I want to start by thanking Jeannine Carlberg for organizing our Red Ribbon events last week. We talked about making healthy choices in the primary grades and dug into issues of bullying and anti-vaping in our upper grades. Red Ribbon Week is a great chance for school to reinforce all of the messages we know you parents send to your kids every day.
On a related note, one of our school and district's priorities is Social Emotional Learning (SEL). We are continuing our work in this area with our curriculum, Sanford Harmony. As with any curriculum, we want to make sure that we have accurate student data to help guide our work. To do this, we will be using a survey which gathers information on students’ self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills and responsible decision making. Below are some sample questions of the survey for students.
How often is the following true for you (never, sometimes, often, always):
- I know what I am good at
- I can tell when someone is upset
- I can finish school work even when I do not feel like it
- I know the adults at my school care about me
- I love learning
Studies have shown that improving SEL has a great impact on student outcomes, such as academic growth, positive attitudes about school and it also serves to decrease emotional distress and conduct problems. It is our hope that using measures like the SEL survey will help our school staff to provide timely support for all students.
Here’s to another great week of learning together!
Ondi Tricaso
Principal