2024 CDE Fall Conference: Creating a Landscape of Wellbeing and Belonging

Youth are reporting elevated mental health concerns, drug and alcohol use, risky sexual behavior, and lack of connection to peers and adults. This is particularly true for youth who identify as LGBTQ+, minority, and/or from poverty. This session will present correlational research between these concepts through youth-reported data. We will discuss how positive youth development (PYD) and social connections can be mitigating factors that promote youth resilience. Youth from a rural, high-poverty, primarily Latinx community will present about their experiences through COVID-19 and how a wrap-around PYD approach has supported their ability to grow and learn through the challenges of the last few years. We will outline how we engaged youth and families to deliver programming that addressed physical, emotional/mental, social, cultural, and academic wellness. We will also present how experiential career learning has helped youth develop positive visions for the future.-

Session Objectives:

• After viewing this presentation, participants will be able to explain the relationship between risky youth behavior, mental health concerns, a sense of belonging, and youth resilience.
• After viewing this presentation, participants will be able to apply a socio-ecological approach to positive youth development.
• After viewing this presentation, participants will be able to identify wrap-around practices that support youth resilience.

When Summit County, Colorado was facing a community crisis that was driving its workforce away, Theatre SilCo launched the Vivo program in order to support local families. This is a unique, no cost program that currently supports over 100 families through dual language theater education. The answer to getting it off the ground? A stellar collaborative team and forming viable and sustainable partnerships. During this session, Chris and Sara will walk you through how this initiative came about, how the team found the necessary funding to start and sustain it, and the significant impact on its community.

Session Objectives:

We hope our peers will gain some tools to make a community impact through what we know how to do: theatre!Theatre SilCo would like to serve as a resource to other non-profits who are struggling to or wondering how to want to make a local impact and serve a community through their art form.

This presentation will focus on the importance of developing, maintaining, and strengthening relationships with key community partners, specifically in regards to the different aspects of school safety. Participants will hear how a partnership between a a small, urban school district and a school-based community health clinic was created and is maintained to support the students and families within this community, as well as partner with the schools to create a multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted approach to meeting the student's needs and creating a network around students who are more at-risk in regards to safety. Challenges, solutions, and lessons-learned will be shared, as well as an overview of logistics and key-considerations for the planning phases of future partnerships.

Session Objectives:

• High-leverage opportunities and important partnerships
• Best practices and legal considerations for effective collaboration
• Important considerations during the planning and implementation phase

Flying Pig Farm (FPF) provides a community learning space in which people can reclaim their relationship with food and land. We take a multi-faceted, community-based approach to teaching young people a sense of belonging to their community, their environment, and soil-based food cultivation. Through our partnership with MSSD14, we've been able to serve over 1200 students a year with academically integrated farm activities.

Session Objectives:

1. Provide a working model for community collaboration
2. Demonstrate the success and joy of land-based learning
3. Coach participants on how to integrate our methods at their schools

Are you frustrated with the lack of buy-in or positive momentum with your teams or initiatives? This session will focus on how building high quality, humanistic, team-driven shared leadership leads to the co-creation of effective systems and increased motivation. We will explore how to engage a diverse team of people, meet them where they are at, and move towards a common goal. In this session, you will learn how to use authentic collaboration and constant reflection to create desired outcomes, develop collective leadership capacity, inspire shared ownership, and increase your ability to address conflicts or challenges as a unified team.

Session Objectives:

• Participants will understand foundational elements of authentic collaboration to increase productive co-creation
• Participants will learn how to build collective efficacy, empowering teams to overcome barriers and challenges
• Participants will explore how emphasizing humanistic relationships increases buy-in, motivation, and productivity

This engaging session will help participants unlock the potential of school-based out-of-school time (OST) programming to boost wellness and belonging among students and staff, enhancing the culture and connectedness of the school community. We will delve into how OST programs support each of the 5 features of the Landscape of Wellbeing and demonstrate how a focus on quality OST programming can positively impact students, families and staff within a school.

Session Objectives:

• Demonstrate the benefits of out of school time programming related to wellbeing and belonging for students, families and school staff
• Identify how OST programs can be leveraged to enhance each of the 5 features of the Landscape of Wellbeing and Belonging
• Give participants tangible next steps to building a culture of OST programming designed to enhance wellness at their school