Tamanawis Secondary 22-23

Physical & Health Education: an inquiry into resiliency

In order to support our student’s mental wellbeing and to focus on being success oriented in class our physical education department decided to put a particular focus on both being resilient but also the students ability to recognize their own personal development of resiliency within themselves.

There were a number of reasons that the department focussed on students and resiliency. The physical education class was the perfect combination of learning to deal with both mental and physical challenges. The development of a resilient learner was just as valuable as learning a sport specific skill or achieving a personal best on a fitness challenge. Can the student learn to push themselves and recover? Can the student push through difficulty or adversity? These questions would need to be answered.

This is an inquiry question that could be applied to any learner of any ability level. Would the student take the challenge of learning to be resilient? Would this classroom work help to remove self doubt from not only this subject area, but others? What kind of a positive impact could this have on student success, mental wellbeing as well as school cultures if students learned to recognize and practice resiliency.

In prior practice, the goal of improving the students score on their fitness test, a timed one kilometre run (lower time) and achieving a personal best was left to a matter of physical training and preparation. If the students trained harder, they would preform the task better and gain the personal satisfaction of a job well done. In order to focus on the social and emotional needs of their students, the teachers focussed on being explicit with their instructions and the students understanding of resiliency, specific to their training and performance for the 1 kilometre run.

Here are some examples of the work being done by our teaching staff and students around resiliency.

In this class, the teacher made it a daily focus to not just explain what resilience is but specifically what it would look like and feel like with regards to fitness in general and specifically the one kilometre runs. The following is the evidence provided by this class.

The graph represents the percentage of students who (blue) demonstrated resiliency by improving on their previous time in the one kilometre run. It also shows the number of students who, when polled felt that they had been resilient during this activity. The correlation between the physical act and student awareness or feeling of resiliency is quite close. This class clearly demonstrated not only the ability to be resilient, but also the fact that when the students themselves believed they could be resilient, they were.

The second example was a class where the teacher took a slightly different approach. The same approach was taken with regards to the students understanding of physically and mentally being resilient. The difference was of creating a focus on one particular day to have all students record a personal best. The focus on a ‘Record Breaking Day’ led to the students planning and preparing for what it would take to achieve this task, specifically how resilient they would have to be. The results were an increase of almost 20 % in how many students broke or maintained their personal best.

When the same teacher tried this method with a different class, the results were even more clear. On days when the class was engaged in regular training, only 57% of the students demonstrated resiliency. However on the ‘Record Breaking Day’ 86% of the class showed the ability to be resilient and achieve a personal best. The specific focus on demonstrating physically and mentally being resilient was having an impact on these learners.

Various reasons were given by the students for why they were able to demonstrate resiliency:

• Motivation tied to achievement
• Intrinsic motivation to better the previous score
• The teacher being intentional about discussing resiliency with the class gave them motivation.
• The teacher asked them to be great, so they wanted to show greatness
• The teacher giving specific instruction on how to improve and be resilient.

While this work will continue for the 2023 – 2024 school year, it is clear that having students own their fitness and improvement and teachers being intentional with their instructions on how to be a resilient learner in physical education classes is making an impact on the social and emotional learning of our students in general.

Humanities and Social Studies Department Inquiries

Members of our Humanities and Social Studies departments took on a number of focuses with regards to student engagement, student understanding and student wellbeing. Various groups of teachers and students engaged in learning that promoted positive self-image, self-worth, a healthy connection to others and the fostering of an inclusive environment. Some of the learning was more direct and intentional, while others was more embedded in the learning for that particular class.

A group of Social Studies and Humanities teachers wanted to know if by creating a welcoming, comfortable and stress free environment, would that translate into personal an academic growth in the classroom. The teachers believed that by engaging the students in quick, welcoming conversation at the beginning of the class, along with more student specific checkins once per week as well as using activities that were designed to build an empathetic and inclusive culture in the classroom, that students would feel more valued, less stressed and anxious as well as supported in everything they did in the classroom.

If successful, the teacher would start to see and the students themselves would recognize the benefits of the positive class environment as well as seeing a reduction or low level of stress or anxiety in the classroom.

 The students were given a survey to gauge if the interventions had worked. The questions asked were:

• Do you feel connected and valued in our classroom?
• How often do you feel stressed or anxious in our classroom?
• Do you feel supported in our classroom?   The following graph illustrates the responses.

90% of the students surveyed felt both connected and valued in their classroom. Is is a very positive report on the students feeling about the image of themselves as students in the classroom and how they see their value or worth in the learning environment. The results were even greater for students feeling supported by their teachers in the classroom, with over 95% of students indicating this is how they felt. The teachers very intentional work to connect and value the students as human beings as well as learners has had a tremendous impact. Of particular interest is the low number of students who felt anxious or stressed in this classroom environment, with students reporting that they only feel stress or anxiety 18% of time in this class. This further demonstrates the positive relationship between the classroom culture, students being able to understand and regulate their own emotions and the importance of an inclusive classroom environment.  

