What does it look like to truly support the whole child? Magnolia Elementary School in Joppa, Md., has been on a mission to provide students with the support they need, well beyond academics. For its success, Magnolia has been named winner of the 2015 Vision in Action: The ASCD Whole Child Award. This award acknowledges schools that promote the development of the whole child, ensuring each child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.
Magnolia is a Title I school that serves 497 students from grades preK–5 and leads programs to enhance the physical and social-emotional health of each one. For example, the school provides lessons on nutrition and participates in a harvestable school garden program, incorporating the vegetables it grows into school lunches. Because many of the students live in unsafe neighborhoods, the master schedule allows for more physical education classes and outdoor time at lunch, and movement periods were added to the afterschool intervention program.
The school also has a mental health cohort that meets six times a year to evaluate the level of support that students receive.
Community and Character
As a Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) school, Magnolia emphasizes positive behaviors and character. To build a greater sense of school community, the school created five houses on campus, each aligned with a specific character trait: responsibility, respect, cooperation, encouragement, and perseverance.
Students from each grade—and every adult in the school—are a part of the house system, which "creates a smaller community within the larger community," explains Magnolia principal Patricia Mason. Students have participated in numerous service learning projects with their houses, such as sending cards to veterans, packing meals for students in need, and cleaning the school grounds.
Sustainable Success
Magnolia's three-part mission statement—developing students as well-rounded citizens, partnering with families and the community, and believing in one another—is integrated into each part of the school improvement plan. The plan focuses on data analysis, health and wellness, and technology, in addition to academics. Leadership is divided between four quality improvement teams that meet every month and collaborate on each element of school success.
School staff members also participate on other important teams: the assessment team; the community collaboration team; and the integrated instructional strategies team, which uses the whole child approach to provide PD based on staff needs. By aligning each of the school's efforts with the mission statement and prioritizing whole child support in that mission, Magnolia has set up a successful and sustainable environment for student growth.