Reimagining School Safety: A Guide for Schools and Communities
While school safety ideas and practices have evolved over the last several decades, the variety of school safety tools, policies, and degrees of success highlights a need for more conversation about the very concept of safety: what it is (and isn’t), who gets to define it, how it’s achieved, and at what cost.
In shifting how safety is defined so that it is not the absence of violence but the existence of systems and structures that support mutual care, belonging, and interconnection, schools’ policies, practices, and values shift towards creating strong communities and places of collaborative learning.
The purpose of this guide is to support education professionals reimagine and redefine school safety such that safety is not the absence of a negative but rather the existence of positive elements like interconnection, belonging, voice, and agency. Further, working from this paradigm of safety and centering the lived experiences of students and families—especially those who have been kept furthest from institutional power—can be a key component of designing systems that are more equitable and sustainable.
This interactive guide pulls from different frameworks and concepts, including complex adaptive systems, restorative justice, co-designing, and design thinking, to provide educators, school leaders, and district administrators with mindsets, strategies, and grounded examples of what is possible by reimagining school safety.
Teaching College Mathematics With, About, and For Social Justice
Developed by leading experts organized by Carnegie Math Pathways and with support from Strong Start to Finish, Teaching College Mathematics With, About, and For Social Justice provides a framework to understand how mathematics and social justice are intertwined as well as strategies and resources to help college instructors create productive and impactful social justice-focused math learning experiences. Â
Educators can use this guide to help promote equity and inclusion in higher education and prepare students to use their mathematical skills to promote positive change in their communities. It contains helpful guidance on:Â
- Creating an equitable classroom that recognizes different perspectives and helps students build their critical thinkingÂ
- Managing and focusing challenging conversations on the instructional goalsÂ
- Helping students see mathematics as a tool to address real-world issuesÂ
Download the guide to learn more or check out the Carnegie Math Pathways’ webinar recording for a walk through of the elements of the guide.
Strategies and Suggestions for Using the Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement Framework
This guide offers school leaders and leadership teams a supplement to the Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement: A Systems Framework and its related CALL survey system. It was developed to help focus your improvement efforts on evidence-based practices that match your school’s particular needs.
The guide is organized primarily by the Four Domains framework, and its sections follow the structure in which CALL survey results are reported. Each chapter contains brief descriptions of a Four Domains practice, a school-based example, and relevant topics following the order of CALL survey reports. Sections on these topics provide strategies, suggestions, and reflection questions to help guide your school’s efforts toward rapid school turnaround.
More About the Four Domains
The Four Domains framework, developed by WestEd’s Center for School Turnaround & Improvement, was created to assist states, districts, and schools as they pursue systemic efforts to improve students’ educational experiences and outcomes. It identifies critical actions that research and practice suggest can have lasting impacts across all levels of education systems.
The framework is meant to be used in ways that take into account an improvement initiative’s local context and implementation. To help tune their use of the framework, many schools and districts also draw on the related Four Domains Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) survey and feedback system. CALL survey results help leadership teams know where to focus their efforts as they develop and implement school improvement plans appropriate to their context.
Restorative Justice in U.S. Schools: An Updated Research Review
This report summarizes information from a comprehensive review of the literature on restorative justice in U.S. schools. It updates and expands an earlier review on this subject, published by WestEd in 2016, and covers literature that was published or made publicly available between 1999 and mid-2018. The review captures key issues, describes models of restorative justice, and summarizes results from studies conducted in the field.
Restorative justice is a broad term and is used in this report to capture what the literature describes using a variety of terms, including “restorative practices,” “restorative approaches,” and similar language. The report describes restorative justice as encompassing “a growing social movement to institutionalize non-punitive, relationship-centered approaches for avoiding and addressing harm, responding to violations of legal and human rights, and collaboratively solving problems.”
This updated review was developed with funding from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as part of a larger effort of the WestEd Justice & Prevention Research Center (JPRC) to document the current breadth of evidence on restorative justice, provide a more comprehensive picture of how restorative practices are implemented in schools, and lay the groundwork for future research, implementation, and policy.
Effective Early Childhood Transitions: A Guide for Transition at Age Three—Early Start to Preschool
Transitioning from Early Start services to other services is an important experience for children and their families, and the process should be seamless and accomplished in a timely manner.
This guide—designed for professionals in all sectors of early intervention services—identifies required elements for transition and recommended practices to support families and their children. References and tools for professionals involved in the transition process are also provided.
This guide was developed by the California Department of Developmental Services, Early Start Section and the California Department of Education, Special Education Division.
Making Sense of SCIENCE: Genes & Traits for Teachers of Grades 5-12 (Charts)
Proven through rigorous research to be effective with both teachers and students, Making Sense of SCIENCE (MSS) helps teachers gain a solid grasp of challenging science concepts, analyze effective teaching practices, and explore how literacy supports impact learning.
This set of single-use, 24″ x 32″ wall charts is used by facilitators to anchor discussions and provide a visual archive of teachers’ thinking in the Genes & Traits Teacher Course—a comprehensive professional learning institute for science teachers of grades 5–12 designed to deepen science understanding in the context of student learning.
