ARISE’s founders and staff believe that all children deserve a quality education that doesn’t replicate inequitable and oppressive institutions. As a result, they’ve developed a rigorous, high engagement, authentic learning experience for all students. In order for every student to meet the high expectations that ARISE holds, a thorough system of support is critical. While the entire school is designed to make the educational experience highly personalized, attentive, and responsive, Adelante Student Services, in particular, provides intensive support to help  students move forward. 

Adelante is a Spanish adverb that means movement and commonly expresses two ideas: “salir adelante” and “sacar adelante” (in English, ”get ahead”). These two sayings encourage the development of self and the overcoming of obstacles. They are often used to push a person’s development. 

Adelante Student Services works within the whole school community to create the conditions, procedures, and resources to support struggling students academically and socio-emotionally.The Response to Intervention system includes the following structures: Academic Mentorship, Advisory, and Restorative Justice Praxis. ARISE offers site visits, coaching, and professional development to support implementation of their model.

BARR’s mission is to create equitable schools so that every student, regardless of race, ethnicity, or economic status, has access to a high-quality education where adults know them, recognize their strengths, and help them succeed. The BARR system transforms both the student and staff experience. Cohort-based classes, whole-child skill development, and personalized support are the markers of BARR for students K–12. Through these offerings, students develop personal relationships with peers and staff, feel understood as individuals, and become more connected in the school environment. BARR’s multi-tiered system of support enables teachers, staff, and administrators to utilize insights from relationships to design individually targeted interventions that address the academic and non-academic reasons why students may struggle in school.

The BARR system is implemented through BARR’s eight Interlocking Strategies:

• Focusing on the whole student
• Providing professional development for teachers, counselors, and administrators
• Using BARR’s U/I-Time curriculum to foster a climate of learning
• Creating cohorts
• Holding regular meetings of the cohort teacher teams
• Conducting Community Connect meetings
• Partnering with families in student learning
• Engaging administrators

BARR is shown to be effective in urban and rural schools alike, driving higher math and reading scores, decreased failure rates, improved student experience for all students, and narrowed opportunity gaps for students traditionally underserved. BARR Model One Pager

The biofeedback breathing program by Rural Opportunity Institute (ROI) teaches students how to change their body’s conditioned responses to stressful situations in order to improve learning outcomes and interrupt cycles of generational trauma. As a training technique based on research from brain and body science, biofeedback breathing helps students develop the resilience and self-determination they need to live healthy, safe, and connected lives.

Biofeedback breathing is widely utilized by athletes, astronauts, and the military as a training tool to enhance performance and manage stress. By providing real-time physiological response data about Heart Rate Variability (HRV), biofeedback helps regulate breathing patterns, leading to better focus, resilience, and performance. Similarly, students can use biofeedback to improve self-regulation of their emotions and body, which makes it a valuable tool to use to cope with issues like anxiety, ADHD, depression, PTSD, and chronic pain.

Biofeedback breathing has produced positive results in a range of settings by helping people manage the health of their nervous systems. ROI has successfully piloted it in middle schools, county jails, and non-profit organizations, where it proved to be a preventative tool that helped to create a more supportive environment for students.

The Compass model goes beyond academics to develop students in mind, heart, body, and spirit. Compass ensures that all members of the community (young and adult) are engaging in deep, holistic, and adaptive development work.

The Compass model is implemented in 64 schools and is helping over 30,000 students experience more social acceptance, social concern, and social reciprocity as well as less emotional exhaustion. Valor offers cohort learning communities, one-on-one coaching and consulting, resource toolkits, and school visits to others interested in implementing the model. 

The Da Vinci RISE High model was designed to provide an equitable education for students traditionally left out of the larger educational narrative—those navigating foster care, housing instability, probation, and/or other circumstances that have interrupted their academic journeys. RISE believes that if we build with the needs of the most at-promise youth in mind, we will not only create an empowering school for them, but we will create a school that is well equipped to serve students with a vast array of skillsets and needs. The RISE model takes a responsive and holistic approach to education, acknowledging and adapting learning to accommodate the additional responsibilities and priorities students have in their lives outside of school. To do this, each RISE student co-creates and regularly updates a Personalized Learning Plan outlining their unique pathway to graduation. Plans leverage flexible scheduling, blended learning, mastery-based grading, and holistic wraparound support to ensure students meet their academic goals while managing their personal needs.

Da Vinci currently operates three RISE High schools serving 250 students in Los Angeles, California. Da Vinci Institute provides workshops to share model best practices. Da Vinci RISE: Student Profile Da Vinci RISE Brochure

Black Girls Smile Inc. (BGS), a national nonprofit organization founded in 2012, provides positive mental health support, education, and resources geared toward young Black women and girls. Their vision is to create a society where all young Black women and girls receive the resources and support necessary to lead mentally healthy lives.

BGS provides Group Coaching to middle and high school students on-site at schools and community centers. During Group Coaching sessions, participants engage in activities and discussions designed to create a sense of belonging and increase mental health awareness and empowerment for Black women and girls. 

Black Girls Smile currently provides their Group Coaching model to schools and communities in the New York area. They can also provide coaching and support for schools that would like to implement their Group Coaching framework outside this region. BGS also offers virtual and in-person workshops and therapy assistance to those participating in Group Coaching. Overview of BGS School Offerings

St. Benedict’s model supports students to fulfill their potential as emotionally mature, morally responsible, and well-educated citizens. To do this, they create meaningful student leadership opportunities, social-emotional support systems, and community-building structures. The success of the model hinges on the idea that students are responsible for their own development as well as that of their peers. While the model was developed explicitly to serve students of color and students from low-income backgrounds, it has the potential to support students from all racial, religious, and socioeconomic groups.

