Communications Playbook
How do we talk about the skills and competencies that help our young people learn and grow in a way that’s intuitive and actionable? This became the call to action that led the National Commission and Learning Heroes to collaborate in developing a suite of communications resources to help our partners address this challenge.We hope these resources will help you effectively engage with multiple audiences, but especially with families, educators and youth-serving leaders, about the development of social, emotional, and cognitive skills in children. They’re meant to deepen understanding about the value of an integrated approach to learning and development; help the adults who support children find shared language for talking about these efforts; and, ultimately, further inspire and motivate the efforts of so many organizations, institutions, and communities that are already working to support the whole student.
These resources are grounded in research on how different audiences think about learning, the role of school, and the best use of out-of-school time. They were developed in consultation with families and educators across the country. And they’ve been conceptualized in close collaboration with national and community-based organizations and groups. The resources are grouped into three broad categories:
- Translated Research includes tools to help educators, youth-development leaders, and community partners communicate with families and parents about this topic. A synthesis of research that compares and contrasts how different audiences think about social, emotional, and academic development will be added soon. Check back!
- How Learning Happens: Creative Assets features tools that convey what science knows about how learning happens in intuitive and emotionally resonant ways.
- Finally, forthcoming Case Studies will document how a few organizations integrated the resources in their local settings and will share their resulting takeaways and lessons learned.
We invite you to use these resources as your own. We hope they help spark the conversations and collaborations that put our collective knowledge into practice for the benefit of our nation’s young people.