Document Type

Individual Presentation

Primary Strand

School and District Leadership

Relevance to Primary Strand

This session highlights the impact school and district leaders have on the culture and climate of their schools. We will discuss ways to apply tools to embed belonging into daily systems and leadership.

Alignment with School Improvement Plan Topics

Climate and Culture

Brief Program Description

Discover how to create a school where every student feels seen, valued, and connected. This session explores how belonging, engagement, and well-being drive both academic and personal success. Participants will practice simple, research-based relational strategies and walk away with practical tools to weave belonging into daily routines, leadership practices, and schoolwide systems—building a culture where students and staff truly thrive.

Summary

Students and staff must also feel connected, valued, and supported to reach our academic and behavioral goals. Unfortunately, many schools struggle with disengagement, isolation, and burnout that erode both learning and culture. This session invites school and district leaders to reimagine school climate through the lens of belonging, engagement, and well-being—three essential drivers of student and adult success.

Grounded in current research and practical experience, participants will explore how relational trust and everyday interactions shape the culture of a school far more than any program or initiative. Leaders will practice simple, evidence-based strategies to strengthen relationships, model empathy, and foster connection among students and staff. The session also provides actionable tools for embedding belonging into daily systems.

Participants will leave with a clear understanding of how to lead with heart—using connection as a lever for academic success, behavior improvement, and overall school well-being. This work is not an addition to the plate--it is the plate.

Evidence

Community building is an intentional approach to building a positive, supportive, and inclusive environment where students feel safe, respected, and valued as a member of the school or class 1 . Community building involves protecting time for relational activities and establishing shared norms around how students and educators will treat one another. One indicator of climate (how people feel in a place) that effective community building can help establish is psychological safety, which is when people feel comfortable to take risks, admit mistakes, and show some vulnerability because they do not fear negative judgment, embarrassment, or punishment for what they say or do.

Edmondson AC, Lei Z. (2014). Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct. Annual Rev Org Psyc Organ Behav, 1, 23–43.

Positive greetings at the door (PGD) is a universal strategy teachers use daily to support students socially and behaviorally as they transition into the classroom learning environment. PGD is a proactive classroom practice designed to promote student sense of belonging and academic engagement in the classroom. It is an important classroom-based strategy because it allows for connection, precorrection, and restoration. There is strong evidence for PGD from single case experimental designs, randomized controlled trials, and quasi-experimental studies demonstrating moderate effect sizes on social, behavior, and academic-related outcomes.

Cook, C. R., Fiat, A., Larson, M., Daikos, C., Slemrod, T., & Holland, E. (2018). Positive greetings at the door: Evaluation of a low-cost, high yield proactive classroom management strategy. Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions, 20, 149–159.

Cook, C. R., Larson, M., Daikos, C. & Zhang, Y. (under review). Does positive greetings at the door work at the elementary level? Results from a teacher-level randomized trial.

Allday, R. A., & Pakurar, K. (2007). Effects of teacher greetings on student on-task behavior. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 40, 317–320.

Cook, C. R., Duong, M. T., McIntosh, K., Fiat, A. E., Larson, M., Pullmann, M. D., & McGinnis, J. (2018). Addressing discipline disparities for Black male students: Linking malleable root causes to feasible and effective practices. School Psychology Review, 47(2), 135–152.

Kincade, L., Cook, C., & Goerdt, A. (2020). Meta-analysis and common practice elements of universal approaches to improving student-teacher relationships. Review of Educational Research.

Learning Objective 1

Understand how belonging, engagement, and well-being drive success.

Learning Objective 2

Practice simple relational strategies to strengthen school culture.

Learning Objective 3

Apply tools to embed belonging into daily systems and leadership.

Start Date

6-2-2026 10:15 AM

End Date

6-2-2026 11:30 AM

Recommended Citation

Bennetone, Ashley, "Leading with Heart: Building Schools Where Every Student Belongs and Thrives" (2026). Southeast Conference on School Climate. 81.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/secsc/2026/2026/81

Creative Commons License

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