Resilience In Schools & Educators

Rise Champions, Highland Elementary School

RISE: Resilience in Schools and Educators is a whole-school social-emotional learning program that builds trauma-responsive school climates and promotes resilience in staff and students. RISE empowers districts to chart a course for staff and student social-emotional development and well-being.

The RISE approach includes a set of practices and strategies that build social emotional and academic competencies. RISE integrates what we know about trauma, resilience, social emotional development and academic achievement to help educators design environments and interactions where students can thrive and learn.

RISE Practices

These core classroom practices are the heart of the RISE approach:

Establishing Intentional Environments

A detailed process for understanding environmental impacts and designing systemic structures that support all students by establishing safety, consistency, predictability and connection through attention to order, routine, ritual, rhythm, roles and responsibilities.

Deepening Well-being

Cultivating awareness and daily practices to support individual and community well-being.

Expanding Skillful Interactions

Use of connection and re-connection skills, emotion support skills, emotion coaching and resilience promoting practices to promote positive relationships and emotional intelligence.

The Educator Impact

Resilience is cultivated in school communities one positive interaction at a time. Every teacher, administrator, custodian, counselor, crossing guards, cafeteria worker and school resource officer can cultivate resilience through the ordinary magic of connection. We all want to feel valued, seen and heard and when we are, we feel the power of connection. Every time we are recognized by name, in a simple greeting or with appreciation for who are, we feel valued. Each high five, smile and handshake demonstrates we have been seen. When we are able to share our emotions, our stories, our celebrations and our conflicts, we feel heard. In hallways, on playgrounds, in classrooms and bus lines, educators have the opportunity to create a sense of belonging, to let students and staff know they matter.

That’s impact.

Our RISE Community

Photo of RISE 2019 Cohort — 2018-2020 RISE Facilitators

Photo of RISE Team Learners Facilitators Cohort — RISE 2019-2020 2nd Cohort Facilitators and Learners

RISE in the Spotlight: Boulder Valley School District's Weekly Wake-Up

Watch the program below to hear a few BVSD educators, the BVSD RISE facilitator/coach and CU RISE faculty talk more about RISE.

RISE Research Results

The results from the pilot projects have been promising, and are depicted below graphically. Although the data is limited to self report surveys by educators and qualitative focus group data, the anticipated results are in the expected direction.

In 2017-2019, two early pilot projects of RISE were conducted in 14 elementary, middle, and high schools with 107 educators in Colorado. These pilot studies were focused on learning about the relevance, acceptability, and feasibility of the program and involved pre-post self-report data from educators and facilitators in RISE’s target outcome areas.

We integrated feedback from educators into the refinement of the RISE program over the past two years. We are currently finishing a larger pilot demonstration study of RISE in elementary, middle, and high schools in the 2019-2020 school year. This project collected pre-post survey data from educators as well and interaction data with educators engaged in a 5-minute, videotaped role plays of a student scenario. RISE also gains qualitative information about RISE through focus groups with educators, administrators, and staff.

The results from the two early pilots have been promising, and are depicted below graphically. Although the data is limited to self report surveys by educators and qualitative focus group data, the anticipated results were in the expected direction.

RISE during the 2020-2021 school year

For the 2020-21 school year, we are currently conducting a quasi-experimental study of RISE with 236 educators in 6 medium sized Colorado elementary schools (3 intervention, 3 control/comparison) in Garfield Re-2 county school system to learn about the efficacy of this intervention.

We have survey data from 236 educators and nearly 200 interaction tasks (observational data) to assess educator behavior change. RISE evaluation is supported by a Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Child Traumatic Stress Network federal grant as well as our local community school partners. Independent researchers at the American Institute of Research assist us in this research study.

Simultaneously, we continue to conduct correlational studies to evaluate RISE in 6 schools in our local school district, Boulder Valley (BVSD) (3 elementary schools, 3 high schools), and one Adams 12 Colorado elementary school. 109 educators are participating. This community academic partnership is funded by Kaiser Permanente’s Thriving Schools project and the local school districts.

RISE Results 2017-2020

We collected data from 196 educators participating in the RISE program from 24 elementary, middle and high schools in Colorado from 2017-2020.

Pre and post measures indicated improvement on:

Educator use of Rise Skills
Student-Teacher Relationship Quality
Educator MIndfulness and Well-Being
Educator Emotional Awareness
Trauma-Informed Care
Reduced Educator Burnout and Increased Resilience

2019-2020 RISE Cohort

We collected data from 88 educators participating in the RISE program at 6 elementary, middle and high schools in Colorado.

Pre- and post-measures indicated improvements in:

Educator emotional awareness (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale)
Educator mindfulness (Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire & Mindfulness in Teaching Scale)
Educator use of RISE skills (RISE Questionnaire)
Educator resilience (Connor Davison Resilience Scale-25)
Educator burnout and secondary traumatic stress (Professional Quality of Life Scale)

Findings are being prepared for publication.

2018-2019 RISE Cohort

We collected data from 55 educators participating in the RISE program at 6 elementary, middle and high schools in Colorado.

Pre- and post-measures indicated improvements in:

Educator emotional awareness (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale)
Educator mindfulness (Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire & Mindfulness in Teaching Scale)
Educator use of RISE skills (RISE Questionnaire)
Educator resilience (Connor Davison Resilience Scale-25)
Educator burnout and secondary traumatic stress (Professional Quality of Life Scale)

Findings are being prepared for publication.

2017-2018 RISE Cohort

We collected data from 53 educators participating in the RISE program at 8 elementary and middle schools in Colorado.

Pre- and post-measures indicated improvements in:

Educator emotional awareness (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale)
Educator mindfulness (Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire)
Educator wellbeing (Positive and Negative Affect Scale)
Student-teacher relationship quality (Student-Teacher Relationship Scale)

Findings are being prepared for publication.

RISE Research Publications

Fitzgerald, M. M., Shipman, K., Pauletic, M., Ellesworth, K., & Dymnicki, A. (2022). Promoting educator social emotional competence, well-being, and student–educator relationships: A pilot study. Mental Health & Prevention, 26, 200234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mhp.2022.200234

Educator Experiences

“What I learned from RISE”

“I recognize that thanks to the integration of the social/emotional time within my daily teaching, students are now more focused and ready to learn.”

“I now view self-awareness and self-care as more important for [the benefit of] my students.”

“I recognize that thanks to the integration of the social/emotional time within my daily teaching, students are now more focused and ready to learn.”

“[RISE] was one of the most important and meaningful classes that I’ve taken during my [5 years] in this district.”

“I was able to recognize that I needed to take care of my own emotions in order to help my students learn how to express and manage their own emotions.”

“I learned that my emotions and behavior affect my students, and being aware of where I am is crucial to dealing with student behaviors.”