The purpose of this document is to provide positive action items that students can take to make their schools and communities healthier places and to challenge meanness and cruelty. It is presented as a list of ideas. While none of these initiatives have been evaluated, they are grounded in a research-driven understanding of interventions, practices, and actions that can be helpful in improving school culture.

Specific Actions outlined in more detail below include:

1. Co-create a Culture-Change Project

2. Establish a Take Back Our School Honor Code

3. Conduct a School Culture Assessment Survey

4. Develop a Surface-the-Wisdom Survey

5. Develop an Action Plan for student response to tragic or violent incidents

6. Advocate for Social-emotional Learning

7. Get involved in Cultural Change at your district’s middle school(s) [For high school students]

8. Create a “Friend Zone”

9. Celebrate “Random Acts of Kindness” (or Respect)

10. Get Student Government involved in Culture Change

11. Develop a Wisdom-Gathering Video Project

12. Dare to be different

February 23, 2012 Anne Collier, Susan Swearer, Mia Doces, and Lisa Jones* The Kinder & Braver World Project: Research Series (danah boyd and John Palfrey, editors) Brought to you by the Born This Way Foundation & the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and supported by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation *