November 25, 2020 | Volume 1, Number 6

Family and Student Engagement

Featured Article Family and Student Voice: Holding Space and Time for All Voices News You Can Use Family and Parent Voice: It Starts with Listening  We Do it Together: Functional and Dysfunctional Family Coping Featured C-TLC Fellow: Rachel Santa Learn more Events, Resources and Program Updates What's happening this month Access C-TLC Resources Helping Educators Address and Reduce Trauma (HEART) Committee Learn more about the Childhood-Trauma Learning Collaborative Become a C-TLC Member Membership is open to individual educators, schools, agencies, and nonprofit educational institutions in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.  Editor's Corner Martha Staeheli, PhD C-TLC Director We have managed to navigate the considerable transition back to school in the fall and now face the second wave of restrictions to combat the rising numbers of COVID-19 cases. In talking to educators around New England over the last several months, we know that you feel exhausted as you manage your grief and stress, tend to your own caregiving responsibilities, and continue to work hard to comfort, educate, and remain connected to each member of the school community. Students and their families are complicated even in the best of times, struggling with a multitude of challenges. However, families can also be sources of partnership, joy, expertise, optimism, and strength. This year, we have new opportunities to connect to our students and their parents as partners and colleagues in our work. In this issue, we offer perspectives on including student and family voice in educational practice, creating ways to reach out and support one another, reminding us to provide invitations to students and families to collaborate and work together. We hope that you, too, find ways to compassionately connect to your support systems, your loved ones, and yourselves. Thank you for all that you do. Best wishes for health and joy.

Featured Article: Family and Student Voice: Holding Space and Time for All Voices By Dana Asby, CEI Director of Innovation & Research Support COVID-19 has brought educators and families together in ways we couldn’t have imagined a year ago. Many parents are serving as teachers while their children are doing distance or hybrid learning. Educators are more directly involved in supporting social emotional learning, ensuring the physical safety of students, and responding to gaps in basic needs than they have been in the past. While not every community, family, or student is being served equally and not every family-school relationship has been enhanced, we have seen that when schools take the time to ask families and students directly what they need, they are better able to meet those needs. READ MORE

News You Can Use

Family and Parent Voice: It Starts with Listening By Jackson Sims, CEI Intern and Dana Asby, CEI Director of Innovation & Research Support Students who pass through the doors of every school have thoughts, feelings, and experiences that distinguish them from their peers. Their families are also unique, with their own history in education playing a role in their child’s perspective of school. With such a wide variety of expectations, goals, and concerns involved in any given school environment, it is important that all members of the community both feel heard and are heard.  A diverse community is one of many factors that can make a school stronger, but it can also lead to a number of challenges that limit communication between students, parents, and educators. Read more We Do it Together: Functional and Dysfunctional Family Coping By Jackson Sims, CEI Intern It’s no secret that families across the country are facing many new challenges. Between the effects of COVID-19, concerns about employment and finances, and adapting to the increased time and space we share at home, there’s a lot to be stressed about. It’s times like these where family coping strategies can be utilized to their greatest potential. These coping methods can provide greatly needed stability and security in the home. That being said, it’s important to be aware of what practices might keep us from those goals, whether we do so intentionally or otherwise. Read more

Featured Fellow: Rhode Island’s Cumberland School Department’s Director of Special Services Rachel Santa Brings Compassionate School Mental Health to Her District By Dana Asby, CEI Director of Innovation & Research Support Rachel Santa has had a varied career in mental health and education in Colorado and Rhode Island, from working as a music therapist and then assistant director of a residential facility to creating an alternative high school program; working with students with emotional, behavioral, and learning difficulties in North Kingstown, RI; and now serving as the Director of Special Services in Rhode Island’s Cumberland School Department. Her varied past experiences allow her to come into the role of administrator with a different perspective—one that honors and furthers the voices of students and their families. Throughout her years of providing mental health and special education services, she has been able to better meet these needs by listening to what students and their families need with compassion.   READ MORE

Learn more about the amazing work our Fellows have been doing through the Childhood-Trauma Learning Collaborative and in their school communities in our 2019-2020 Survey of C-TLC Fellows.

Events and Resources Access and share C-TLC resources: Download our toolkit: Back to School After COVID-19: Supporting Staff and Student Mental Health Access a recording of The Future of Education: Equity, Inclusion, and Racial Justice webinar. Stay posted to our Events page for updates and announcements. To view other archived webinars, subscribe to CEI’s YouTube channel.

Helping Educators Address and Reduce Trauma The Helping Educators Address and Reduce Trauma (HEART) Committee is a New England regional effort designed to help school communities and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) collaborate intentionally and concretely around best practices that enhance and improve youth mental health supports. This regional initiative is a collaboration with: The SAMHSA Region 1 Office The Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) Office of Regional Operations (Region 1), The New England MHTTC, and New England FQHCs and school community stakeholders. Stay posted for regular updates on our work!

Our goal is to map, document, and analyze processes, resources, and strategies that advance youth mental health supports by establishing and strengthening collaborations between schools/districts and community health centers.

No school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children's best interests. ~Dorothy H. Cohen This issue of our newsletter marks the first since the retirement of Dr. Christine Mason, the former Director of the C-TLC and the Executive Director of the Center for Educational Improvement. We want to thank her for her profound contribution to our work over the last two years (which will continue in a new form) and her leadership and expertise in steering the C-TLC. She has led this project with creativity, intelligence, and energy, guided by her vision for a future of education and school mental health that compassionately supports all students and educators We are excited to see where this next chapter takes her and wish her a well-deserved and very happy retirement from the C-TLC as she takes CEI's work further!

The C-TLC is funded by the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and is part of the New England Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (New England MHTTC) Network.

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