Learning is fueled by feedback…
School Climate: Please read pages 14-19 and complete this anonymous survey. Then blog to address one strength and one weakness of our overall school climate.
Class Climate: Please give your students this anonymous survey to complete. Feel free to copy and tweak appropriately. We will use the returned data to blog next week.
Strength: Strong Sense of Collective Identity
ReplyDeleteOne of Empower's greatest strengths is its strong collective identity and shared sense of purpose. Students understand expectations, routines are clearly taught, and there is a consistent structure that promotes collaboration, accountability, and supportive interactions. This foundation helps students feel connected and focused on meaningful academic goals.
Weakness: Peer Interaction Variety (I would like to work on this in my classroom)
One area for growth in my classroom is increasing opportunities for student varied peer interaction. Providing more structured chances for students to collaborate with different peers could further strengthen engagement and deepen the overall sense of community. When I taught elementary school, I would put the kiddos in virtual breakout rooms all the time, but now, since I’m teaching middle school; many of my kiddos won’t talk. This makes it difficult in some cases to put them in breakout rooms, because they sit there in silence. Hopefully, I can come up with some ideas to change this, but for now, we typically are whole group!
One dimension our school exceeds is the feeling of being NEEDED among the staff. “We know our contributions are valued because others rely on us for consequential work” (p.17). This has been most important and ultimately, more needed in our school than at any other school faculty I have been a member of. In turn, however, it creates a sense of value and buy in as we are truly working together to make our school successful, something we all believe in.
DeleteI agree with Bynghum about interaction for students. Given our technology constraints, supervision management and time tables, creating successful and meaningful time for students to befriend others is challenging. Our students do not walk the halls together, eat lunch together, ride buses or do extracurricular activities together. This means the friendly interaction must happen during class time. This is a challenge I would love to overcome.
I agree with both of you on the time contraints and challenges with peer interactions! Even with these challenges, it's nice to see that we do have students forming relationships and making friends in classes and during lunch bunch time.
DeleteYes! I love seeing all the friendships that form between our students!
DeleteI think one strength, and one of the best things about Empower as a whole, is that we have a collective identity and share a sense of purpose. We truly support each other and work together in all we do. One thing I believe we all wish we could do more of is offering students time to just talk and interact with each other more than just the first few minutes of class. It’s so easy for students to talk with one another face-to-face, but is more challenging in a virtual environment.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think our biggest strength is that we definitely have a collective EMPOWER identity. We share the same passion for our students and our delivery…and are SO supportive of each other!
ReplyDeleteThe nature of virtual programs does not readily provide opportunities for students to sit with and interact with different peers regularly. I wonder if we could somehow incorporate a schoolwide competition in conjunction with our face-to-face events to facilitate & spend class time focused on group goals? Could this provide opportunities for students to interact with each other more?
I love that we have our face to face events. I think they are SO needed, but unfortunately not all students can attend. I do like the idea of tying something to those events. Collaboration is just much more of a challenge in a virtual setting.
DeleteI agree! I have really worked to talk up the face to face events with my classes before and after. It seems like there are more students from these classes attending now than at the beginning of the year? Maybe I'm just imagining it or it's hopeful perception? Regardless, given our virtual structure and the natural difficulties that come with that, I feel like we do really well, AND I love how we are always looking at how we can improve this.
DeleteI really appreciate everyone’s insight on this! It’s clear we all feel that strong sense of collective identity that makes Empower so special. There’s a genuine spirit here where both staff and students feel a shared purpose, and I think that foundation of 'we’re in this together' is what helps the students.
ReplyDeleteI also felt a lot of 'me too' moments reading your comments about student peer interaction. Annie, you hit the nail on the head—without those 'hallway moments' or bus rides, the pressure is on our class time to build those social bridges and we just don’t have the time built into our days. I try to give them time before announcements and during lunch bunch (if they choose to come) but it doesn’t feel like enough.
I love Monelle's idea of using schoolwide goals or competitions to give them a low-pressure reason to talk. The problem I have is my students love to talk and share. I’m hoping to find more ways to move beyond the whole-group setting so they can have more opportunities to share and develop their learning with peers.
