CARE Playlist Informing

Culturally Responsive Anti-racist Equitable (CARE) - InFORMING

Professional Development > Learning Paths > School Mental Health Readiness

In a culturally responsive school or district, students’, families’, and educators’ cultures are included in all aspects of supports and services that promote well-being and mental health. Anti-racist policies and practices promote equity and oppose racism and other forms of oppression. Equitable schools and districts provide the climate and resources that enable all students and educators to perform at their highest level. Culturally responsive, anti-racist and equitable (CARE) schools and districts embrace cultural differences and assets; use cultural knowledge to promote wellness and academic success; mediate power imbalances based on cultural identities; and work to dismantle systems of injustice.

The resources below focus on building a positive school climate and are recommended for schools or districts that have started to do some exploration in this area and wondering what to do next. You are ready for the “informing” stage of the CARE Pillar if….

This assessment from the National Center of School Mental Health is recommended for all stages of readiness in this work. This assessment contains five domains: 1) Teaming and Collaboration; 2) School Climate; 3) School Discipline; 4) Curricula and Teaching; and 5) Professional Development. Each indicator includes a few ways schools or districts may demonstrate success in each area. The examples included in the assessment are not exhaustive, but illustrative, and ratings in each domain can be used as a starting place for quality improvement initiatives. This assessment tool provides suggestions for action planning that can be tailored to meet your school’s needs. A team approach with broad and diverse participation in this process ensures meaningful assessment, successful planning, and implementation.

Info on how and where to access assessment

These four short courses provide a solid foundation for districts, schools and teams wanting to expand their understanding of the intersection between trauma and racism. The courses are broken down into the three levels of racism described in Dr. Camara Jones’ framework: Institutional, internalized, and personally mediated. Each course provides a deeper dive into the impact of racism on trauma, as well as strategies schools and districts can put into place.

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 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. The action plan aims to identify root causes of current inequalities and evidence-based solutions to meet the constitutional standard.

Leandro_Teacher_Working_Conditions_BRIEF.pdf – Google Drive

This resource comes from W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s work that includes recommended tools and resources for implementing racial equity strategies as part of a human resources function. This resource can be valuable to human resources and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) professionals. It may also be useful to any leader doing internal organizational transformation work in school communities.

HR Toolkit for Racial Equity.pdf – Google Drive

This brief from the Learning Policy Institute highlights lessons learned from New Mexico’s investment in community schools. Drawing on profiles of three sites that received state implementation grants, we find that community schools implementing the key practices at the center of New Mexico’s community schools framework are seeing improvement across a range of indicators, including growth in test scores, increased graduation rates, reduced chronic absence, increased student engagement and connectedness, improved school climate, greater access to mental and physical health care, and stronger family engagement. Key to achieving these outcomes were state investments to support hiring school coordinators and to provide professional development and technical assistance.

New Mexico Community Schools Improving Student Opportunities and Outcomes.pdf – Google Drive

The science of learning and development demonstrates the value of positive relationships for student
success and well-being. This brief describes structures that secondary schools can integrate to cultivate
conditions that enable healthy attachments to grow. Specifically, it highlights structures that can foster
personal teacher–student relationships, including those that create small learning communities, promote
safety and belonging, support culturally sustaining and relevant education, and foster student voice and
agency. In addition, it describes structures that enable relationship-building between and among staff and
families so that relationships can become more fully embedded into a school’s culture and fabric. School
structures can create opportunities for relationships to develop, but those structures are only as powerful
as the interactions within them.

Relationships_Secondary_Schools_BRIEF.pdf – Google Drive

Research shows that students who feel known and valued are more prepared to meaningfully engage in learning. Students who experience a sense of belonging have better self-esteem, higher rates of classroom participation, and higher academic achievement (Korpershoek, 2018). As a result of creating a positive school climate for both students and educators, the elementary school featured in this report had the conditions in place to make rapid academic gains. When educators implemented the instructional improvements described in this case study, student proficiency improved dramatically because children were in the right mindset for learning.

Building-a-Culture-of-Joyful-Learning-at-the-Harvard-Kent-EdVestors-SOM-Case-Study-2020.pdf – Google Drive

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.

Comm_Schools_6_Pillars_INFOGRAPHIC.pdf – Google Drive

A trauma-informed, resilience-oriented school honors the need to prioritize the well-being of all staff. Compassion fatigue and burnout are increasingly prevalent when staff members work daily with students who are impacted by trauma and toxic stress. This reading aims to increase awareness and understanding of compassion fatigue, burnout, and compassion resilience. Learn about how to encourage wellness assessment and seek feedback from staff on resilient culture, implement individual and district-wide adaptations to promote resilience in staff.

Building a culture of faculty and staff compassion resilience.pdf – Google Drive

This is part of Panorama’s Celebrating Resilience webinar programming, which features a panel of experts who explore how districts are adapting family engagement frameworks to today’s context. Decades of research outline a clear need for parental engagement in a child’s education. When families are engaged in school, their children are more likely to succeed. At a more holistic level, many studies support the importance of partnerships among families, schools, and the broader community. Educators and administrators also play a role in making family-school partnerships work. When schools elevate family members as true partners and the experts that they are students benefit significantly.

How Caregivers & Teachers Can Work Together: 5 Family Engagement Ideas

This reading from Panorama outlines ways school districts can understand and address common barriers to engagement with families. It also provides information on the Panorama Family-School Relationships Survey, which uses questions to identify what family members perceive as obstacles to engaging with their child’s school, schools can set goals and improve family-school partnerships in targeted, data-driven ways.

link to reading Update 2022 Reducing-barriers-to-family-engagement-2022 .pdf – Google Drive

link to survey Family-School Relationships Survey.pdf – Google Drive