Cross-age peer mentoring programs are an increasingly popular choice for educators and youth development professionals hoping to create positive outcomes for youth. This guide will assist you in your recruitment, training, and activities involving peer mentoring programs.
Type: Document
Sustaining Positive School Climate and Culture in Schools and Districts
This resource outlines key strategies for sustaining supportive and inclusive school environments over time by embedding effective practices into school systems, culture, and everyday routines. It emphasizes using data for continuous improvement, aligning policies and procedures with school climate improvement efforts, building leadership capacity, engaging families and community partners, and maintaining shared ownership so that positive conditions for students and staff persist beyond initial implementation.
Special Service Providers: The Impact of Special Service Providers on a Positive School Climate
This resource describes how special service providers (such as counselors, psychologists, and behavioral health specialists) contribute to a positive school climate by offering supports that enhance students’ social-emotional well-being and academic success. It outlines practical roles and strategies—such as using data to identify needs, facilitating evidence-based interventions, collaborating with teachers and families, and supporting inclusive, trauma-responsive practices—that help strengthen students’ sense of safety, connection, and engagement within the school community.
School Leaders: The Impact of School Leaders on a Positive School Climate
This resource outlines how school leaders can cultivate a positive school climate and culture by providing transformational leadership, building shared vision and goals, and fostering trust and collective efficacy among staff, students, and families. It highlights practical actions such as forming a school climate team, assessing community needs, selecting and implementing evidence-based supports, setting SMARTIE goals, using data for continuous improvement, and prioritizing responsive professional development to sustain positive environments for learning and well-being.
School Community Readiness
This resource explains community readiness for promoting positive school climate, describing how prepared a school community is to adopt new initiatives, programs, or policies and why assessing readiness matters for successful implementation and sustainability. It outlines the nine levels of readiness and five readiness dimensions (such as leadership support, community climate, knowledge, and resource availability) and provides practical steps and assessment questions to help schools determine their current level of readiness and plan actions to strengthen support before launching change efforts.
Adapting Evidence-Based Programs (EBPs) Part II: Adapting EBPs – Common Reasons
This document expands on the Traffic Light Model for adapting evidence-based programs (EBPs), explaining why, when, and how to make adaptations while preserving effectiveness. It identifies common reasons that lead to red-light (avoid), yellow-light (cautious), and green-light (generally acceptable) adaptations and offers proactive strategies – such as using team planning, connecting with developers and technical assistance providers, and aligning program selection with community needs – to prevent harmful changes. The guide also provides practical examples of adaptations in each category and emphasizes evaluating any approved changes in collaboration with implementation support to maintain program integrity.
Adapting Evidence-Based Programs (EBPs) Part I: The do’s and do not’s
This brief provides guidance on making thoughtful adaptations to evidence-based programs (EBPs) while protecting their essential components. It uses a “traffic light” approach to distinguish types of changes—green-light adaptations that improve fit without compromising core elements, yellow-light changes that require careful consideration and consultation, and red-light changes that should be avoided because they could reduce effectiveness. The resource emphasizes planning, consulting program developers or technical assistance providers before adapting, and documenting any approved adaptations to support fidelity and positive outcomes.
Adapting Evidence-Based Programs: A Guide
This document presents scenario-based guidance on adapting evidence-based programs to better meet community or population needs while preserving essential core components. It clarifies which adaptations are appropriate, which require caution, and when consultation with program developers is recommended to maintain fidelity to the original model.
The Meaning of “Evidence-Based” Programs
This handout outlines criteria for what it means to say a program is ‘evidence-based’ and where programs then fall along a ‘continuum of confidence’.
Communicating Evaluation Results
The Dissemination Evaluation Tool guides practitioners through the intentional process of sharing program evaluation findings with key audiences—such as stakeholders, community members, funders, and policymakers—in ways that are accessible, understandable, and actionable. It explains why dissemination matters (e.g., increasing awareness of program impact, informing decision-making, fostering collaboration, and supporting sustainability), outlines how to tailor messages to different audiences, and offers strategies and formats for effectively communicating results so they drive learning, improvement, and informed action.