BELE

Building Equitable Learning Environments

students

BELE Beyond 2023

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As the BELE Network has grown and evolved over the past six years, our charge has remained the same: creating more equitable learning environments that support all students to succeed and thrive.

While we will not be continuing as a formal network in 2024, we will remain steadfast in that charge in both our individual work and partnerships. Through this time together as the BELE Network, we have built relationships that will sustain and carry on BELE’s vision and learning. Our hope is that more and more schools, school districts, and education support organizations will find innovative ways to apply the latest science of learning and development on behalf of young people everywhere.

We know through research that a student’s daily experience in school — including how they feel and think — is fundamental to not only how much they learn, but also their lifelong well-being and development. By focusing our attention on improving the day-to-day experience of students, we can catalyze meaningful change and set students up to reach their fullest potential.

Here are three key insights from our work to guide us in our journey forward:

  1. Student experience matters, is measurable, and directly contributes to the academic success and well-being of young people.
  2. When educators and leaders participate in repeated improvement cycles, they transform how students experience school and improve student outcomes.
  3. When educators, students, parents, and community members recognize each other as partners and collaborate to change policies and practices, student experience improves.

To help you put these insights into action, we’ve created Centering Student Experience: A Playbook for Improving Student Outcomes By Centering Student Experience. Regardless of role, we each have a part to play in shaping the conditions that impact student learning and improving the experiences of students. This playbook — which is a curated culmination of actionable best practices, tools, and resources created by the BELE Network — can serve as your first step or a guide to going deeper.

We are grateful for your commitment to this work and thankful for your support of the BELE Network. As we reflect back on these last few years, we are incredibly proud of the knowledge we’ve generated in partnership together, the tools we’ve tested and refined with educators and students in schools across the nation, the conversations we’ve had to advance the field forward, and so much more. While this is our final newsletter, we look forward to continuing to support all students to thrive.

With gratitude,

The BELE Learning Partners

Joining Transcend and the American Association of School Superintendents on the Road to Reinvention

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By The BELE Network

In the coming months, our schools will continue to make decisions that affect the trajectory of student learning and the student experience for countless young people across the country. Instead of reverting to a status quo that never worked for everyone, there are jobs that schools can tackle in order to meet the moment and move forward stronger.

On October 22nd, Transcend Education and the American Association of School Superintendents (AASA) held the first webinar in their “Road to Reinvention” bi-monthly webinar series on how schools can equitably respond, recover, and reinvent in response to COVID-19. Featuring Rowan-Salisbury Schools Superintendent Lynn Moody, this webinar explores the “leaps” that need to happen in order to shift our education system from the status quo to one that allows all young people to thrive.

Watch this highlight reel of Superintendent Moody in conversation with student Ali Khatib about how they were able to leverage the Transcend Leaps into a meaningful conversation about how schools can work better for students.

School leaders: keep abreast of AASA + Transcend offerings on behalf of your school community today by registering for free using this form.

You can view the full webinar below, or dive in further and learn about the steps necessary to respond, recover and reinvent from their full resource. Once you have, tell Transcend and AASA about your experience and perspective using this survey.

Finally, keep an eye out for upcoming webinars in this series in December, February, April, and June on Transcend Education’s event page. Please share these opportunities widely with others in the education community — by preparing now, we can position ourselves to take the necessary leaps to create equitable learning environments in the near future.

Transcend Education’s work with school communities and the larger ecosystem is guided by five fundamental beliefs: all children have infinite potential; to realize this potential, we must reimagine “schooling” as we know it; the work is most successful when pursued through a rigorous, community-driven R&D process grounded in equity; while never easy, innovation is absolutely possible, accelerating progress requires strong local leadership, surrounded by a conducive ecosystem.

The BELE Network is dedicated to reimagining our inequitable school system that has failed too many for too long, and is committed to transforming our classrooms into learning environments that nurture the intellectual, emotional and cultural growth of all students — especially students of color.

Learn more about BELE on our website, and access our resource library to get the best and most up-to-date thinking on how to make learning environments more equitable.

Joining Transcend and the American Association of School Superintendents on the Road to Reinvention

by

By The BELE Network

In the coming months, our schools will continue to make decisions that affect the trajectory of student learning and the student experience for countless young people across the country. Instead of reverting to a status quo that never worked for everyone, there are jobs that schools can tackle in order to meet the moment and move forward stronger.

On October 22nd, Transcend Education and the American Association of School Superintendents (AASA) held the first webinar in their “Road to Reinvention” bi-monthly webinar series on how schools can equitably respond, recover, and reinvent in response to COVID-19. Featuring Rowan-Salisbury Schools Superintendent Lynn Moody, this webinar explores the “leaps” that need to happen in order to shift our education system from the status quo to one that allows all young people to thrive.

Watch this highlight reel of Superintendent Moody in conversation with student Ali Khatib about how they were able to leverage the Transcend Leaps into a meaningful conversation about how schools can work better for students.

School leaders: keep abreast of AASA + Transcend offerings on behalf of your school community today by registering for free using this form.

You can view the full webinar below, or dive in further and learn about the steps necessary to respond, recover and reinvent from their full resource. Once you have, tell Transcend and AASA about your experience and perspective using this survey.

Finally, keep an eye out for upcoming webinars in this series in December, February, April, and June on Transcend Education’s event page. Please share these opportunities widely with others in the education community — by preparing now, we can position ourselves to take the necessary leaps to create equitable learning environments in the near future.

Transcend Education’s work with school communities and the larger ecosystem is guided by five fundamental beliefs: all children have infinite potential; to realize this potential, we must reimagine “schooling” as we know it; the work is most successful when pursued through a rigorous, community-driven R&D process grounded in equity; while never easy, innovation is absolutely possible, accelerating progress requires strong local leadership, surrounded by a conducive ecosystem.

The BELE Network is dedicated to reimagining our inequitable school system that has failed too many for too long, and is committed to transforming our classrooms into learning environments that nurture the intellectual, emotional and cultural growth of all students — especially students of color.

Learn more about BELE on our website, and access our resource library to get the best and most up-to-date thinking on how to make learning environments more equitable.