Lena Shaw Elementary
OUR CONTEXT
Lena Shaw is a dynamic, vibrant community of resilient learners and dedicated, caring staff. We are a school whose beauty comes from the diversity of our students’ cultures and backgrounds. We lean on each other, and draw from our strengths as both staff and students, to solve problems and embrace our best potential. Lena Shaw is committed to being an inclusive and safe space for students to grow as people and help serve their community. We provide a variety of programs and extracurricular activities to support student learning, and the opportunity to explore their personal identity.
Our Students
Lena Shaw students are resilient, kind, empathetic members of our community. They bring joy and enthusiasm to their learning every day. Our students are eager to learn! Our students seek and respond well to safe, trusted adults within our community. When given opportunities for leadership, our students meet and exceed expectations. Our students thrive on hands-on, practical activities that challenge their critical and creative thinking. They value the many opportunities offered throughout the school to explore their interests and identity. Our learners embrace the opportunities offered by local green spaces, such as Green Timbers Park and Hawthorne Park. This allows students to learn in a holistic and experiential way, with a focus on connectedness to nature.
Our Staff
Lena Shaw staff are constantly working to build relationships with students and foster equitable practices in self-reflection and critical thinking. With that, committing to promoting and modeling effective self-regulation strategies is paramount to the success of our student population in their academic and social emotional development. In order to facilitate these practices, staff provide opportunities and programs to cater to students’ individual needs and passions. Differentiated learning is incorporated into classrooms at all grade levels every day. Some of these programs include extracurricular sports, after-school clubs, breakfast and lunch programs, Bannock and Books events, leadership programs and clubs, lunch monitoring, fundraising, Pride club, knitting club, book club, DND club and more! Staff work to strategically provide equitable support to students to help guide them to be successful in their school experience and build self-worth.
Parents / Community
Parents and guardians are an important part of our school community. There is a constant open and transparent line of communication between staff and families. Parents and families place significant trust in the Lena Shaw staff to provide a safe and inclusive environment for learning. They know and trust that their children will be cared for, and set up for success each day. Our parents are a collaborative part of our learning community. Our parents are critical stakeholders in Individual Education Plans, conversations around student learning, field trip planning, and volunteering. Our school’s Parent Advisory Council is active in fundraising to provide access to field trips and classroom incentives.
President and PAC committee:
"We as parents feel it is our role to encourage healthy relationships with peers, being aware, respectful, empathetic and accepting of others. To help them with time management and feel good about themselves.
As PAC members, we feel our role is to work with the school, working to fundraise to give our children opportunities for learning and fun. To spread awareness in the community creating a kinship that we are all here to help each other, which in turn makes community bonds stronger and hopefully incentivize them to also help out."
OUR LEARNERS
At Lena Shaw our learners make connections to their community. Students can explain how they are using their strengths and abilities in different ways. At Lena Shaw, our students work closely with Child Care Workers, Social Development Workers, Aboriginal Child Care Workers, Counsellor, Integrated Support Team, after school programs and BLAST. This offers students a variety of trusted adults who can support students both academically and emotionally. Students have opportunities to explore their identities and make connections to their cultural backgrounds in safe spaces.
In order to meet our learners’ diverse needs, Lena Shaw is committed to providing a foundation in social-emotional learning. We see the benefits of teaching our students specific self-regulation strategies in order to develop their resiliency. Our learners are constantly exposed to a variety of SEL tools, including Zones of Regulation, MindUP, deep-breathing techniques, yoga, safe spaces to regulate. These tools support our students to recognize and identify their emotions with the intent of learning to self-regulate.
Through the use of the SEL tools, the intention is for our learners to be able to self-regulate, identify their emotions and identify strategies to regulate. This allows students to gain a stronger sense of empathy while also acknowledging other’s emotions, it also helps students to stay present in the moment and focus on the task at hand. In order to be successful in academics, students need to be regulated and have a foundation in Social and Emotional skills.
Through the lens of Social and Emotional Learning, our community draws from the First People's Principles while frequently referring back to the curricular competencies.
