Personalized, individual touchpoints between student and staff

As a part of Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School’s Success Coaching, students receive daily, one-on-one check-ins from staff members who inquire about physical, mental, and emotional health. Every student receives a success coach who connects with them on a daily basis, and every week a case management team meets to review summaries of success coaching calls to discuss what supports students need — both from school and community partners.

With the pandemic and school closures, students lost many of the in-person connections they previously had with teachers that helped to monitor and support their overall health and wellness. In addition, many of the support services students received also disappeared. In order to continue to connect with students and provide them with the necessary non-academic supports, Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School introduced success coaching, which provides each student with a staff member that checks in with them on a daily basis.

“Success coaching makes sure our scholars and families are able to say each morning, ‘I have an adult who’s checking in with me,’ not just about school, but saying, ‘How are you today? How are you feeling? What are things that you need help with today?,’ and to have that adult be consistently the same person allows us to be able to talk to our community and to be able to start to see where the needs are. Success coaching has been one of the marquee adjustments we’ve made to center student voice, student wellbeing, and the impact of the pandemic.” – Bb Ntsakey; Director, Academics – Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School

Approach

To support students and families as they navigate through the challenges of ongoing racial injustice coupled with the difficulties students and families have experienced as a result of the pandemic, staff members were assigned to each student at Brooklyn Lab to complete daily, one-on-one check-ins. As a Success Coach, staff members focus on developing relationships with students and helping them build the resilience needed to persevere through the pandemic and beyond. Success Coaches provide support in a variety of ways, including:

• Addressing technical issues, such as logging into a class for remote learning

• Solving transportation problems to help in-person students get to school, such as providing metro cards

• Providing connections to community resources, including housing and food support

• Offering guidance towards academic supports

• Building relationships to provide students with a trusted adult to rely on

• Setting goals to help students develop independence

After making contact, Success Coaches document the conversation and flag when additional supports are needed. Based on this documentation, a group of staff members meets on a weekly basis to review referrals and provide additional supports as needed. Depending upon the needs identified, students can be referred for tiered success coaching, which can include more frequent touch points with staff that have social-emotional expertise or individualized or group counseling.

This strategy is a part of TLA’s Hop, Skip, Leapfrog release, which explores the concrete ways in which schools and systems pursued student-centered innovation during COVID-19. Explore the full guide to find additional strategies, insights, and resources.