Thursday, January 19, 2023 Volume 17 Issue 16
At a recent Principal Coffee, Principal May reviewed the data from our school's most recent student climate survey. The district administers these surveys to 3rd-5th grade students three times each year to check in on how they are feeling about school. Our school reviews this information so that we can better understand our students’ school experience.
The survey is broken into a number of sections with several questions in each section. Some items are more pertinent to school initiatives, and we use this information to set goals to improve our efforts. Early this fall, our Building Leadership Team reviewed climate data for last spring and set a goal based on a question under the Social Emotional Learning heading: “At school, I learn how to speak up for what I need.” 76% of our students answered that they agree with this statement, and this was a drop of 9 points from the previous survey administration. We chose this as a focus for improvement for two reasons:
1) Self-advocacy is an important skill throughout life so our students are able to get what they need in school and beyond.
2) Speaking up for what you need is most likely to happen for elementary students who feel cared about by the adults around them. We want to be sure that all our students are connected to multiple adults at our school, so they do feel comfortable going to an adult for help.
Our goal is for every child to have at least 3 adults they know will support them. Adults at school are leaning into this goal. Staff work hard to build relationships with students, and Ms. Matsui is collecting data on whether students feel connected to adults, and how many adults they can name that can help them at school. Most students can name at the very least their homeroom classroom teacher. We encourage students to think beyond this and consider their PE, Art, and Music teachers that they see every week, our counselor and family support worker, our instructional assistants, our nurse, our tutors, our office staff, our nurse, and hopefully Ms. Davidheiser and me! For some of our students, it’s Ms. Liliana in the lunchroom that they see as their special person – there are many ways adults are connecting with children at school. You can help us with this goal by talking to your child at home about adults that care about them at school. Check in with your child to see how many grown-ups they can name. This might give you a little insight into your child’s school life, which is always interesting!
And to keep you up to date on our progress… the percentage of students answering the statement “At school I learn how to speak up for what I need” favorably has grown from 76% in Spring 2022 to now 84% in the Fall of 2022.
A few other highlights from our data:
At school, I learn how to make good choices for myself and my community – 95% favorable
This school is a safe and welcoming place for people from all backgrounds and cultures – 97% favorable
My teacher believes I can do great things – 97% favorable
I enjoy reading – 94%
I am sure that I can learn everything taught in math – 84%
While there are always areas we can improve in, it is exciting to see a majority of our intermediate students feeling so positively about school.
