Miss Kendra Programs Announce Expansion Initiative For CT Schools

Press release from Big Voice Communications:

Feb. 10, 2021

Miss Kendra Programs is launching an expansion initiative for Connecticut-based schools to bring the program to more students and teachers across the state. The expansion is supported in part by a new grant from the Connecticut-based Seedlings Foundation. Elementary schools in Connecticut can apply to become a Miss Kendra school and the first 20 accepted schools can apply for a grant up to $15,000 towards the first year of the program.

Miss Kendra Programs is a trauma-informed, whole-school and whole-child social and trauma-informed emotional learning (SEL) program that equips schools and teachers to proactively address the social and emotional needs of their students.

Featured in the award-winning documentary, Resilience: The Biology of Stress & The Science of Hope, Miss Kendra Program guides teachers and support staff with structured lesson plans to elicit the opinions, feelings and thoughts of the students as well as their personal experiences. Through these open classroom conversations, children learn that when they talk about their experiences, they can find the tools needed to strengthen the connection between teachers and students. Miss Kendra’s Connecticut expansion program is encouraged by the Connecticut Education Association and the Connecticut Association of Schools.

Miss Kendra Programs provide a full-year curriculum that knits together trauma-informed care, SEL and resiliency. The program is easy to teach, takes minimal prep time and engages students in a magical, playful, story-based environment in the Miss Kendra lessons.

“The program transforms and deepens the relationship between student and teacher, which is the foundation of education,” says David Read Johnson, PhD, CEO Miss Kendra Programs. He notes, “Education is what happens between a teacher and a student. Trauma directly interferes with the health of that relationship, and the health of both the student and the teacher.”

For students and schools across the country, Miss Kendra Programs have consistently produced reductions in distressed behaviors and improvements in teacher efficacy and school climate. In the midst of COVID-19 the demand for SEL has never been higher.

“The Miss Kendra Program provides a way for our students to give voice to their worries, and know our school is a safe place in which they receive support,”says Nicholas Perrone, Ed.D, principal, Edgewood Magnet School, New Haven.

For more information or to apply visit misskendraprograms.org.

This press release was produced by Big Voice Communications. The views expressed here are the author's own.