December 17, 2023
Throughout the year, WestEd webinars present opportunities to hear from experts on critical issues, challenges, and solutions related to education, health, and justice.
The webinars featured in this Spotlight are designed to support state, district, and school leaders in supporting the whole child, whole person, and whole community.
They cover such topics as
- ensuring that students are present and engaged in school
- creating physically safe school environments
- preventing bullying and harassment
- promoting culturally responsive systems
Joyful Learning for Students and Educators
In the first half of the year, WestEd’s Joyful Schooling team facilitated a comprehensive series of webinars aimed at providing support for English language development, promoting inclusivity in English education, and encouraging joyful literacy in early grades.
View the first three webinars below.
Session 1: Culturally Sustaining English Language Development in Grades 6–12
Session 2: Critical Race English Education
Session 3: Joyful Literacy in the Early Grades
Equity-Driven Strategies for Addressing Chronic Absence
Chronic absence—which includes absences that are excused, unexcused, or due to suspensions—is a leading indicator of inequity. When chronic absence occurs, it is a sign of challenges inside and outside schools (e.g., unstable housing, unreliable transportation, historical trauma, disengaging educational experiences, bullying) that not only cause absences but also affect children’s ability to learn overall if they are left unaddressed.
This year, the Western Educational Equity Assistance Center at WestEd hosted a webinar series to support educators with evidence-based strategies to address chronic absenteeism.
View the first three webinars.
Session 1: Data to Identify Patterns of Inequity
Session 2: Organizing a District Team to Address Chronic Absenteeism
Session 3: Data-Driven School Attendance Team
Implementing Behavioral Threat Assessment
Although behavioral threat assessment (BTA) has been recommended as a strategy to prevent violence and improve school safety since the late 1990s, its use has surged in recent years, propelled by unfortunate tragedies in schools. This has led to federal funding and legislation across many states to support the implementation of BTA.
This archived webinar, presented by the WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center, focuses on the most pressing operational challenges associated with developing, implementing, and maintaining an evidence-based BTA program within K-12 schools.
Legal Rights and Responsibilities: Protecting Students From Bullying and Discrimination
Given the increase in bullying behavior in schools and its devastating impacts on students, educators must learn about the roles and responsibilities of school districts to prevent these incidents. We must explore and understand a systemwide approach to combating bullying and keeping our students safe. Most of the 50 states have anti-bullying laws in effect.
This webinar focuses on the rights and responsibilities of a school district to address bullying and provides a practical application of systems and structures that address bullying from a field perspective.
Centering Community Wisdom and Collective Action for Systems Change
Drawing on community organizing, liberatory design, and participatory methods, Participatory Systems Change for Equity is an approach to systems transformation that centers the expertise of those most impacted by child-, youth-, and family-serving systems to make sense of and interrupt inequitable system conditions.
This virtual learning session explores the Participatory Systems Change for Equity framework and how this framework can help your school, district, county, state, or other community-serving agency reimagine how it transforms systems in partnership with communities to promote equity, opportunity, and well-being.
