We are honored to mention that Santa Cruz Gardens Principal Carlo Albano was selected as a California Spotlight Transformative Leader by CalHope, and invited to speak on their monthly panel that is attended statewide.
“I am honored to be selected as a Spotlight Transformative Leader by CalHope.” says Principal Albano. “In supporting the work of Counselor Sue Robinson and Speech Language Pathologist Julianne Wolf, I am proud to say we are truly building capacity for student engagement, agency, and leadership in the school culture of wellness and Social Emotional Learning skills.”
The most important way the staff have done this has been involving student leadership and including student ownership and engagement as a core component of the work.
In the Fall and Spring of the 2023- 2024 school year, the upper grade students participated in the Kelvin Pulse Survey that measured their sense of belonging and their social emotional well-being at school.
The Student Leadership team found that the two key areas they felt most deeply about were a need for student skills for coping with tough emotions, and making sure that teachers are spending time to make sure that their students have what they need and are accessing all content.
They spent the next month working with Counselor Sue to step into all SCG classrooms and build in extra time to go over coping skills such as breathing exercises, talking to peers and staff, and using RULER tools like the Mood Meter. Along with emotional awareness and regulation techniques, student self-advocacy practices were taught in general classrooms by student leadership.
The data analysis, student agency, and action steps facilitated by SCG staff and students have been widely acclaimed and recognized as top tier transformative SEL in practice by leading organizations in the field such as CalHOPE . SCG has been asked to submit a proposal to present at CalHOPE’s state symposium in May. Stay Tuned!
Suzanne Denham, Social Emotional Academic Development (SEAD) Coach of the Santa Cruz County office of Education mentions, “Not only was Carlo the featured speaker at the CalHOPE Statewide CoP this week, describing the systemic SEL accomplishments at SCG, Isaac McGilvray's video is being highlighted in the Schools Integrated Behavioral Health Initiative this month. Santa Cruz Gardens is becoming even more widely known!”
At SCG Elementary, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to work with CalHOPE as a Focal Site to explicitly provide learning opportunities for these skills and integrate the practices into the school culture, as well as academic content. See SCG Student, Isaac McGilvray’s video, A Time To Grow that features Student Leadership and student work!
More on the CalHOPE Partnership:
CalHOPE Student Support provides training to teachers and school staff, utilizing existing educational Communities of Practice to effectively provide counseling through social-emotional learning (SEL) environments. This youth-centered initiative enables California’s schools to support proactive and early intervention and to collectively respond to the social, emotional and mental health needs of students, families and educators.
Supported by strong partnerships and leveraging California’s existing support network, leaders from all 58 County Offices of Education (COEs) are participating in statewide SEL Communities of Practice, which aim to build leadership to strengthen SEL in schools across the state.
Student Social Emotional Intelligence
We now know the science (neuroscience) behind the fact that students need to feel safe, seen, and included in order to learn. We are living in an era of understanding that part of education is to support students to develop a positive identity, learn coping strategies to manage stress and disappointment so that they can set and attain goals, foster healthy relationships and effective communication skills, along with the ability to collaborate with others and make caring and constructive decisions, with a sense of curiosity.
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