After observing our students in various environments we noticed that they can name some strategies that are related to Blair Cares “I can” statements.  However, this raised the question: How deeply can they understand the concepts living within the Blair Cares framework?

We also noticed that the learners are experiencing a variety of SEL activities and focuses depending on their classroom experiences. However, we had a hunch that although we have school-wide language, the students' are not necessarily connecting the language to their learning and living it school-wide.

So we decided to ask the students some questions to gain some further insight.

1. Can you name two adults at Blair that care about you and believe you will be a success?

2. What are you learning at school?

3. How are you doing with your learning?

4. What are your next steps in your learning?

5. What materials help you to learn?

6. What Blair Care strategies do you use at school?

Feedback from our Scanning confirmed our hunch that the students are able to describe a number of SEL strategies through the use of our school-wide language of Blair Cares for self, others and this place.  

However, very few responses indicated an understanding of how or if these strategies help their over all learning and growth. This feedback is helping us define our next steps of working with staff and students to make this connect to SEL health and learning more explicit. We recognize that we need to give students' more time to reflect and discuss using concrete examples how these social emotional learning strategies can help with their learning. We will do this through noticing, nurturing and nudging students along this SEL learning journey.

Next Steps: Nurturing and Nudging

We are going ask for more specific feedback, by asking the students how they feel our whole school Friendly Friday morning walk impacts their learning. 

Then we will focus on specific classroom strategies and discuss their connection and impact on their learning. 

We are also curious to see if working with different materials will help to make the concepts in the Blair Cares framework come alive. We will start by exploring Clay in our Blair studio to see if this makes a difference for our learners.

Feedback from Student Scanning- Nov/Dec. 2023