Here are two examples of the students responses to the survey.

Social and Emotional Learning: Engaging in the assessment process

When setting goals for our learners to become more socially and emotionally responsible, engagement and participation are areas we would want to see growth and improvement. We know that students who know which learning standard is being investigated but also the criteria that are being assessed will meet with greater success. The students know what is expected of them, and thus can show their improvement in relation to the content they are studying as well as their current strengths and next steps in their learning. This group of teachers wondered if they engaged their students in the assessment process (in particular use of the new proficiency scale) would that lead to a better understanding for the student of their progress in learning in this course. The students had the opportunity to learn about the criteria that set a particular level of proficiency and then use that criteria to assess their own work or another students work. Examples of the activities done in class are posted below.

When our student can recognize that a particular project or piece of writing meets a certain criterion on a scale, they then know what they need to do to show a higher standard on the next assessment. A classroom where the students are a part of the entire learning process, including assessment creates a stronger classroom and school community.

 A separate group of teachers worked with their students in the area of engagement, but with a different focus. This group wanted to see if teachers used strategies that made learning visible, would that lead to an increase in student engagement. Here are a few examples of work done in the class.

Another group of teachers wondered about the impact of various political, social and cultural events to develop greater empathy and emotional understanding in their students. They believed that by modeling empathy and a sense of belonging as well as using examples, ideas and themes from times of conflict that students would further develop these skills themselves. The students engaged in reflective writing on a topic of history involving injustice. In terms of evidence collection, they looked for and gave feedback on various samples of writing in which the students could relate plight of those persons who were suffering at the hands of others. In particular, did the students writing spark any particular emotions. Could the reader empathize with the writer. Here are two examples of students work.

The work of this group will be ongoing in future classes, as the students continue to connect the evidence of the past to their ability to make judgements as to the wrongdoing experienced by many at the hands of those with power.

Our next group of teachers wanted to investigate if classroom strategies that worked to foster communication and collaboration skills in their students would lead to greater student confidence and engagement in the course.

 The teachers believed that by using activities that encouraged students to work together and discuss curricular topics in either small or larger groups would not only build the skills to participate in different types of discussions, but also convince the students that they could become comfortable participating in discussions that could become emotional. (emotional safety)

From a social and emotional learning standpoint for students to be successful in their learning they must be able to ask questions, share their points of view, contribute to class discussions and take ownership of the work they are doing in class. Both communication and collaboration skills are considered important skills for a rapidly changing world. Being able to engage is classroom discussions and debates creates a sense of belonging. Being able to develop confidence in working with information where a point of view must be developed and possibly defended not only develops confidence but also resilience.

The students participated in a survey early in the semester with regards to confidence and engagement.

While 77% of the students surveyed believed that verbal participation in the class was valuable, only 69% felt comfortable answering questions in class and only 66% felt comfortable contributing to class discussions. The students gave a number of reasons for not participating:

• Nervousness
• Unsure of the answer
• Uncomfortable answering in front of other students
• Not confident that their answer is correct

Over the course of the semester, the students participated in various learning activities that not only express their ideas orally in front of other students, but to begin to use more complex responses that would require the students to think critically. Would the teachers see an increase in student confidence, increase in communication from the beginning of the year but also an increase in the collaboration between students in the class.

The students were given an opportunity to reflect on a debate activity that the class had engaged in later in the semester, where students had both individual and group responsibilities. Debating is an opportunity that not only teaches students to be fully engaged on a topic they will prepare and present on, but one that puts students in a position where they must not only be confident in their own arguments but be confident enough to defend them against the counter arguments and criticism of other students. When asked about the preparation time and knowledge acquired to be successful in the debate, 92% were satisfied with the amount of time they had to prepare and 75% believed they had the adequate knowledge to participate in the debate. This certainly points to the confidence the students had developed over the semester, particularly given the lower values that students reported on with respect to their confidence in participating in verbal activities in the classroom. As to the question of whether they enjoyed the debate (a focus on engagement) a total of 81% of those surveyed answered yes. From these responses and the evidence of the students work, it is quite clear that the strategies being used to increase student confidence and engagement are proving successful.

As the staff and students at Tamanawis Secondary continue to learn together and develop their skills and strategies around Social and Emotional learning, we anticipate continued growth in the following areas:

• A continued practice of increasing resiliency in our Physical & Health Education students with a focus on determining the further impact school wide.
• continuing and increasing the practice of teachers making positive connections with students to lessen the possibility of anxiety in the classroom.
• continuing to work with students on understanding the tools and structures that are being used to assess their learning.
• continue to develop learning activities that engage students, particularly with visual representations of information
• continue to work with sensitive topics to build empathy and understanding in our learners
• further develop the skills needed for students to effectively communicate and collaborate that will serve them well in their education both now and into the future.