Category: HOT TOPICS

After a year of pivoting, it may well be time for a stretch. Whatever instructional calisthenics educators encounter in 2021, flexibility will be key. As districts hasten to complete learning acceleration plans to secure Assembly Bill 86 or American Rescue Plan funding, it is important to remember the role that intentional planning has in ensuring inclusion for the success of all students. The California Coalition for Inclusive Literacy (CCIL), led by Universal Design for Learning experts at CAST, supports districts at a time when “the myth of average” will not be more apparent.

As students return to school sites, they may come having experienced trauma, loss, triumph, growth, or all of the above. CCIL, a partnership between the California Department of Education (CDE), CCEE, and five county offices of education, provides professional learning to help districts and educators anticipate learner variability and proactively design instruction to minimize barriers. This three-year initiative, funded by the Special Education Educator Workforce Investment Grant, focuses on practical  implementation of UDL to maximize choice and provide multiple means of access to content for students during instruction.

Through a tiered service model of universal, targeted, and intensive technical assistance, CCIL fosters inclusive educational and literacy practices in both general and special educational settings. 

Universal Supports: CCIL’s universal supports ensure that educators across California can acquire the essential knowledge to provide access to grade-level content by supporting literacy within general education settings. Resources such as the Learning Designed instructional platform, free webinars, podcasts, graphic organizers, and lesson planning templates will all increase the capacity of your teachers and paraprofessionals to provide supports for all students, but especially to English learners and students with disabilities.

Targeted Supports: Teams of educators from districts and schools will engage in cycles of professional learning activities throughout the school year, including county-led training days, professional learning communities, and personalized workshops. Deeper work includes collaborative classroom observation protocols, sharing of demonstration lessons, resource creation using Lesson Design Studios, and opportunities to earn credentials through self-paced learning modules.

Intensive Supports: COE/SELPA coaches in five counties will spend three years diving deeply into CAST’s model of universally designed inclusive literacy development. These coaches will learn to facilitate innovative professional learning opportunities that build the internal capacity of COEs to scale and sustain their work across districts and into other counties.

“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”

 – Alexander den Heijer –

AUTHOR

Elise Yerkey,
Implementation Specialist,
CAST

RESOURCES

• California Coalition for Inclusive Literacy (CCIL)
• CAST Website
• Learning Designed

Designing for Literacy Development in the Hybrid Classroom (Webinar Series)

• 4/12: Building Comprehension
• 5/10: Expression & Communication
• 6/14: Reflection & Goal-Setting

With the passage of Assembly Bill 86, school districts will once again feel the pressure to speedily match students’ needs with the appropriate level of intervention and learning supports to accelerate learning. Although the question of how schools will address the large-scale learning acceleration of students is complex, we know that students need to first feel safe and secure to learn. This will require an initial assessment—in an intentional and formative manner—of the personal well-being of not only the students, but also the adults. In this past year, students and adults alike have been “battered by difficult emotions stemming from not only the pandemic, but also the economic recession and ongoing civil rights protests” (Prothero, 2021). Data on student and adult experiences will serve as the ultimate truth teller to help understand where they are and how we can move forward in addressing the necessary protective factors to engage our students academically. 

CCEE invited Dr. Peter Senge, co-founder of the Center for Systems Awareness and author of The Fifth Discipline, to be a part of the Leading Forward 2021 initiative. In his keynote session, Dr. Senge shared a conversation he had with a group of educators about the scar tissue left on our learners and adults after the pandemic.

“They talked about scar tissue. It’s one of the first images that was used. The damage has been done, and healing is actually more important in a way than learning in the traditional sense. Without healing, without recognizing and attending to the deep social, emotional traumas that students have gone through, we can think we’re focusing on learning and we can think we’re making up ground, but we won’t make much.”

As schools prepare to reopen, we must be prepared to address the reengagement of students and what that means in our current context. This begins with building or rebuilding staff-student, staff-staff, student-student, and staff-family relationships, which are fundamental in supporting the social, emotional, and academic needs of students. Consider the following strategies to strengthen these relationships:

Staff-student: Map out relationships so each student is assigned a staff member who develops and maintains a relationship with the student through regular scheduled check-ins. Greet students at the door, organize fishbowl discussions, and design activities for students to have fun and show school spirit, focusing on strategies that strengthen relationships and build trust. 

Staff-staff: While resources and attention, appropriately, are front and center in supporting students, less focus is paid to assessing and addressing the mental health of educators who have also struggled to find balance and safety during the pandemic. Conscious efforts should be made to leverage staff-staff relationships by promoting relationship-building and peer-to-peer support through “wellness committees,” mentors, professional counselors, social workers, school psychologists, or other trained professionals.

Student-student: Facilitate the process of creating a shared agreement for classroom norms, set the expectation that every voice matters, and provide opportunities for students to develop individual relationships and build a class community (e.g., “mix and mingle” activities, “glows and grows,” team projects) – virtually and face-to-face (as deemed safe).

Staff-family: Staff-family relationships have probably never been more important. Using culturally and linguistically responsive approaches, regularly communicate with families to schedule individual check-ins and distribute climate and culture surveys. Listen to what worked and didn’t work for them during the pandemic and use these opportunities to understand the needs of their children. Additional trauma-informed trainings or resources can support families in approaching difficult conversations with their children to help them cope with changes and prepare for the transition back to school.

As schools bring more students back for in-person instruction, we must create psychologically safe learning environments to accelerate learning, while advancing equity for our vulnerable student groups. The March edition of the CCEE newsletter will feature tools, strategies, and resources focused on reengaging students and building relationships, to ensure we are addressing the whole child. 

AUTHOR

Tom Armelino, CCEE Executive Director

Resources To Support Reengagement

Engaging Students During the Pandemic and Beyond (San Diego COE)

Refocus on the SEL Roadmap: Actions for a Successful Second Semester (CASEL)

School Reentry Considerations (NASP and ASCA)

Multi-Tiered SEL and Mental Health in Distance + Blended Learning (Orange CDE)

Student Well-being with CCEE Executive Director Tom Armelino (Leading Forward Podcast, Ep. 3)

Creating Safe and Supportive Classrooms

As we prepare to welcome students back to campus, one thing is abundantly clear – status quo will never be the same. Returning students will need unprecedented access to mental health supports to overcome trauma stemming from the COVID-19 crisis, social injustice, wildfires, and a multitude of other experiences. Schools must prioritize the psychological safety of all students, families, and educators as never before. Left untreated, trauma, anxiety, and depression will impair students’ ability to engage in learning, leading to greater academic skills gaps and exponentially increased social-emotional/behavioral needs. 

The research is clear—early intervention yields positive outcomes. Key to unlocking student success are credentialed school-based mental health professionals (school psychologists, counselors, and social workers) who play an integral role in the early identification of mental health issues. These highly trained professionals must be included in each phase of the school reopening plan, as they collaboratively support the social-emotional well-being of students, families, and educators. Within the Multi-Tiered System of Support framework, they implement culturally sensitive, trauma-informed supports for the whole child by: helping teachers embed social-emotional learning into the curriculum; helping students reconnect through back-to-school events, peer buddies, looping, and more; developing and communicating re-entry plans; examining infrastructure to conduct universal screening and informal check-ins with students; and managing a referral system for students at higher risk. Administrators—now is the time to embrace your Pupil Personnel Services (PPS) team as mental health providers. 

AUTHOR

By Jeannine Topalian, Psy.D., LEP#3365, CASP President

RESOURCES

California Association of School Psychologists (CASP) Website

Fostering the Whole Child: A Guide to School-Based Mental Health Professionals

The Critical Role of School-Based Mental Health Professionals