The St. Benedict’s Prep model is implemented at the flagship site in Newark, NJ, serving 950 students, of which 85% identify as students of color and 80% receive financial aid. St. Benedict’s students far outpace Newark in graduation rate and college enrollment and persistence. The Father Mark Payne Institute offers site visits, professional development, implementation workshops, and ongoing support for schools interested in implementing the model.

The Arthur Project utilizes graduate social work students to provide structured, holistic support to youth throughout middle school. The therapeutic mentoring model was designed to provide greater access to wide-ranging support for middle school students by connecting them with clinicians-in-training who serve as their mentors for the duration of middle school. This process is facilitated by weekly meetings between mentors and individual students where the focus is on healing, growth, and exploration. 

Core to The Arthur Project is a focus on the power of effective relationships with caring adults informed by best practices in youth development, mentoring, and mental health. By pairing them with healing-centered, trauma-informed, culturally responsive mentors, the model helps middle school students recognize their value in the community and the world during a formative time in their lives. Adolescent development research indicates that middle school is a crucial time for school engagement and that ninth-grade status is the single-best predictor of whether a student will complete their secondary education. In support, The Arthur Project seeks to strengthen the crucial transition from middle school to high school. 

The Arthur Project currently works in three middle schools in New York City, but the model is designed to be scalable so that more young people have access to services that support mental health. The Arthur Project uses its experience and expertise to consult with schools that want to adopt its model. The ultimate goal for the model is to prepare more youth for lifelong success beginning with the developmental window that opens in middle school. The Arthur Project Theory of Change

The Parent Program impacts two generations —parent and child—through a coaching approach. It is parent-centered, relationship-based wellness programming that connects families to concrete supports, increases social connections, and elevates self-efficacy. The program’s approach aims to increase parent agency and mitigate the impacts of toxic stress and adverse childhood experiences on parents and their children in the long term. This is done by meeting parents where they are, both on their well-being journey and where their capacity is to support their children’s health and education. The program is a partnership with parents to strengthen protective factors for children and families as a whole. These protective factors include parental resilience, social connections, concrete supports in times of need, knowledge of parenting and child development, and social and emotional competence of children. The Parent Program achieves this by assigning a dedicated Parent Wellness Coach to each family. The Parent Wellness Coach is trained to apply two coaching frameworks in individual and group settings. 

The Primary School implements the Parent Program at its East Palo Alto and East Bay sites. East Palo Alto East Bay While the Parent Program can be run from birth until middle school, they are currently piloting iterations of the program from grade 3 onward. The Primary School is looking to support other schools and community settings interested in piloting the Parent Program.

The Brotherhood Sister Sol (BroSis) is a New York City–based nonprofit organization that has been at the forefront of social justice, educating, organizing, and training youth and educators since 1995. Through unconditional love, around-the-clock support, and wraparound programming, it makes space for young people to examine their roots, define their stories, and awaken their agency as they develop into empowered critical thinkers and community leaders. 

Core to the organization is the Rites of Passage Program (ROP). ROP is a long-term, transformative youth development model that provides multilayered support, guidance, and education to adolescents as they grow into adulthood. In this model, youth form self-identified, gender-based groups (called “Chapters”), each led by two adult Chapter Leaders who facilitate weekly sessions and serve as trusted mentors and confidantes for participants as they explore their identity and beliefs as well as life’s various challenges. 

Together, Chapters of 12–18 youths form an intentional community, learning to embrace the ideals of brotherhood and sisterhood and to utilize restorative justice methods to resolve conflicts. All the while, they are strengthening their connection to their histories, their values, their world, and their voices.

While ROP was designed to support Black and Latinx youth, the program has been successful in many diverse communities. BroSis offers training and coaching for schools and community organizations to help them establish ROP programs that meet the unique needs of their youth. The Rites of Passage Program Overview and Rationale

The Whole Child Model makes students’ socio-emotional growth foundational to everything a school does. It is a trauma-informed, social-emotional learning model rooted in an understanding that children’s academic success is inextricably linked to their overall well-being, and in the belief that we can—and must—attend to the development of the whole child. The model helps students build the intra- and inter-personal skills they need to regulate their emotions, manage stress, and handle conflicts productively. It does this through a multi-tier system of supports that together develop a safe and warm school environment for everyone—including students and their families. 

The Whole Child Model is currently implemented in over 30 schools across Washington D.C., Texas, and Tennessee. Students in Whole Child Model classes demonstrated significant growth in various social-emotional factors such as perseverance, social awareness, and self-efficacy. Free resource toolkits, as well as some Cohort Learning Communities, are available to schools interested in implementing the Whole Child Model.

The Whole-Bodied Education Model by Girls Athletic Leadership Schools (GALS) aims to support young women to become powerful advocates for themselves and leaders for their communities. It reflects GALS’ belief that academic growth is strengthened through social, emotional, and physical health support. All students are challenged, take risks, learn from failure, and leverage their individual strengths through rigorous, standards-based academic programming. 

Specifically, Movement Modules and active pedagogy ensure students experience the connection between pushing themselves physically and thriving academically. In addition, they learn to be self-aware, to set goals, and to become advocates in their learning and growth through the GALS Series, a homegrown SEL curriculum that focuses on female adolescent development and empowerment. The single-gendered context is embraced as a strength, while difference and individuality within what it means to be female is celebrated as part of the distinct community that makes up the school. 

There are three GALS schools operating in Denver and Los Angeles and serving 512 students, and two GALS-inspired schools exist in Guatemala and Israel. Students of GALS express confidence in their ability to be successful. GALS offers school visits, professional development, 1:1 coaching, and its GALS Series curriculum for schools interested in implementing the Whole-Bodied Model.