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As the new school year gets underway, education leaders are tasked with keeping students physically and emotionally safe amidst political, economic, and social turmoil related to the COVID-19 pandemic, a national reckoning with overt and systemic racism, and multiple environmental disasters. The national Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety’s Jenny Betz spoke with Pia Escudero, the Executive Director of the Student Health and Human Services Division in the Los Angeles Unified School District, about how she is approaching the school year with a focus on resilience and collective care.

Their discussion touches on what we can learn from disaster response research to foster individual and community resilience, the role of social and emotional learning and strengths-based approaches in schools and classrooms, the need for cross-sector collaboration to enact systems change, and the opportunities that can be found in this uniquely challenging time. Escudero shares how she and her district have looked beyond playbooks and checklists to create a model for psychological safety that takes a whole person and whole community approach.

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