Funding for first year available!
Miss Kendra Programs is a trauma-informed, social and emotional learning (SEL) program that equips schools to proactively address the social and emotional needs of their students as they return to school while continuing to grapple with the ongoing threat of COVID-19, the lasting impacts of extended school closures and stay-at-home orders, and the upending of many other aspects of their lives.
Miss Kendra Programs offer an established, cost-effective, and sustainable intervention to help meet the emotional needs of children as they return to school by giving them a safe space to share their stressors and worries and by equipping schools to create whole-school environments that welcome open conversation about stressful experiences.
In more than 40 schools in 10 states, Miss Kendra Programs has consistently reduced disruptive behaviors, increased teacher efficacy, and improved school climate, regardless of race or socioeconomic status, in rural and urban communities. Best of all, because the program trains teachers and school support staff to deliver the program, Miss Kendra Programs produces lasting improvements in a school’s ability to support children’s social and emotional health at a cost that schools can sustain.
Miss Kendra Programs is now expanding in elementary schools across Minnesota to respond to the widespread need for effective SEL programs that reach every student in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. SEL programs that rely on remedial approaches involving intensive interventions with the most distressed and symptomatic students can cost upwards of $5,000 per student per year. Miss Kendra Programs offers an affordable, sustainable alternative, with an annual, per-student cost of roughly $50 during the first year of the program and approximately $10 in Year 2 and beyond.
The Nationwide push to reopen schools encourages districts to find programs that will help address trauma and childhood stress in the wake of the pandemic. Elementary schools in Minnesota can apply to become a Miss Kendra school and the first 20 accepted schools can receive up to a $20,000 grant to offset the costs of their first year of Miss Kendra implementation.
To learn more about Miss Kendra Programs Minnesota Expansion initiative and becoming a Miss Kendra school, click here.
Miss Kendra Programs is looking for elementary schools that have experience delivering trauma-informed care, that can make a whole-school commitment to the program’s guiding principles of trauma-sensitivity, non-punitive discipline, and a whole-child approach, and that are prepared to sustain the program.
If your school is ready to move beyond being trauma-informed and ready to address trauma proactively, become a Miss Kendra school today!