One initiative that we have implemented to meet this goal is our advisory program, where students meet with their advisory on a daily basis for support. To understand how we are meeting our goal on relationships, we provided students with a survey to assess our school climate. After the survey was complete, we asked faculty to look at the data and develop some short term goals based on their takeaways from the survey. Below are the survey results:
Teacher observations, reflections, and goals:
- On average most students feel: Safe recognized for good behavior have a good relationship with teachers and TSA advisors feel like their voices are being heard.
- It sounds like teachers have built strong relationships with their students.
- Our school climate, on average, seems positive. However, academic settings/ academic climate seems to be a struggle. Next year, have a more deliberate, positive and quiet roll out of this survey.
- More emphasis needs to be placed on creating a positive ACADEMIC environment. Improve the number of students that feel safe (strongly agree) by 40% by winter survey. Attempt to understand why students do NOT feel safe. Work to improve PBIS so more students feel recognized for good behavior (strongly agree) to 25%
- We would like to be more cognizant of placing TSA students with teachers in the future. We could utilize prior relationships with prior advisers to help place students in a more appropriate or non-triggering environment.
- All students need to stay safe. Every other student we meet in the hall has felt unsafe. Moderately safe is not good enough. We can reinforce this message in our teaching by restating safety concerns.
- We need to make sure that we are making a concrete effort to reach out to all students in TSA; help them to make a connection.
While we feel positive overall about the results of the survey, we do recognize that there is more work to be done