88th Annual CASCWA State Conference

Discover how educator wellness and understanding trauma can transform student success. This session explores the vital connection between personal self-care, mindfulness practices, and fostering belonging to support students experiencing trauma and attendance challenges. Learn how to identify your own triggers, practice mindfulness, and create a stable, inclusive environment that empowers student resilience. Through interactive activities and actionable strategies, participants will leave with tools to enhance their own well-being while fostering meaningful connections with their students. Prioritize your wellness and positively impact the lives of students facing adversity.

This session examines how integrating SEL within PBIS and MTSS frameworks can improve teacher utilization, student behavior, and school climate. Using findings from a pilot study at Val Verde Unified School District, we’ll explore how teacher utilization of SEL grew from 8% to 75%, and how their students developed:

• Stronger SEL competencies
  
• Improved behavior, and
  
• Better conflict resolution skills
  

Attendees will gain practical strategies to increase teacher buy-in and implementation fidelity, align SEL with academic and behavioral goals, and strengthen stakeholder support for sustainable SEL integration and higher ROI (return on investment). Through discussion, reflection, and interactive activities, participants will walk away with concrete tools to address implementation challenges and enhance SEL practices in their schools.

Students sometimes express their respectable and valid goals, values, challenges and pain through problematic behaviors. This presentation and facilitated discussion will identify activities and social-emotional learning that support prevention and provide positive, viable alternatives to the problematic behaviors. We can highlight and provide these opportunities for students to experience  ̶  often led by students. This approach is a key alternative to punitive, exclusionary practices! This workshop stands alone and supports another presentation, Drum Circle (real): A Participatory Example of Positive Alternatives to Negative Behavior.

This proposal outlines a fiscally sustainable framework to build and maintain comprehensive mental health programs in TK-12 schools. By creating a robust mental health continuum on campus, schools can address the varied social, emotional, and mental health needs of students while simultaneously developing a pipeline of qualified mental health professionals.  The primary goal is to ensure the sustainability of mental health programs by leveraging resources to train and retain professionals who can support students’ mental well-being while advancing their own career pathways toward licensure.

This presentation focuses on the rights and protections for pregnant and parenting students, covering three key areas: reproductive health, parenting, and academic/social supports. Students are entitled to accommodations such as eight weeks of parental leave, excused absences for caring for a sick child, and lactation rooms. Under Title IX and California law, schools must prevent discrimination and ensure pregnant students remain full participants in education. Unfortunately, many students are unaware of these rights, leading to alternative schooling or dropout. This presentation aims to raise awareness and ensure that students receive the accommodations they are entitled to.

Riverside Unified School District’s Department of Wellness and Engagement supports students demonstrating social, emotional, and/or behavioral concerns impacting their ability to fully participate in daily instruction, school activities, or their overall educational experience with licensed therapists, school psychologists, and prevention assistants. The
program focuses on developing supports for students facing non-academic barriers to their learning. The department also supports a thriving structure for enhancing employee well-being.
Participants will gain knowledge about:
RUSD’s innovative program that includes 42 licensed therapists, 8 school psychologists, 20 prevention assistants, and a teacher on special assignment. Consider how attendees might implement a similar structure for counseling, behavior support, and the well-being of employees. These structures work within the Multi-Tiered System of Support framework.

Join us as we explore ways to implement and strengthen alternatives to suspension for substance use in schools. We will review strategies for gaining buy-in, showcase youth insights, and build your capacity to reframe the issue from discipline and punishment to meaningful student support. Participants will be introduced to a comprehensive toolkit with step-by-step guidance and resources to help districts and schools adopt supportive approaches effectively.

Loneliness harms both individual and societal health. In adults, it is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, stroke, depression, anxiety, and premature death. The mortality impact of being socially disconnected is like smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. In students, a lack of friendship can result in academic underachievement, mental health issues, and impaired brain development. We will look at current data on friendships in the workplace and schools and use research from the Blue Zones and the U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory report on loneliness to share ways to foster a sense of community both within the school setting and community.