Ensuring Smooth Academic Transitions for Military Children in Public Schools: A Q&A with Diana Pineda, Program Director of Welcoming Practices

Pineda walks us through the ins and outs of this initiative to ensure military children experience seamless academic transitions.

Too often, the sacrifices and obstacles of military children go unrecognized. These children move with their families every one to three years on average, and are likely to attend anywhere from six to nine schools between kindergarten and their senior year of high school.

In honor of Military Appreciation Month, Diana Pineda, program director and adjunct lecturer at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, explains in this Q&A the work that programs such as USC’s Building Capacity in Military-Connected Schools and Welcoming Practices are pioneering.

USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work: You worked previously on the Building Capacity program, and now you’re involved with Welcoming Practices. Could you briefly describe the genesis of each program, and what problem each is meant to address?

Diana Pineda: I started off with the Building Capacity in Military-Connected Schools program, a partnership of eight school districts in San Diego and Riverside counties, with USC leading the consortium. We received funding from the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) to work with school districts to change school climate so military-connected and non-military students feel supported. The model was intended to achieve certain overarching goals: to assist public schools in creating military-friendly school environments; increase capacity for workers in these school districts to address the social and emotional needs of students; and create an infrastructure that sustains trainings and programs.

Welcoming Practices that Address Transition Needs of Military Students in Public Schools has three main goals: 1) increasing school engagement, belonging, academic achievement and well-being of transitioning students, 2) increasing school engagement and satisfaction of transitioning parents, and 3) enhancing awareness of the needs of transitioning families and spreading best practices and technologies developed by the consortium.

USC: Could you discuss the training component of this model?

DP: The program involved training our Master of Social Work students through an orientation, monthly seminars and specialized field instruction that included military culture. In our Building Capacity model, we placed a large number of social work interns at school sites to address the needs of military-connected students and families — specifically, implementing procedures and supportive activities to help new students feel welcomed and to provide academic support. Interns also conducted behavioral assessments, provided therapeutic interventions and case management, and educated families. These students filled a huge need for social workers in our school systems.

USC: What were some of the course materials or publications that were developed alongside this training program?

DP: We developed a training manual for our DoDEA interns and a publication with four guides geared toward different audiences: parents, administrators, teachers and The Pupil Personnel Guide For Supporting Students From Military Families. The Pupil Personnel guides were used by school counseling teams and as an educational tool for our MSW interns.

Our interns also received a school-based skill-building training that involved emotional regulation and problem-solving. The training was made available through a partnership we developed with UCLA FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress) to provide our interns with the skills to address the pressures a lot of our military-connected students experience.

USC: How does data and information analysis factor into the Building Capacity program?

DP: A large part of Building Capacity involved data and the monitoring of information. We collaborated with the California Department of Education, particularly their contractor WestEd, to develop a survey tool — essentially a 30-part questionnaire — that could be used by districts to administer questions about the needs of military-connected students and their families. The survey was used to monitor student behavior, experiences and attitudes toward schools.

Our research team analyzed the California Healthy Kids Survey results and shared our findings with the districts. This military module is now listed on WestEd’s website and is available to any school district in California.

USC: Fantastic!

DP: There are lots of components involved with Building Capacity. In addition to training interns and providing staff development trainings, we brought in the Military Child Education Coalition. Their involvement provided an opportunity for school administrators, counselors and educators to attend workshops that we hosted. Each year we also provided school staff development trainings.

USC: How did Building Capacity inform Welcoming Practices?

DP: We learned through Building Capacity that there was a need for these schools to actively engage incoming families, and Welcoming Practices was created in response to this need. We are in our fourth year, and the program involves five school districts: Chula Vista Elementary School District, Bonsall Union School District, Oceanside Unified, Fallbrook Union High School District and Temecula Valley Unified School District.

We want to ensure that staff members receive the professional development they need to create welcoming transition routines for incoming students.

USC: What does that protocol consist of, and could you elaborate on the welcome center component?

DP: The protocol includes information and a plan for how districts welcome and support new families. This includes a welcome center and a liaison or navigator to help families, where student leaders greet new students and help orient the family to the school site with a tour, map and other resources.

The welcome center is a safe space to greet new students, and invite families to attend an orientation and meet with the school principal or a district administrator. We think of it as a one-stop shop for districts: They get information about the school and enrollment, receive all the forms they need to complete, and have the chance to learn more about the school and community. Each district in the program made its welcome center a little different.

We also developed a mobile application called WelConnect, which provides resources in four different categories: district, school, community and military. The app provides a convenient way for school staff and counselors to quickly access and share resources for students and families. It also has a rating system and geo-mapping feature to connect families.

USC: Do you have any sense of the overall impact of the program? And how do you measure what impact you do see?

DP: Our evaluation team has analyzed both quantitative and qualitative data on the positive outcomes from Building Capacity and Welcoming Practices. Results have been published in hundreds of articles noting the model and importance of schools providing various levels of support to military-connected students and their families. Such articles cover the capacity building of interns in schools, the importance of developing a monitoring system, and the spread of grassroots and evidence-based programs.

As a result, our team has received several requests to meet with other districts to discuss best practices, present at conferences and meet with international educational systems to assist in implementing a monitoring system. The dissemination of our four guidebooks has reached several hundred K-12 school districts, informing parents, administrators and teachers. These have also been used in college-level courses to train new educators. We have also seen many of our consortium districts create school social work positions, implement policies that include a military-connected identifier, and expand student-led leadership programs. Our program was highlighted at Operation Educate the Educators, a White House event in which hundreds of higher education representatives learned about the initiative.

USC: What do you envision for the future of Welcoming Practices? Are there any new initiatives on the horizon?

DP: Our project is coming to a close — it’s a grant-funded program, and this is the final year. In terms of sustainability, we know the districts involved will continue to operate the leadership programs, awareness programs and welcome centers. We know that many districts are creating plans to continue components of the model and have budgeted accordingly. The same goes for many of the on-the-ground programs dealing with student leadership and staff development.