RISE is an adult-centered, trauma-responsive prevention program that builds educator social emotional skills, intentional environments, and safe supportive relationships to foster resilience and well-being for everyone at school.
Decades of research have revealed that one essential protective factor for youth is having a safe, supportive relationship with an adult. RISE was developed to help educators have the support, skills, and tools they need to be that adult.
Trained building-based facilitators deliver a series of nine RISE workshops to small groups of 8-15 educators each year. Workshop content includes well-being practices, connection skills, emotion support skills and emotion coaching skills. Each workshop is approximately 75 minutes long and includes didactic instruction, hands-on activities, time to reflect and share, and opportunities for skill application. The workshop series is the core of the RISE program.
While the workshop series is the core of the RISE program, we often say that coaching is where the magic happens! In between workshop deliveries, trained RISE facilitators meet individually with workshop participants to discuss their goals, help them apply RISE skills to their specific role and context, and problem solve challenging situations.
We know how important it is that every initiative in schools is data-driven and evidence-based. Therefore, RISE includes a component of impact assessment. Using pre/post surveys, we assess how educators’ skills, mindsets, attitudes, and well-being shift over the course of the workshop series. We share those findings with you in easy-to-understand ways, so that the data is immediately useful. Our RISE schools often share this data with parents, school or district leadership, and funders.
We use a “train the facilitator” model for the majority of RISE implementation, which means that essential RISE knowledge and skills stay in your building and district for years to come.
Districts and schools identify who they would like to have trained to deliver the RISE workshop series and individual coaching from their own faculty! RISE facilitators can be teachers, counselors, administrators, mental health advocates and more!
Facilitators are trained using a mix of asynchronous coursework; two days of live, highly experiential training; and ongoing support throughout the year(s). These trained facilitators then deliver our workshop series and provide individual coaching to small cohort(s) of educators each year.
In addition to our standard comprehensive RISE implementation, as described above, we have a variety of other rich offerings for schools interested in increasing educator social emotional competency, interaction skills, supportive environments, and cultivating well-being. Other offerings, which can be delivered stand-alone or in conjunction with RISE, include:
We have measured the impact of RISE on hundreds of educators across Colorado since 2017. While there are differences at each building, and from year-to-year, there are consistencies too:
RISE workshops, participants report higher levels of social emotional skills, including increased emotional awareness, increased emotion regulation, and increased self-compassion.
We see significant increases in educator use of RISE skills, such as self-awareness, connection skills, emotion support skills and emotion coaching skills.
Educators regularly report improvements in their experience of burnout, as well as increased levels of psychological resilience.
Measures of trauma-informed school practices increase from levels assessed before RISE implementation.
Educators consistently report that participating in RISE has expanded their network of social support at work.
Listen below to hear educators talk about the impact RISE has on them personally and in their classroom!
In this episode, host Amy Detgen discusses the RISE program, which focuses on enhancing educator well-being through social-emotional skill development and increasing resiliency. Guests Essie Hengeveld and Sarah DiGiacomo share insights on the importance of self-care for educators, the challenges faced in implementing well-being initiatives, and future research opportunities to further explore the impact of improving educator well-being.
“What I learned from RISE”
Building-based RISE facilitators come from many different backgrounds, including teachers, administrators, school counselors, mental health advocates, coaches and more! We train one or two cohorts each year and then stay connected with our facilitators for years to come.
