Still I RISE: Innovative Work at Da Vinci RISE High School

Key Points

• Da Vinci RISE High School in Los Angeles is designed to support historically underserved youth, including those facing foster care, housing instability, and the juvenile justice system, by providing a flexible, trauma-informed, and community-collaborative education model.
• Through a multi-campus structure and partnerships with mission-aligned nonprofits, RISE ensures students have access to vital academic, mental health, and material resources while maintaining stability despite life transitions.
• RISE integrates real-world learning, project-based experiences, and work opportunities to make education relevant, empowering students to build meaningful futures while balancing personal responsibilities.

CASEL’s series of Innovations reports share innovative conceptions, methods, and practices that embody the principles of social and emotional learning (SEL), along with aligned strategies that maximize learning and well-being for students in each setting of CASEL’s systemic SEL framework. In this blog, we share one of the case studies highlighted in the latest report from the series, By Choice, Not Chance: Engaging Social and Emotional Learning to Create a Supportive Climate and Discipline Strategies.

Nestled on Central Ave and 29th, in the epicenter of what was once the west coast jazz scene, blocks away from the location of the first national convention of the NAACP, sits the first Da Vinci RISE High School micro-campus. RISE serves as the home of a new revolution in Los Angeles, one centering the lived-experiences of youth who have been historically underestimated. The students RISE serves often have complicated lives and schedules; many were let down by their traditional high schools and now need extra support.

Designed and redesigned around the intricate needs of youth who interface with foster care, housing instability, and the juvenile justice system, RISE is committed to using these experiences to construct a universally designed school well-equipped to serve all students.

A cornerstone of the RISE model is collocating with mission-aligned nonprofits that serve as collaborators in providing the material, academic, physical, and mental health resources youth need to access an empowering education. This multi-campus model ensures that when/if students are displaced, they likely have a RISE site within their region and can advocate to remain at their school of origin as they are transitioning placements. Micro-campuses also allow this population an easier access point to develop supportive relationships in a space where many of them have historically been traumatized and excluded.

Creating a Supportive Culture Is Everyone’s Job

At Da Vinci RISE, creating a supportive culture is everyone’s job; the student services team works in tandem with the teachers, administrators, and operations staff to ensure youth are holistically cared for. Behavior interventionists, case manager-counselors, and school psychologists circulate the building pulling students for one-on-one counseling, college and career advising, anger management, resource allocation, and more, ensuring that students’ baseline needs are always accounted for. Prioritization around training all staff in the fields of restorative justice, trauma-informed care, and non-violent crisis intervention allows RISE to operate as a largely non-expulsion and non-suspension school, even while recruiting and serving youth who are often expelled and suspended from their previous schools.

RISE High’s design reflects a set of beliefs about how learning best occurs, tied to the school’s overall principles and values, based in extensive conversations with stakeholders (including students), and grounded in research on best practices in education, particularly for those students who have not been successful in more traditional learning environments. Project-based learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, trauma-informed care, and flexible scheduling are all key facets of the RISE model that ensures our students’ success.

Meeting Students’ Needs

Many RISE students are unable to attend school for eight hours a day due to competing but vital life priorities such as maintaining a household income, obtaining food and shelter, and providing childcare for siblings. As such, we became chartered as an independent studies school to allow our youth to complete assignments whenever and wherever they are. This also means we can curate individualized schedules upon intake.

The traditional independent study model of a single teacher managing multiple course packets for scores of students limits academic rigor and frustrates often already academically low-skilled students. At RISE High, students understand that learning happens in all aspects of life and not just within the four walls of a traditional classroom during specified times each day. Our flexible scheduling model within an independent study framework enables students to both receive instructional time and meet their personal needs outside of school, such as working to support themselves and their families, attending court dates, receiving counseling and mental health services, or caring for their own children or younger siblings.

Students engage in interdisciplinary and real world-driven projects with industry partners and rigorous feedback cycles during their days on campuses. When offsite, they continue their learning online through Google Classroom leveraging adaptive learning technologies and teacher-curated assignments and lessons.

Making Education Relevant

RISE High seeks to make education relevant and engaging for all students by providing opportunities for thinking about how their education will apply to their life and career beyond school. Through partnerships with local industries and organizations, students have opportunities to participate in exciting internships and earn work experience that prepare them for jobs they wish to pursue in the future. Students are also connected to paying jobs where possible if they need financial support and are prepared and supported through work readiness and financial literacy courses. Skills learned in real-world experiences can result in mastered competencies and count towards course credit.

As RISE has stayed committed to the holistic wellness and preparedness of our youth, we have seen an influx of highly qualified alumni coming back to work at RISE and throughout the Da Vinci School network. RISE currently has three alumni serving on staff and a fourth working at another school within the network. We can’t think of a better endorsement of the supportive climate we seek to create.

Images courtesy of Da Vinci RISE HIgh School.

The views in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CASEL.

Born into a proud Black, Chicano, and Indigenous family, Erin Whalen began his career in education in Miami, Florida, through Teach for America.  Nominated Teacher of the Year in Miami, he transferred back home to Los Angeles to work at KIPP: Sol in East Los Angeles. During Erin’s time in Miami, he met his now son, Sicard, who was in his first English class. Sicard’s story of housing instability sparked Erin’s passion to create a school designed around the intricate needs of youth who are often written out of the education system, foster, probation, and unhoused, which resulted in the founding of Da Vinci RISE. Today, Da Vinci RISE is a nationally recognized model for serving the most at-promise youth in Los Angeles. At Da Vinci RISE, Erin has served as assistant principal and humanities teacher, principal, and executive Director, and now as assistant superintendent of student support services of the Da Vinci Schools Charter network. He holds a masters in school leadership from Loyola Marymount University and doctorate in social studies from Grinnell College.

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