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

Using the PERMA model from the Center for Rural School Health & Education to define wellbeing as Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment, we will look deeper into the ways wellbeing can be supported throughout Rural Communities as it relates to staff, families, and student experiences.

Session Objectives:

• Connect with other rural districts to provide ongoing support
• Examine and review supportive structures of building relationships in your rural community
• Discover new ways empower students in their own wellbeing

In this session, participants will learn how to integrate the latest in neuroscience research from Dr. Lori Desautels’ into their school counseling program. Participants will engage in different techniques that can help shift the energy in their classrooms and counseling sessions, as well as walking away with a list of over 100 three to five minute activities. This session will also describe how the Cripple Creek Victor School District utilizes their district level neuroscience educator, and the grants surrounding that position. This session will have a presentation piece as well as hands-on activities to get participants engaged with neuroscience.

Session Objectives:

1. Objective One: Participants will have an understanding of their own brain and nervous system states.
2. Objective Two: Participants will walk away with neuroscience strategies and mindfulness strategies to implement immediately.
3. Objective Three: Participants will understand the importance of coregulation, and strategies around coregulation.

Regional Collaborative Conversations, Family Resource Centers, and the community schools strategy are impactful family, school, and community partnership initiatives that are playing a critical role in addressing the needs of Colorado’s most vulnerable youth. This presentation will provide an overview of multiple entry-points to serving your most vulnerable populations and ways that the Colorado Department of Education can support local implementation. This session will highlight different approaches to effective family engagement across Colorado and participants will identify strategies that are transferable to their local context and the unique populations that they serve.

Session Objectives:

• Learn about the Colorado Department of Education’s work supporting Regional Collaborative Conversations and Transformational Partnerships, Family Resource Centers, and community schools at the local level.
• Consider elements of family, school, and community partnership success stories of addressing the needs of the most vulnerable youth and families in areas of Colorado with high concentrations of poverty and how it might look in your community.
• Discuss how to support the community. family, school, and community partnership initiatives in your community and identify opportunities for growth.

Through an Attorney General’s Justice Innovation Grant, case management was undertaken for 20 justice-engaged youth to support school re-entry and success. With only 20% of adjudicated youth earning a diploma nationwide, the support team assisted stakeholders in moving students toward graduation. Participants will be introduced to the findings from this process that impacted the content and passage of HB24-1216 and understand how those provisions will impact their school or district going forward. Bill provisions can increase belonging for justice-engaged students and their families when implemented in a way that supports educational success.

Session Objectives:

1) Leave with an understanding of how HB24-1216 will impact your school or district.
2) Embrace greater understanding from student and family perspectives of common elements and barriers in the educational trajectory of justice engaged youth,
3) Gain experience analyzing an educational journey map completed by a student and their family member and working collaboratively to identify common themes and experiences that could be better addressed through a school commitment to ensuring belonging.