Staff Well-being

Promoting Mental Health & Well-Being in Schools: An Action Guide for School and District Leaders: Getting Started

Check out the companion “Getting Started” guide to help with your action planning, designed for school administrators in kindergarten through 12th grade schools (K-12), including principals and leaders of school-based student support teams, to identify evidence-based strategies, approaches, and practices that can positively influence students’ mental health.

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Promoting Mental Health & Well-Being in Schools: An Action Guide for School and District Leaders

This action guide was designed for school administrators in kindergarten through 12th grade schools (K-12), including principals and leaders of school-based student support teams, to identify evidence-based strategies, approaches, and practices that can positively influence students’ mental health.

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Collective Care Planning Worksheet

To create a culture of support, connection, and collective care among teachers and administrators that fosters overall well-being, reduces burnout, and enhances resilience within the school community. This worksheet helps schools plan for caring for teachers’ and staff well-being with actionable steps and accountability.

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How to Promote Collective Staff Well-being

By understanding the warning signs of burnout, promoting collaboration and collective efficacy, and upholding a work culture that destigmatizes teacher health challenges, districts can promote a positive school climate and increase staff retention. This article describes how to identify teacher burnout and promote collective school staff well-being to increase professional retention and student achievement.

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Center of Wellness in Schools: Case Example

This school district is transforming schools into centers of wellness by placing mental health teams in every school in the county. No longer do students need to be in crisis to receive the mental health supports they need. This approach acknowledges that everyone can benefit from mental health support and emphasizes the importance of accessing these services before a crisis occurs.

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Leaning In and Leading Out to Renew: Navigating Lived Polycrisis School Leadership

This guidebook comes out of 10 interviews with school leaders from Arizona, Southern California, and Northern California. Interviewees, from mental health counselors to HR directors to state leads of suicide prevention. The guide is divided into two parts: Part One “Leaning In: The Gifts and Challenges that Lived-Polycrisis School Leadership Evokes; and Part Two “Leading Out: Practices for Navigating Toward Recovery & Renewal, which offers guidance for school crisis leadership beyond immediate crisis response, through recovery, and toward renewal.

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The Importance of Teaching and Learning Conditions on Teacher Retention and School Performance

This brief draws on a study of teacher working conditions and their relationship to teacher retention and school performance in North Carolina. It is part of a series of studies conducted by the Learning Policy Institute—
in collaboration with WestEd and the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University—as part of an action plan developed to inform ongoing efforts to ensure compliance with the North Carolina Supreme Court’s decision in Leandro v. the State of North Carolina. That case affirmed the state’s constitutional responsibility to provide
every student an equal opportunity for a sound basic education, including access to qualified teachers and administrators. Requested by the court in conjunction with both plaintiffs and defendants, the action plan aims to
identify root causes of current inequalities and evidence-based solutions to meet the constitutional standard.

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Key Practices for Community Schools Transformation

The six key practices for school transformation are illustrated on this infographic from the Community Schools Forward Framework, informed by both research and practice. The framework shows the integrated nature of the key practices and emphasizes the enabling conditions (i.e., trusting relationships, inclusive decision-making, a shared vision, and actionable data) and supportive infrastructure that must be in place for effective implementation.

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You Can’t Pour from an Empty Cup

Taking care of yourself is vital. It can be challenging to prioritize time for yourself when there are so many other people and things to take care of in life. But focusing on others, whether it’s family, students or friends, is difficult if you haven’t already taken care of your needs. We also need to call out the need for collective or community care, which is communal responsibility of the group rather than the lone task of an individual. By the end of this course, participants will be able to: understand the definitions of commonly used terms; increase knowledge about the ABCs of self-care; learn about collective care and healing-centered environments; complete your Action Plan with your self-care information.

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Developing Teacher Resilience & Resilient School Cultures

Teacher resilience in a pandemic is a timely topic for America’s superintendents. This literature review focuses on teacher resilience and retention, with relevance for building resilient school cultures. The question guiding analysis of studies was, “What factors and processes contribute to teacher resilience and the ability to overcome adversity?” Findings were that individual and contextual factors of resilience impact teachers’ ability to persevere, as well as schools’ capacity to retain novice teachers. Resilience is associated with retention, job satisfaction, and other positive outcomes. Actions for developing teacher resilience and resilient school cultures are identified. K–12 teachers who attend to factors of resilience can better adapt and overcome adversity. School district leaders who encourage teacher resilience can foster resilient school cultures 

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