Empower's strength lies in our cohesiveness. We are a true team who work towards each others strengths and are willing to help each other with any task or concern. The ability to not only be one's self but to also growth within an organization builds a cohesive culture. We all work well together and can have open discussions on best practices. We encourage each other to try new things. We have all been willing to lend an ear when someone just needs to chat. We know that together we are better then apart.
ReplyDeleteI believe in my own classroom, the struggle is in grouping students to work. It is a process to determine best practices within the virtual setting and this is made trickier as Meet doesn't record breakout rooms. Luckily we have good students that offer few worries, but monitoring groups to facilitate true discussion and minimizing the one-does-all trope is difficult. I try and incorporate low-stakes group activities like shared notes slides where they create the notes, or shared explorations rather than graded assignments. I also have to clearly define the roles needed in each group (presenter, writer, image checker...etc). This is something I would like to incorporate more in my classes.
I agree that the monitoring of group work is what causes my hesitancy for breakout rooms. The ability to share collaborative documents is so nice, but if we had a way to better monitor their discussions around these collaborative documents I would feel much more confident assigning group work.
DeleteThat was Jamie Stewart in the reply above :)
DeleteAfter reading these pages of The Illustrated Guide to Visible Learning by John Hattie, I’d say one strength of our school climate is how structured and collaborative we are. There’s a clear sense of purpose, routines are established, and students know what’s expected, which helps create a supportive environment. One weakness, though, is that we don’t always give students a strong voice in shaping class norms or decisions (at least I don't!). We do a good job building community, but we could grow by giving students more ownership in how that community runs.
ReplyDeleteI think our school does an excellent job in making students feel all dimensions of belonging in every class. Teachers make sure students feel welcomed and loved in their classes by having periods of the day when we can meet with them and discuss their personal likes/dislikes. One thing that I think every school can work on is making students feel heard and involved. Many students love to be teachers and collaborate with each other, and I think through letting them express themselves and feel acknowledged, that would allow them to feel more willing to participate in class.
ReplyDeleteThis is me ^^
DeleteOur biggest strength is our feeling of family through collective identity and cohesiveness. We are definitely on the same page as to our Empower Environment. We have a united sense of belonging and support each other. We also have the same expectations for students and teachers. Everyone feels welcomed and understands their role in the class.
ReplyDeleteImprovements can be to ensure we do not feel isolated due to not having a grade level team.
Our cohesiveness and collective identity is by far such an incredible strength of our staff. I have never seen anything like it in any other work environment - education or otherwise. As several of you already stated, I also believe one area we can work to improve is student interaction/ownership. I also believe that our design clearly presents more challenges to that than most. I think our face-to-face events help with this, even though that is outside of class time. Before my main classes begin during the morning time, I try to allow just a couple minutes - whether out loud or through the chat box - for students to share about their weekend and to have those personal, social interactions with each other. This not only helps them to come out of their shells a little, but it helps to build trust and community between them, me, and sometimes even the parents who are close by.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like our middle grades, at least 6th, has had a much higher mobility rate, and I feel that also adds an extra challenge with this whether through whole class interaction and also with breakout rooms.
**Note - I learned from Beth Sweeney last year how to join the main meet and a breakout room at the same time. I always keep one group in the main room while staying in there and then on another tab float between the breakout rooms. It's complicated, but definitely helps with monitoring!
In my opinion one clear strength of Empower Virtual Program is respect. As a teacher, I feel valued for my professional expertise and trusted in my instructional decisions. This culture of respect fosters psychological safety, collaboration, and a willingness to innovate, which ultimately benefits our students.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, an area for growth may be intentionality. In a virtual setting, relationship-building and community development do not always happen organically. Because we are not physically together, maintaining strong connections and reinforcing shared goals requires deliberate effort and planning. I need to be more intentional about collaboration structures, communication, and celebrating successes, to strengthen an already positive climate.
As discussed in our book study meeting, we all see and respect the school climate of collective identity. We do not hesitate to reach out to ask or help others. We all are here for a purpose and want our students to do well. It's a struggle since we have such a high rate of mobility, but we all try and support each other to enhance the learning for our students.
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