Welcome Back, Educators: Building the Foundation for a Successful School Year
Start the school year strong with classroom routines that build safety, connection, and student self-regulation. Free guides included.
Each new school year brings fresh opportunities to build meaningful connections, support growth and help students develop the skills they need for success—both in school and in life.
We believe students must feel safe and cared for in order to be ready to learn. This foundational understanding drives everything we do through the Whole Child Model, an evidence-based approach to creating school environments that support student and adult well-being.
Imagine a city—and a nation—where every child attends a school in which their well-being is not just a priority, but also the central focus. Envision schools that actively counteract the negative impacts of stress and trauma by creating environments where every student feels safe, connected and empowered to develop the social, emotional and academic skills essential for success.
The Whole Child Model brings this vision to life.
Developed through a partnership between Transcend and Van Ness Elementary, a District of Columbia Public School, the Whole Child Model is rooted in the understanding that children's academic success is intrinsically linked to their overall well-being. To date, schools across the country—including in California, the District of Columbia, Minnesota, Tennessee and Texas—have embraced the Whole Child Model, with promising results.
New Resources to Support Your Classroom Community
We're excited to share that for the first time, we're making our resources available on AFT’s Share My Lesson! This partnership allows us to reach more educators who are committed to fostering environments where the whole child can flourish. You can find our resources here.
To help you establish the foundation for a successful year, we're sharing two essential implementation guides: “Strong Start & Close” and “Consistent Routines.” These resources represent core practices that help create classroom communities where students feel safe, connected and ready to learn.
“Strong Start & Close” and “Consistent Routines” establish a predictable and safe classroom environment that becomes the foundation for everything else you'll accomplish this year. Here's what makes them so effective:
- Foster safety through predictability. Students can focus their mental energy on learning rather than wondering what will happen next.
- Explicitly teach and practice social and emotional skills. Create natural opportunities to build social and emotional competencies throughout the day.
- Give students greater ownership. Support student autonomy while maintaining clear, reasonable expectations.
- Free up mental energy for learning. Predictable structures reduce anxiety and increase engagement.
- Build a sense of safety, belonging, community and self-efficacy. Daily rituals help students feel connected and ready to learn
What You'll Find in These Implementation Guides
Our Strong Start & Close Implementation Guide provides practical strategies for greeting students individually at the classroom door to reinforce safety and belonging. You'll find guidance for morning routines, breakfast in the classroom, and independent activities that give students productive choices. The guide includes step-by-step instructions for group rituals like purposeful partnering, community building, breathe and focus, and goal setting, plus meaningful ways to end the day with a strong close and visual examples from real classrooms.
The Consistent Routines Implementation Guide offers practical principles for creating routines that are the least restrictive possible while maintaining safety. You'll learn teaching strategies, including using social stories and posting visual expectations throughout your classroom. The guide provides daily schedule guidance that balances students' needs for group and independent work, active and quiet time, with strategic movement opportunities. Real classroom examples of visual schedules, expectations posters and center rotations give you concrete models, along with implementation tips for maintaining consistent routines while giving students autonomy.
Both guides emphasize that children are capable of learning how to meet reasonable expectations for routines and procedures. When students don't meet expectations, it's a sign that more practice, not punishment, is needed. This approach helps children build their own self-regulation skills and abilities.
Getting Started: Setting Your Students Up for Success
Implementing these routines is an investment in your entire year. The time you spend establishing these foundations will create more time for learning and a stronger classroom community throughout the year.
Teaching and trusting children to meet reasonable expectations helps them build their own self-regulation skills and abilities. When we create predictable structures with clear visual supports and consistent practice, we're helping students develop the independence and confidence they need to thrive.
Here's to a year filled with connection, growth and joy for both you and your students!
More Resources for the New School Year
Get the new school year started off on the right track with more resources on topics such as classroom management, social-emotional learning, family engagement, supporting English-language learners, building successful community schools, and more.
Developed through a partnership between Transcend and Van Ness Elementary, a District of Columbia Public School, The Whole Child Model is rooted in the understanding that a child's academic success is intrinsically linked to their overall well-being. Grounded in learning science, we firmly believe... See More
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