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

This session delves into the essence of restorative practices applied to leadership, fostering a supportive and accountable school environment. We'll integrate other best practices for leadership to tailor your leadership approach to various scenarios. Join us to revolutionize your leadership style, promoting a culture of compassion, respect, and continuous improvement in educational settings.

Session Objectives:

• Understand Restorative Leadership Principles: Participants will learn the foundational principles of restorative leadership, including strategies to foster a culture of accountability, empathy, and respect within school environments.
• Develop Effective Leadership Skills: Gain practical skills to apply restorative leadership techniques in daily interactions and decision-making processes to effectively manage teams and resolve conflicts.
• Enhance School Culture and Climate: Explore methods to implement restorative practices that promote a positive school culture, improve student behavior, and increase educational outcomes through compassionate leadership.

In this session, participants will explore the importance of wellbeing and belonging to promote student success in school and life. Additionally, participants will learn about the Landscape of Wellbeing and Belonging, a new virtual hub hosted by the Colorado Department of Education, that aims to blend guidance, resources, systems, and best practices to improve outcomes for students, staff, and families across all PK-12 schools in Colorado. We will explore the five features of wellbeing and belonging: safe and welcoming school environments; strong and trusting relationships; support for health and wellbeing; social, emotional, and behavioral competencies; and engaging learning practices.

Session Objectives:

1. Understand how the promotion of wellbeing and belonging helps to ensure that all students achieve high academic standards and gain skills needed to thrive in school and life.
2. Describe the five features of wellbeing and belonging and their alignment with COMTSS, the Colorado Professional Standards, and other frameworks used in school systems throughout Colorado.
3. Identify ways to integrate the five features of wellbeing and belonging into your work so that all students may thrive in school and life.

Participants will be introduced to the concept of Educational Journey Mapping as a student and family driven assessment protocol that can build relationships and identify critical barriers to educational success that can be addressed directly at school or through wrap-around services. Having been piloted through a CO Attorney General Office Education and Innovation Grant with justice-engaged students, educational journey mapping is being expanded to additional school settings to identify and address root causes of chronic absenteeism. Join the workshop to test out the methodology yourself and consider how to develop a tool and a process that speaks to attendance barriers in your school or district.

Session Objectives:

Participants will:
1) Leave with an understanding of educational journey mapping as an evidence-based practice to address chronic absenteeism,
2) Possess a greater understanding of student and family perspectives related to common elements and barriers in the educational trajectory of their children,
3) Be prepared to apply your learning to increase student and family belonging.

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

The training will explore the fundamentals of preventing school violence by emphasizing the creation of systems and structures essential for positive school environments. Participants will engage in a collaborative session to identify, integrate, and align evidence-based school violence prevention strategies (e.g., inclusive discipline practices, bullying prevention, proactive social-emotional and positive behavioral supports).

Session Objectives:

1. Explore elements of school safety plans in Colorado and how they connect to school climate improvement.
2. Describe school violence prevention and corresponding evidence-based practices.
3. Consider the contextual variables as well as the systems and structures necessary to effectively integrate and align school safety efforts.

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.