Healing Centered

From a Nation of Risk to a Nation of Hope

June 30, 2025

This report explores how the promotion of social, emotional, and academic learning is not a shifting educational fad; it is the substance of education itself. A solid body of scientific evidence confirms that learning has social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions that are inextricably linked. It is not a distraction from the “real work” of math and English instruction; it is how instruction can succeed. And it is not another reason for political polarization. It brings together a traditionally conservative emphasis on local control and on the character of all students, and a historically progressive emphasis on the creative and challenging art of teaching and the social and emotional needs of all students, especially those who have experienced the greatest challenges. Based on conversations with hundreds of people across the nation over the past two years, including students and their families, the report’s recommendations describe strategies that can help local communities address young people’s comprehensive development, including illustrative examples from the field.

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Building a Culture of Joyful Learning

June 30, 2025

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.

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Healing Centered Framework

June 30, 2025

This framework is designed to articulate what it will require to be a school district that centers healing and wellness in its work. The information aims to clarify what being “healing-centered” looks and feels like for the different members of the CPS community in different roles. It also outlines five different components of a healing-centered district that apply, in unique ways, to each stakeholder.

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Center of Wellness in Schools: Case Example

June 30, 2025

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

June 30, 2025

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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Cultivating Relationships in Secondary Schools

June 30, 2025

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.

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Recognizing Healing-Centered Community Practices as a Complement to Trauma-Informed Interventions and Services

June 30, 2025

This brief from the Praxis Project showcases the importance of addressing community trauma through identifying and making space for healing-centered practices that communities have evolved over time, acknowledging and understanding the roots of trauma, and addressing the persistent, structural causes of trauma. It describes how trauma shows up in our communities and institutions, how it can be addressed through community- centered healing, and the role that trusted partners can take in supporting community healing. Download a free copy of the brief from this link.

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

June 30, 2025

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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Reducing Barriers to Family Engagement

June 30, 2025

This toolkit 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.

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Building a Culture of Care: Section 3 of Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented Schools Toolkit

June 30, 2025

Section 3 of Trauma-Informed, Resilience-Oriented Schools Toolkit. 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.

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