Bringing Mental Health Knowledge to Schools Through Academic-Community Partnership: A City Year Tale of Equal Service to Training and Research

Abstract

This article highlights an ongoing academic-community partnership between university researchers and City Year Miami, the local site of a national education non-profit serving the nation’s third-largest school district. AmeriCorps Members (ACMs) serve as small-group interventionists and behavior/attendance coaches for the county’s lowest performing students. Collaboration with City Year Miami supplemented their routine workforce support with trainings (n = 18) for City Year Miami Team Leaders (TLs) and ACMs focused on youth mental health. Trainings emphasized the Cognitive Triangle by highlighting how to bring compassion and intentionality to their work with students, school partners (e.g., teachers, teammates, and administrators), and their own self-care. We present our collaboration, the training model, and process data representing three layers of organizational voice that informed iterative revisions and refinement to the training model. Data sources (n = 45 TLs and ACMs) highlight what was learned from each group (TLs, ACMs, and leadership) and include: (1) pre-training survey data, (2) training-generated data such as attendance and exit slips, (3) post-training survey data measuring intent to use training content, and facilitators and barriers to use, and (4) meeting-generated data from formal (planned, agenda-driven) and informal (impromptu) partner discussions. Emphasis is placed on the role of City Year Miami organizational leaders and providers at all stages of research and implementation, as well as lessons learned in this community-partnered, school-engaged work, including takeaways related to positionality, partnership, and research.