The Campaign for Grade Level Reading (CGLR) recently invited Resilient Lehigh Valley to their weekly GLR Tuesdays live stream to highlight their work in building youth resiliency. Resilient Lehigh Valley was honored to have the opportunity to share the work that they do every day to increase youth resiliency through creating trauma-informed and culturally responsive schools and organizations.
CGLR is a collaborative effort by foundations, nonprofits, business and government agencies across the nation to ensure that more children from low income families succeed in school and graduate prepared for college or career. The Campaign focuses on a key predictor for school success and high school graduation – grade level reading by the end of third grade. United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley launched their own CGLR program, called Lehigh Valley Reads. Resilient Lehigh Valley collaborates with LVReads by training educators in a trauma informed school model, promoting healthy emotional regulation skills for students, promoting staff wellness, and promoting safe and supportive learning environments- which in turn helps increase student attendance, staff morale, positive school climates and improved academic performance.
Throughout the CGLR live stream presentation, hosted by Senior Director of Education for United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley and co-founder of Resilient Lehigh Valley, Beth Tomlinson, representatives from Resilient Lehigh Valley, Easton Area School District, City of Bethlehem Police Department, Lehigh University, Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit 21, and United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley highlighted just some of the many ways Resilient Lehigh Valley works within our local schools and organizations to build safe, stable, and nurturing communities through trauma-informed systems through the lens of youth resiliency. The presentation focused on sharing ways we’ve worked to renew hope, healing, and resiliency in our students and families, the success of our Handle With Care program, information on our school staff wellness initiatives, and more.
Malai Amfahr, senior program officer of constituency outreach and engagement for Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, expressed her appreciation for the Resilient Lehigh Valley team’s participation in the live stream event and the leadership and expertise on trauma-informed care that they put forward during their presentation. This particular live stream was the most highly attended Crucible of Practice since the series launch in 2020, with the highest number of registrations, bringing in over 400 attendees. “The topic definitely struck a chord with our network, and this was also evident in the high engagement levels on social media and in the live chat box,” said Amfar. “[Resilient Lehigh Valley] did such a wonderful job managing all of the elements of the presentation as well as the audience comments and moving pieces of the session.”
Resilient Lehigh Valley is honored to have had the opportunity to participate in CGLR’s weekly live stream and we hope that through this collaboration, we were able to further spread awareness on the topic of trauma-informed care in schools and the impact it has on a child’s ability to learn and thrive in and outside of the classroom.