OUR FOCUS
The BC Ministry of Education identifies the core competencies as "sets of intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need in order to engage in deep, life-long learning."
Lena Shaw is drawing from The Personal and Social Core Competency. In particular, Social Awareness and Responsibility involves the awareness, understanding, and appreciation of connections among people, including between people and the natural environment. Social Awareness and Responsibility focuses on interacting with others and the natural world in respectful and caring ways.
People who are socially aware and responsible contribute to the well-being of their social and physical environments. They support the development of welcoming and inclusive communities, where people feel safe and have a sense of belonging.
A socially aware and responsible individual contributes positively to their family, community, and environment; empathizes with others and appreciates their perspectives; resolves problems peacefully; and develops and sustains healthy relationships.
The focus at Lena Shaw is to intentionally build connections, trusting relationships, and safe learning environments in order to engage in deep, reflective learning.
Moving forward into the 2022/2023 school year, we will continue to strategically build connections, safe learning environments, as well as facilitate and draw upon a number or curricular areas to further our goals. First, we will continue to support all students in finding safe spaces, and building friendships. We will continue to collect data at regular intervals through various means: surveys, reflective writing, and through observations on individual student successes. Using our SEL practices, we want to measure if our students can make the connection between a safe, caring learning environment, and their ability to engage in deep, reflective learning.
Language Arts
Through the subject area of Language Arts, teachers will have a focus of both oral and written language. Students will be able to explore these through morning meetings, journal writing and self-reflections. Students will learn to share their learned strategies of self-regulation, sharing pieces of their identity using oral language or drawings. SEL can be incorporated in a variety of ways in Language Arts; for some students this may be using their Touch Chat to describe their emotions or creating a sentence explaining their needs. For others, teachers can start their mornings with a morning meeting and help facilitate conversations about various tools and strategies for self-regulation such as, zones of regulation, calm down corners, and breathing techniques. During journaling students can be given a prompt to discuss some of the strategies they use to regulate their emotions, gifted students can draw a picture during this time or use a Touch Chat to share their ideas.
Through Journal writing 75% of our grade 4 and 5’s will can 8/10 will be able to identify SEL through journal writing will be able to identify a trusted adult.
Physical education
In physical education teachers are constantly drawing upon the Big Idea stating, “developing healthy relationships help us feel connected, supported and valued.” Teachers discuss how our bodies are constantly changing and growing, through conversations around puberty and understanding our bodies and body image. Students also take risks by performing in front of others, they have an opportunity to be vulnerable and see others do the same. Through SEL students learn to show kindness for different levels of abilities and physical limitations. As a result, students build empathy and respect towards each other and develop trusting relationships.
OUR NEXT STEPS
As part of our school focus of building connections, trusting relationships, and safe learning environments in order to engage students in deep, reflective learning; teachers at Lena Shaw produced a survey for grade 4 and 5 students to reflect on their connections within the school. Our intentions are to measure our goals in the present time; to assess our strengths in these areas, as well as deficits. This year's data will serve as a baseline in which we compare future assessments to ensure we are meeting The Personal and Social Core Competency.
The following are the results of the survey:
The results from the survey indicated that majority of students have a trusted adult in the school they can talk to. These adults provide either a safe place, support for students when required, a place where they can seek help with problem solving or advice. Based on our initial data, we can see these are areas to be celebrated.
Moving forward into the 2022/2023 school year, we will continue to strategically build connections, safe learning environments, as well as facilitate and draw upon a number or curricular areas to further our goals. First, we will continue to support all students in finding safe spaces, and building friendships. We will continue to collect data at regular intervals through various means: surveys, reflective writing, and through observations on individual student successes. Using our SEL practices, we want to measure if our students can make the connection between a safe, caring learning environment, and their ability to engage in deep, reflective learning.
Surrey Schools
Formed in 1906, the Surrey School District currently has the largest student enrolment in British Columbia and is one of the few growing districts in the province. It is governed by a publicly elected board of seven trustees.
The district serves the cities of Surrey and White Rock and the rural area of Barnston Island.
