Sturgis High School is in year three in the implementation of a creative one-two punch approach to capturing student voice. By using the combination of a Student Connection Survey and Positive School Culture (PSC) teams, we have found that giving students a platform for suggestions and concerns improves attendance, helps decrease behavior problems, and increases our overall academics, graduation rates, and student satisfaction. Welcoming and applying student feedback sends the message to students that we are all learning and growing together and that their voices make a difference.
The Student Connection Survey came out of a brainstorming session we held after we conducted a "dot activity" that authors Randy Sprick and Robert Blum use to identify which teachers feel a connection with what students, as well as which students lack connections. In this activity, staff members examine the entire student roster and place a dot next to each student they think would come to them for support during a critical time. For students who do not have dots next to their name, plans are put in place to help them form connections to the school.
The research on the power of relationships is everywhere right now, so this was information that we wanted to capture, but we also wondered whether this process was really getting us the information that we needed. What we really wanted to know was which students feel connected to which adults and, perhaps more important, which students feel they have no connection at all. Thesequestions were especially pressing for our high-risk population of students, who could benefit the most from connections at school that would encourage them to graduate or even just attend.
We send the two-part Student Connection Survey electronically using Google Forms. The first part of the survey has an alphabetical list of every adult in the building, including administrators, teachers, secretaries, and support staff—becausea connection can form through even the most chance encounter. Students are asked to identify and select all adults with whom they feel connected. The second part of the survey captures demographic information (to sort against the results) and then asks a series of questions directed at how students feel about school in terms of confidence, safety, systems, and respect. The lastquestion is an open-ended one requesting students' ideas to improve our school.
With the findings of the survey in hand, the next step in our process is to work with our PSC adult and student teams separately to analyze the data and talk candidly about our findings. Each team then makes a list of commonalities in the data. Theteams develop action plans based on the information gleaned from the data and then work together on some initiatives and separately on other action items. The teams listen, sometimes collect more data, and then work on improving our school together.
As a staff, we've used the survey results in a variety of ways, such as adopting a 2x 10 student relationship-building strategy, where an adult interacts with the student in relationship-building conversations for two minutes a day for 10 consecutive days. We have also used the results to notify teachers when they are a student's only identified connection, to identify students who do not have connections in the building at all, and to support a student when they have experienced traumatic events such as the death of a parent.
With the student PSC team's direction, we have added more academic support time in our schedule, held monthly schoolwide kindness activities, offered lunch-time activity options, and beautified different spots in our school. One big change we've instituted in response to the survey is to be more intentional about recognizing students who are consistently doing well in terms of behavior, academics, and attendance. Now we offer several incentive options, such as Fun Fridays, PRIDE cards, and an exam exemption policy.
- Students who are passing all their classes can participate in Fun Fridays, monthly events organized by our PSC team and based on survey data on the types of activities students enjoy. Past Fun Fridays have featured movies, students vs. teachers games, and a variety hour (students choose from an array of activities such as cards, board games, basketball, ping-pong, volleyball, soccer, or just sitting and chatting in our cafe.)
- PRIDE cards are a quarterly incentive earned by students with three or fewer absences in any class, who are passing all classes, and who have no discipline referrals. PRIDE cards confer extra privileges like a 10-minute early release on Fridays, $1.00 off at our cafe, a five-minute tardy freebie, free entrance into a sporting event or dance, or a free cookie at the cafe.
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We've also made changes to how we support students who struggle with attendance, behavior, and academics. We have developed behavior-expectation lessons and videos to help our staff teach students the behaviors we would like to see throughout the building. We monitor our course failure rates monthly as a building and through an intervention team. Throughout the year, we establish a monthly focus of intervention for our struggling students. For example, in November, students focused on setting goals to improve their grades. We then monitor each intervention on a weekly basis to support students in reaching their goals. These monthly interventions repeat in the second semester.
Students also have summer and online options for credit recovery. In addition, our "seminar courses" offer built-in time during the school day for students to get extra academic support from peers or teachers. Finally, each student has at least one positive "Good News Card" sent home per semester. Although some of these items may not be new to other schools, they are new and positive advances in ours, adopted through our research and creative action planning.
This two-prong approach, while not perfect, does help us capture a majority of student voices. It drives buildingwide decisions and, perhaps most important, helps students feel a sense of empowerment. On top of all that, the changes in behavior, academics, and attendance are further testament that connecting with and listening to students are the prerequisites to school improvement.