Senator Reid »

What Do We Know About Our Learners?

Senator Reid is located in the North-West part of Surrey, close to the Delta border, three blocks east of our catchment High School, LA Matheson.  Our school population, approximately 380 students, is culturally diverse,  and reflective of Surrey City Centre.  The majority of our students are English Language Learners.  Our school has close ties to the community and we host Community Schools Partnership (C-SP) for students and families including a breakfast and lunch program, PALS (Parents as Literacy Supporters), Canada Scores (Poetry/Soccer After-school Program) and B.L.A.S.T.  (Bringing Learning to After School Time). 

Most recently, we were the first elementary school in Surrey to partner with a high school for the “Next 100 Years” project.  This project’s purpose is to connect students, particularly students from India, to their roots and celebrate their ancestry.  It is also about taking pride in their culture today and in the future.  Safe Schools in Surrey has also introduced us to the Yo Bro/Yo Girl Initiative after school for which nearly all our Grade 6s and 7s are involved.

At Senator Reid Elementary we embrace our similarities and differences.

We have an extremely dedicated staff, including both teachers and EAs, who coach team sports such as soccer, cross country, volleyball, basketball and track and field.  Senator Reid has a history of strong basketball teams, a strong tradition of student leadership (WE School) that supports both local and global initiatives including The Surrey Food Bank.

What will be our Focus?

The staff has dedicated time at many staff meetings to discuss, and collaborate on school (student) strengths and needs.  After engaging in a process of discussion and prioritization; Senator Reid Staff decided to make Social Responsibility (Taking Care of Self, Others and Community) as well as Social Emotional Learning (SEL) a priority focus, specifically, the areas of self-awareness and self-management.  This comes from noticing an increasing need to help students learn to regulate their emotions, to understand themselves as learners and to see the connection between the two.

We will make use of Stuart Shanker’s work, “Calm, Alert, and Learning” for some of the theoretical implications in our school.  We will work from the common text, “The Zones of Regulation” when working with our students on the practical side.

What is Social Emotional Learning and Why is it Important?

Social Emotional Learning is one of the Surrey Schools’ Learning by Design Priority Practices. Social Emotional Learning has a large body of research that supports its importance as a foundational component of successful schools.

To get a better idea of what Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is, watch this video: What is SEL?

CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning) explains the areas of SEL.

BC CURRICULUM CORE COMPETENCIES

The core competencies, along with literacy and numeracy foundations and essential content/concepts are at the centre of  BC’s redesigned curriculum.  Core Competencies are sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need to develop in order to engage in deep learning and life-long learning.  Linking closely to our work in social-emotional learning is the Personal and Social Core Competency.  This is the set of abilities that relate to students’ identity in the world, both as individuals and as members of their community and society.  At Senator Reid, our Grade 6s and 7s have a deep focus in this area, while connecting with LA Matheson Secondary and Safe Schools in their “Next 100 Years” project. 

Personal and social competency encompasses the abilities students need to thrive as individuals, to understand and care about themselves and others, and to find and achieve their purposes in the world.  Specifically linked to our work in SEL is Personal Awareness and Responsibility.  This includes the skills, strategies, and dispositions that help students to stay healthy and active, set goals, monitor progress, regulate emotions, respect their own rights and the rights of others, manage stress, and persevere in difficult situations.  Our partnership with Yo Bro/Yo Girl works to support our Upper Intermediate students in this vein.

Students who demonstrate personal awareness and responsibility demonstrate self-respect and express a sense of personal well-being.  Also closely linked to SEL is the area of Social Responsibility.  Social Responsibility involves the ability and disposition to consider the interdependence of people with each other and the natural environment; to contribute positively to one’s family, community, society, and the environment; to resolve problems peacefully; to empathize with others and appreciate their perspectives, and to create and maintain healthy relationships.  Senator Reid believes in Taking Care of Yourself, Others and Our Community.  We do this with some leadership guidance through an organization called “We Schools“.  This organization helps our students to find and maintain a focus.

What Do We Want to Learn?

Student office referrals have declined from 2015/2016 school year (89) to (58) in 2016/2017.  We believe this may be related to several factors such as:

• The Group of Students Involved
• Increased Focus on Ancestry/Roots and Respective Cultural Pride
• Targeted After School Programs (Student age / Program type)

This begins to beg the Inquiry Question: 

What must we do to decrease referrals further?  If what we have been doing is working, will maintaining existing programs and increasing others support a continuing decline in student office referrals (red tickets)?

What Professional Learning Do We Need?

We currently have a Green, Yellow and Red Ticket system.  Green tickets are like “Gotchas” where students have been caught doing something great and helpful, meeting our goal of “Taking Care of Self, Others and/or Community”.  Yellow tickets are a teacher to teacher communication slip about a child who has made a mistake.  Yellow tickets are ordinarily not shared with the office.  Red tickets are office referrals – usually related to something outside of the classroom or of a serious nature beyond the typical handling of a teacher.  We will continue to maintain those information slips.

During the balance of the 2017/18 school year, staff will look at the SEL competency document created by our school district and begin to collect data on students’ understanding and level of competence in the areas.

Staff will engage in professional development on the May non-instructional day to learn more about the 5 domains of Self Regulation (based on the work of Dr. Stuart Shanker). We will then develop whole school and grade group lessons and focus based on determined need.

Teachers will share resources, participate in webinars and may review some of the commercially available products for purchase other than the ones currently in use at our school:

• Theory:  Calm, Alert and Learning, by Stuart Shanker
• Practical:  Zones of Regulation, by Leah Kuypers

What is Our Plan?

Our plan is to gain a better understanding of Social Emotional Learning and how it impacts students.  Through use of developed tools and rubrics, we will gain a better insight into student needs (both individual and as a cohort).

Teachers will then work together with the support of the District Helping teachers, Principal, Counsellor, Child Youth Care Worker and Education Assistants to provide explicit instruction in the area of Self-regulation (Self-awareness and self-management).  Over time, teachers will review, reflect, and reassess to determine the impact of this instruction.