This article explores how a laboratory middle school (LMS) serving students from low-performing elementary schools and students with academic or social-emotional challenges is developing as a trauma-responsive school. The authors explore the literature, school/community context, student cases, and the ways in which classroom and school-wide practices are trauma-informed. Trauma-informed practices focus on individual students as well as whole classroom and school-wide initiatives, potentially benefiting all, not only those students experiencing trauma. At LMS, a community of care system, evaluation committee, tribe and village meetings, the democratic classroom approach, project-based learning, as well as focused enrichment and remediation are all initiatives that have demonstrated some success. Documentation of such successes merits exploration in other middle schools. The LMS team seeks to understand and implement highest leverage practice as students are challenged academically, their socioemotional needs are supported, and resiliency is built not only in the classroom but also in the lives of the young adolescents themselves.

This chapter shares the way in which one principal preparation program builds and assesses leadership capacity through the use of a tool called Core Competencies for School Leaders or CCSL. The CCSL tool views competencies as actionable behaviors that can be observed and measured in both quantitative and/or qualitative ways. Competencies cross several leadership domains, determined primarily by established state and national leadership standards. The CCSLs provide relevant, contextually responsive, standard-based, and research informed field experiences. The authors purport the CCSLs and the wrap-around processes of which learning is dependent (e.g., reflection, collaborative dialogue, feedback), advance awareness, and capacity across leadership domains. Competencies serve to both build and evaluate leadership capacity. In conjunction with other research informed practices for leadership preparation, competencies can play an integral role in the development and growth of aspiring school leaders.