AT A GLANCE

Headquarters
New York, New York

Social Entrepreneur
Pamela Cantor, President & CEO

Year Founded
2001

Website
https://www.turnaroundusa.org/

Mission:

Turnaround for Children is connecting the dots between science, adversity and school performance. Turnaround develops tools and strategies for educators and administrators that cultivate a safe environment, reduce stress, increase engagement in learning and accelerate healthy development and academic achievement.

Vision: 

Turnaround believes in a new reality for public education:

Where students are highly engaged in learning, have the skills to regulate their own behavior and can achieve to their full potential.

Where teachers are equipped with the practices to cultivate calm, engaging learning environments that foster healthy student development and academic achievement.

Where schoolwide culture is physically and emotionally safe, and systems exist to provide student support services, manage classroom behavior and implement positive, rather than punitive, disciplinary practices.

Where districts and schools across the country acknowledge the effects of adversity on learning, develop policies and use practices designed to address them.

Approach:

Turnaround for Learning works directly with high-poverty public schools to establish environments, based on Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), that accelerate healthy student development and academic achievement. It translates the science that explains the impact of stress on learning and behavior for teachers and administrators into tools and strategies that cultivate a safe environment, reduce stress and increase engagement in learning.

Student Support: Turnaround helps partner schools build MTSS, including classroom and small group interventions for at-risk students and individualized, timely services for the highest-needs students. It connects schools with a community-based mental health partner and sets up a Student Support Team – frequently made up of teachers, administrators and social workers – which organizes individualized plans for students and tracks their behavioral, emotional and academic progress.

Teacher Training: Turnaround provides professional development and coaching for teachers and school staff in instructional strategies that ensure safe, engaging, productive classrooms and drive critical areas of student development, such as self-regulation, that are most impacted by adversity.

Leadership Engagement: Turnaround partners with school leaders to support the development and enhancement of a schoolwide vision and to foster a culture of strong attachment and high expectations for student growth and achievement.

Impact:

During the 2016-17 school year, Turnaround partnered with 10 high-poverty schools and 4 community mental health providers to serve 4,200 students, and trained more than 3,000 teachers, principals and social workers at the school, CMO and district levels.