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Learning to Focus on Adult Social and Emotional Learning First in Tulsa: One of Six Case Studies of Schools and Out-of-School-Time Program Partners

September 15, 2022

This case study is one of a series detailing how schools and out-of-school-time (OST) programs in six communities have collaborated to build students' social and emotional skills. The communities are participants in Wallace's Partnerships for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative, which has brought together school districts and their OST partners to develop and implement mutually reinforcing social and emotional learning (SEL) activities and instruction across learning settings.This case study features Whitman Elementary in Tulsa and its OST partner, Youth at Heart. The two collaborated to aid adults in building their own social-emotional skills so they could support social and emotional learning for their students. The idea was to help adults prioritize their own mental health to reduce burnout, effectively model SEL competencies for students, and build strong and healthy relationships with students.This case study finds that by focusing on adult SEL: The effort saw corresponding declines in teacher burnout and turnover. Students experienced consistent SEL resources and best practices.The school and OST staff members noted improvements in students' social and emotional skills as well as the overall school climate.

Strengthening Students’ Social and Emotional Skills: Lessons from Six Case Studies of Schools and Their Out-of-School-Time Program Partners

September 15, 2022

This report presents cross-cutting lessons from a set of case studies detailing how schools and out-of-school-time (OST) programs in six communities have worked together to build students' social and emotional (SEL) skills. The communities are participants in a Wallace initiative that has supported elementary schools and their OST partners in incorporating SEL activities and instruction into both the school and OST parts of the day.For five of the case studies, researchers selected a partnership in each community that has done an exemplary job of addressing one of a series of challenges widely shared by participants in the initiative. In one of the cases, the partnership between the school and its OST programs was in an early stage of development, so the researchers focused on what took place during the school day.The case studies explore:developing a brand-new school-OST partnership focusing on SEL (Boston),developing an effective SEL committee that includes a school and OST partner (Dallas),finding and jointly prioritizing time for SEL in the school and afterschool schedules (Denver),engaging teachers, staff members and parents in SEL (Palm Beach County, Fla.),incorporating equity into SEL (Tacoma), andfocusing on adult SEL first (Tulsa). The report summarizes the case studies and discusses nine factors that facilitated progress in carrying out SEL programs and practices, each of which was common to at least two of the cases:Committed school/OST program leaders were the foundation on which SEL work was built.SEL committees guided and supported implementation.Prioritizing time for SEL in school and OST schedules was important to making implementation routine.Starting the efforts by building adults' social and emotional skills proved central.Short SEL rituals were often the first and most widely adopted strategy, setting the stage for more extended SEL instruction.Establishing trusting relationships enhanced the collaboration on SEL in school-OST program partnerships.Formal, written SEL resources facilitated a consistent approach within and across settings.Distributing "ownership" of SEL across staff members and students increased people's buy-in to the effort and its sustainability.Experience with SEL before the pandemic helped schools and OST programs adapt to COVID-19 disruptions.

Addressing the Needs of Vulnerable Communities During COVID-19: Insights from Tulsa’s COVID-19 Community Impact Survey

December 9, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionally affected vulnerable communities across the United States, including racial and ethnic minorities and immigrant groups. Many face severe challenges in meeting the essential needs of their families and handling mental health issues, both of which have been exacerbated by the prolonged stress and isolation during the pandemic.To better support these vulnerable communities and to ensure that Tulsa's emergency services provide equitable access to all of its residents, New American Economy (NAE) worked with the City of Tulsa and local community organizations to survey Tulsans about their experiences during the pandemic. The COVID-19 Community Impact Survey conducted targeted outreach between February and May of 2021 to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) and immigrant communities in Tulsa about the essential needs of their families; the impact of COVID-19 on their wellbeing; and the help they received from local organizations.

Black Funding Denied: Community Foundation Support for Black Communities

August 1, 2020

In light of the national uprising sparked by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor (and building on other recent tragic movement moments going back to the 2014 murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri), NCRP is analyzing grantmaking by community foundations across the country to find out exactly how much they are – or are not – investing in Black communities.We started by looking at the latest available grantmaking data (2016-2018) of 25 community foundations (CFs) – from Los Angeles to New Orleans to New York City to St. Paul. These foundations represent a cross section of some of the country's largest community foundations as well as foundations in communities where NCRP has Black-led nonprofit allies.

The Power of Principal Supervisors: How Two Districts are Remaking an Old Role

May 4, 2016

Principals have a difficult job. It requires them to be instructional leaders, managers and mentors, all with the goal of helping every student succeed.How can school districts provide principals the support they need to excel in this challenging position? Two knowledge products—A Story From the Field and a WNET-produced video, School Leadership in Action: Principal Supervisors—explore how some school districts are responding to that question by remaking the job of the principal's supervisor.The idea—to shape a job focused squarely on helping principals improve instruction—represents a dramatic break with the conventional notion of the principal supervisor as a bureaucratic enforcer of principal compliance with regulations.The article and video profile efforts in two districts, Tulsa and Washington, D.C., that have rethought the supervisor's job, in part by giving supervisors fewer schools to oversee. The result is that supervisors now are fixtures in Tulsa and D.C. schools, doing things like classroom walkthroughs to observe what's working and what isn't—then sitting down with principals to discuss solutions. "I can't imagine doing this job without her," one novice D.C. principal says of her supervisor, who is helping her face such challenges as closing an achievement gap between African-American and white students.Changing the supervisor's job is no easy task. In addition to finding funding for the work—assigning each supervisor fewer schools means increasing the number of supervisors—district leaders face initial wariness from both principals and central office staff members. Supervisors, for their part, don't necessarily step into the job fully prepared to tackle it; so each district provides the supervisors with a considerable amount of professional development. Even with that, supervisors need to figure out how to reconcile two seemingly contradictory roles: developing a trusting relationship with principals while also being their judges in job performance evaluations.Both Tulsa and Washington, D.C., school districts receive Wallace support as part of the foundation's Principal Supervisor Initiative, which seeks to help participating districts and generate lessons for the broader field.

Shuttered Public Schools: The Struggle to Bring Old Buildings New Life

February 11, 2013

Large-scale public school closures have become a fact of life in many American cities, and that trend is not likely to stop now. This report looks at what happens to the buildings themselves, studying the experiences of Philadelphia and 11 other cities that have decommissioned large numbers of schools in recent years: Atlanta, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Mo., Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Tulsa and Washington.

School-Based Mentoring: A First Look Into Its Potential

September 30, 1999

School-based mentoring is one of the most promising of several new mentoring approaches. This study explores some of the strengths, challenges and potential contributions of this approach by describing two well-run school-based programs. It describes characteristics of the mentors and youth involved, program practices and potential benefits to youth, and discusses implications for practitioners and directions for future research. Findings suggest that well-run school-based mentoring programs are likely to be a powerful intervention for many disadvantaged youth.