You’ve received your RSSI snapshot — now it’s time to use it.
This episode explains how Illinois schools interpret their data and choose the right pillar for action.

Your school took the RSSI screener. You received your resilience snapshot. Now what?

In the premiere episode of Inside Resilient Schools, school counselor Miguel Sandoval and school social worker Diane Kowalski walk through how to interpret your RSSI snapshot — and how to move from data to action.

They break down the three layers that shape every snapshot:

• Your 15 survey responses
• Illinois School Report Card data
• 5Essentials school climate data

Together, these create a building-specific picture of strengths and growth areas across four pillars: trauma-responsiveness, social-emotional learning, mental health, and cultural responsiveness.

This episode explains:

• How to read your snapshot without treating it like a report card
• How to choose the right pillar for your school
• What the TRS-IA, SMH-QA, CASEL Staff Survey, and CARE Assessment actually do
• How Communities of Practice support sustainable implementation

The snapshot is diagnostic — not punitive. And it’s only the beginning.

If your school has its RSSI snapshot, this episode helps you take the next step.

Produced by The Signal Lab using AI-generated voices. All content is human-written, fact-checked against CCR and ISBE materials, and reviewed by CCR’s communications team. Personas are fictional characters representing authentic professional perspectives.

When schools can’t fund prevention, taxpayers fund crisis.
This episode makes the fiscal case for dedicated Illinois investment in RSSI — a statewide resilience framework already working in schools.

What does it actually cost Illinois when schools don’t have the tools to respond to trauma early?

In this inaugural episode of The Springfield Signal, special education teacher Beth Lindgren and family liaison Miguel Sandoval make the fiscal case for dedicated state funding for RSSI — the Resilience-Supportive Schools Illinois framework developed by the Center for Childhood Resilience and endorsed by ISBE.

Drawing from decades of classroom experience, Beth explains how the price of inaction shows up elsewhere: juvenile detention, residential placements, emergency psychiatric holds, and educator burnout. Miguel shares how schools serving families under intense stress — from immigration uncertainty to poverty — have long relied on discipline because prevention infrastructure wasn’t funded.

RSSI offers a different path:
• A brief, voluntary school screener
• A personalized resilience snapshot
• Evidence-based tools across four pillars
• A framework already operating statewide

The missing piece? Stable state investment — particularly coaching support that turns data into daily practice.

Illinois built RSSI. The evidence exists. Schools are using it.

The question for Springfield is simple: do we fund what works, or keep paying for what doesn’t?

Produced by The Signal Lab using AI-generated voices. All content is human-written, fact-checked against CCR and ISBE materials, and reviewed by CCR’s communications team. Personas are fictional characters representing authentic professional perspectives.

Fifteen questions. Ten minutes. One clearer picture of your school.
In this episode, we explore how the RSSI Screener Survey helps Illinois administrators uncover strengths and gaps in trauma-responsiveness, mental health, and school climate.

What if ten minutes could change how you see your entire school?

In this premiere episode of The Resilience Snapshot, Principal Nadine Okafor and school social worker Diane Kowalski unpack the 15-question RSSI Screener Survey — and why it’s more than “just another survey.”

Built by the Center for Childhood Resilience in partnership with ISBE, RSSI combines voluntary screener responses with existing Illinois School Report Card and 5Essentials data to generate a personalized resilience snapshot across four pillars:

• Trauma-responsiveness
• Social-emotional learning
• Mental health
• Cultural responsiveness

Nadine shares how the RSSI snapshot revealed blind spots in her own building — not a crisis, but a starting point. Diane explains why adverse childhood experiences don’t follow zip codes and why every Illinois school benefits from a shared framework for recognizing and responding to student stress.

If you’re an Illinois administrator, this episode walks you through exactly how to access the RSSI Screener Survey inside IWAS — and why those fifteen questions may be the most important ten minutes your school invests this year.

Your data already tells a story. RSSI helps you see it.

Produced by The Signal Lab using AI-generated voices. All content is human-written, fact-checked against CCR and ISBE materials, and reviewed by CCR’s communications team. Personas are fictional characters representing authentic professional perspectives.