Assess team readiness across leadership, facilitation, communication, shared understanding, and capacity before starting¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

Before beginning the guide's chapters, teams complete a readiness assessment evaluating "your district's collective skills, knowledge, and support for alignment and coherence of whole-person initiatives." The assessment poses questions in five areas: leadership (whether LEA leaders have prioritized whole-person initiatives and their alignment), facilitation, coordination and communication (including differences in how the agency defines whole-person work), shared understanding (shared goals and why alignment matters), and team capacity (skills, openness to adapting mindsets, data-informed decisions, and action-planning processes).

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Teams should use readiness responses to decide which preparatory actions to take before implementing the guide; a yes answer to every question is not required to start

Constraints¶

• The guide states that team readiness will vary and that capacity will increase as the district engages in the work

Target Learners¶

• district and school leaders
• implementation teams

Target Learning Goals¶

• organizational readiness for aligning whole-person initiatives

Related Strategies¶

• Form a small cross-departmental team with defined facilitation roles before starting alignment work
• Five getting-started steps for building an integrated, school-based system of care
• Design for influence, not simply participation, and scaffold without replacing partner leadership
• Write SMARTIE action-plan goals that are specific, measurable, ambitious, realistic, time-bound, inclusive, and equitable
• Use the tools as facilitated conversation starters that produce artifacts, not as a checklist exercise
• Seven equity strategies for local leaders, including listening first, strengths-based approaches, and co-design
• Conduct readiness checks and align systems to local student need before replication, expansion, or merger

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Walrond, N. (2021). Serving the whole person: An alignment and coherence guide for local education agencies. WestEd. https://www.wested.org/resources/whole-person-alignment-and-coherence-guide-for-local-education-agencies