By Chris Yankee
Principals
Emily Gleason; Monica Lozano; Michelle Shedro; Leah Peña Teeters; Blanca Trejo; Julia C. Zigarelli
Collaboration + support
CU Boulder Renée Crown Wellness Institute; Boulder Valley School District students, teachers and administrators
Learn more about this topic:
In partnership with a group of Latinx high school students from Boulder Valley School District, researchers from the Renée Crown Wellness Institute at CU Boulder have developed and implemented a peer-led model of social support called Circles de Confianza (of Trust).
In this model, students explore topics such as trust, distrust and belonging in the context of school through dialogue circles and multimodal multilingual testimonio, or first-person narratives. The students collaborate with researchers and educators from their school to work toward creating a school de confianza: a school designed and guided by a commitment to wellness, trust and confianza for all students, in particular, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) youth.
A manuscript for the project’s findings has been published in Journal of Latinos and Education, and the researcher and student team co-presented findings and recommendations to school district leadership. The team has been invited to present to the school board.
Photo by Monica Lozano