Also Available
- Facilitator Guide Bundle: Contains the Facilitator Guide, Teacher Book, Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teaching Collaboration, and a digital download that includes all course materials, the eBook edition of Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teacher Collaboration, and the Genes & Traits Formative Assessment Task Bank
- Teacher Book Bundle: Contains the Teacher Book, Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teacher Collaboration, and a digital download that includes all course handouts, additional classroom resources, the eBook edition of Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teacher Collaboration, and the Genes & Traits Formative Assessment Task Bank
- Formative Assessment Task Bank: A collection of 20 formative assessment tasks for use with grades 5–12 students
Professional Learning
- Facilitation Academies are designed to prepare staff developers, district science leaders, and other teacher educators to effectively lead a Making Sense of SCIENCE Teacher Course
- Teacher Courses empower teachers to educate students in ways that increase engagement, promote critical thinking and analysis, and ultimately improve achievement.
Visit Making Sense of SCIENCE for more information about professional development services and resources.
Making Sense of SCIENCE: Genes & Traits for Teachers of Grades 5-12 (Teacher Book Bundle)
Proven through rigorous research to be effective for both teachers and students, Making Sense of SCIENCE helps teachers gain a solid grasp of challenging science concepts, overcome common misconceptions, analyze effective teaching practices, and explore how literacy supports impact learning.
These comprehensive course materials for 5–12 science teachers are designed to deepen science understanding in the context of student learning.
Designed to complement any curriculum, these materials support the learning of key concepts related to genetics—from the origins of traits to the many factors that influence gene expression. The concepts are central to Next Generation Science Standards and aligned with Common Core State Standards in literacy.
The Teacher Book bundle includes:
- The Genes & Traits Teacher Book, which contains teaching cases of actual classroom practice, science background information, and guided investigations that explore science in conjunction with related literacy supports and teaching practices
- Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teacher Collaboration, designed to accent the Teacher Course and support the learning of teachers during the school year by providing guidance in collaboratively examining and learning from their students’ work
- Digital resources that include all course handouts, additional classroom resources, the eBook edition of Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teacher Collaboration, and the Genes & Traits Formative Assessment Task Bank
Also Available
- Facilitator Guide Bundle: Contains the Facilitator Guide, Teacher Book, Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teaching Collaboration, and a digital download that includes all course materials; the eBook edition of Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teacher Collaboration; and the Genes & Traits Formative Assessment Task Bank
- Charts: A set of single-use 24″ x 32″ wall charts that are used by facilitators to anchor discussions and provide a visual archive of teachers’ thinking in the Teacher Course
- Formative Assessment Task Bank: A collection of 20 formative assessment tasks for use with grades 5–12 students
Professional Learning
- Facilitation Academies prepare staff developers, district science leaders, and other teacher educators to effectively lead a Making Sense of SCIENCE Teacher Course
- Teacher Courses empower teachers to educate students in ways that increase engagement, promote critical thinking and analysis, and ultimately improve achievement
Visit Making Sense of SCIENCE for more information about our professional development services and resources.
Making Sense of SCIENCE: Matter for Teachers of Grades 5-12 (Charts), Second Edition
Shipping March 2017.
Making Sense of SCIENCE (MSS) helps teachers gain a solid grasp of challenging science concepts, analyze effective teaching practices, and explore how literacy supports impact learning..
The activities and approach in this second edition Making Sense of SCIENCE: Matter course supports existing standards-based curricula, are based on a decade of research, and have been nationally field-tested with teachers and vetted by scientists.
This set of single-use, 24″ x 32″ wall charts helps facilitators anchor discussions and provides a visual archive of teachers’ thinking.
Also Available Separately
- Facilitator Guide Bundle: Facilitator Guide; Teacher Book; Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teaching Collaboration; a digital download that includes all course materials, the eBook edition of Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teacher Collaboration, and the Matter Formative Assessment Task Bank
- Teacher Book Bundle: Teacher Book; Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teaching Collaboration; a digital download that includes all course handouts, additional classroom resources, the eBook edition of Making Sense of Student Work: A Protocol for Teacher Collaboration, and the Matter Formative Assessment Task Bank
- Formative Assessment Task Bank: Twenty formative assessment tasks for use with grades 5–12 students
Visit Making Sense of SCIENCE for more information about professional development services and resources.
Field Guide to Geometric Transformations, Congruence, and Similarity, Updated Edition: Pack of 30
This first-of-its-kind illustrated and laminated guide helps both secondary school teachers and students understand geometric transformation, similarity, and congruence.
Developed by the Learning and Teaching Geometry Project, this resource features:
- Definitions of important terms
- Color coordination of key phases
- Diagrams with examples and non-examples
- Examples of precise and imprecise language
- Properties for translation, rotation, reflection, dilation, congruence, and similarity
An Overview of Commercially Available Principal Evaluation Resources
To improve principal evaluation systems, state and district leaders must make decisions about commercially available resources that may be useful. This overview aims to assist state and district leaders in the decision-making process.
Information in this overview can be used to support states and districts in identifying some of the resources to be considered in taking appropriate next steps to evaluate school leaders, design an evaluation method, and/or buy a program or service.
These resources were recommended either by district practitioners using them or were noted by experts in the field, in topic-related reports, as being used by districts.