SSRCE supports the growth of each student's heart (emotional well-being),
spirit (relational well-being), mind (cognitive well-being), and body (physical well-being).
Follow the link to access the grounding documents guiding our
SSRCE Well-Being initiatives.
SENSE-MAKING
Identify a well-being themes from data
Use your Student Success Survey (S.S.S.) to identify theme areas in your school that may need attention. Consider each section of the S.S.S. as a potential theme area.
SETTING GOALS + TAKING ACTION
Identify a well-being goal from the theme area
Within this/these theme area(s), identify a school goal for the 2024-2025 school year.
Empower your Student Well-Being Team
Empower your student well-being team to identify actions and strategies that would support meeting this goal. These actions and strategies will be your short cycle goals. Your very first short cycle goal is to engage student voice.
Implement actions towards your goal
Work with your full school community to implement the actions and strategies/ short cycle goals.
REFLECTION + EVALUATION
Evaluate impact
We care about using strategies and actions that work towards building student well-being! We can see the positive impact through evaluating the work. Check out the 'Reflection + Evaluation' section below for ideas on how to evaluate short cycle well-being goals.
Respond
Shift the approach, depending on the results of your evaluations.
Enhancing well-being for students and our school community is grounded in equity and positive relationships. Increase the intentionality and impact of decision making using student evidence.
SENSE-MAKING
Identify well-being theme(s) from data
SETTING GOALS + TAKING ACTION
Identify a well-being goal from the theme area(s)
Empower your Student Well-Being Team to identify impactful actions
Implement actions towards your goal
REFLECTION + EVALUATION
Evaluate impact in collaboration with students
Respond
In SSRCE, we envision Well-Being through the gift of multiple perspectives (Etuaptumumk/Two-Eyed Seeing).
In creating well-being goals, engagement of the school community is key. Engagement of multiple perspectives allows school teams to identify the most effective opportunities for positive impact and enhance buy-in from students, staff, and the community.
Student and community voice is key. To find out more, click here.
Well-Being goals in our Student Success Plans (SSP) are an opportunity to affect change in both student well-being and in the well-being of the school community. This positively impacts school culture and the school environment.
Enhanced student well-being will positively impact student achievement.
Well-being is an interconnective flow of balance amongst the four aspects of humanness: heart, mind, body, and spirit.
Well-being is nurtured and nourished through wholistic experiences which grow understandings of: Who am I? Where do I come from? What is my purpose?
There are many different ways to understand well-being. SSRCE encourages and celebrates multiple perspectives.
Your well-being work is informed by the students and staff that are affected most.
When engaging students and staff, ensure that you include folks with diverse perspectives and understandings of well-being and consider accessibility needs.
Through engaging traditionally marginalized voices at your school, you will clarify how issues of student equity and well-being are manifesting in your school; you will enrich ideas; and you will increase the impact of your actions.
It is also best to engage those who will be most involved in making the well-being work goal happen. For example, if your well-being work relates to Physical Activity, engage your Phys Ed Teachers, an ASK Project Lead, BAP facilitators, etc. If it relates to Eating at School, engage your food service workers, if it relates to Relationships at School engage the Student Support Workers, school counsellors, school psychologists, Schools Plus, SEL Consultant, etc.
The more folks that are a part of the process, the more perspectives, ideas, and hands will shape your goal! That being said, involve too many people and the process can become onerous and slow.
Groups of 12 can be a great size to facilitate for facilitating quality, focused discussion. We encourage you to engage groups of just students, just staff, and integrated groups of both. This will ensure both students and staff have the opportunity to share their ideas, uninhibited by the presence of the other, and also come together and share ideas and perspectives.
For a wholistic understanding of your students + your school culture and environment, we encourage you to engage multiple perspectives and data sources.
Engage staff:
Follow the Notice/Wonder protocol or the CASEL Data Reflection Protocol to review Student Success Survey results with staff - Consider a World Cafe!
As a staff, identify a theme & a well-being goal.
Ensure your school's well-being goal aligns with SSRCE's RSSP Well-Being Goal
"Build school communities where students, staff and families experience a full sense of belonging, have healthy relationships, and engage positively with school."
Engage students to determine the necessary actions for implementing the goal:
Interviews – Speak directly with your students and staff to get their perspective
Focus groups – Facilitate conversations within and between stakeholders. Ask big questions and create space for reflection and ideation.
Fish bowl – This offers a chance for larger groups to listen to a smaller group’s experience.
Micro-surveys- Create and facilitate a survey and allow your students to answer different questions.
Vote with your body –Create a scale from 0 to 10 in a physical space (i.e. the wall to the left is 0 or disagree and the wall to the right is 10 or agree)Pose a question and ask participants to stand in the place on the scale that best represents their answer.
Possible days, times, and conditions for the work:
Conditions for Empowering Student Engagement
To meaningfully engage students in decision-making, leadership, reflection, and action requires certain conditions. When engaging students, ensure that there are:
Opportunities to make a meaningful contribution.
A committed, supportive adult.
A plan to share back results or impacts and reflect.
A culture of support and safety within the group of students and staff involved.
Necessary resources, training, and support in place to support participation.
Staff Engagement
While it can be tricky to find time to engage meaningfully with staff, we have some options:
Staff Meetings
School-Based PD Days
Collaborative Learning Time
After school sessions
Collaborative Meetings with Regional Staff (SSP Lead, Well-Being Support Team)
Let's connect to set a date and time that works for you!
Please connect at:
ssrcewell-being@gnspes.ca
What can we target in our school to have a high positive impact on well-being?
Each of the themes areas below corresponds with the provincial Student Success Survey. After your school team sifts through the Student Success Survey results to narrow down the scope of your well-being work, there are opportunities to choose from multiple characteristics & sample goals with each theme.
How can we be sure we evaluate and share what is most essential?
If you are evaluating the impact of your well-being work in short-cycle, your assessment will be related directly to your goal.
Assessments of process, progress, and impact are done approximately every 90 days and will inform the next step of your school's well-being SSP work.
You might choose to measure growth quantitatively by using pre- and post- student assessments (surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc.).
You can choose to include qualitative data that demonstrate process, such as pictures or other artifacts (posters, etc.).
What are the artifacts that will be the most powerful representations of what we have created?
Reflection + Evaluations options, may include (but are not limited to):
Interviews – Speak directly with your students and staff to get their perspective
Focus groups – Facilitate conversations within and between stakeholders. Ask big questions and create space for reflection and ideation.
Fish bowl – This offers a chance for larger groups to listen to a smaller group’s experience.
Micro-surveys - Access one of these survey templates or create your own.
Student artifacts - Expressive images, writing, videos, posters from students and/or community.
For additional ideas:
Street Data: A Next Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation by Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan
When you are ready to collaborate in any of these areas (Sense-Making, Setting Goals + Taking Action, Reflection + Evaluation),
please reach out to the Well-Being Regional Support Team at ssrcewell-being@gnspes.ca