School Goal Two
How can we guide and support our students to recognize factors that impact their mental health, to form meaningful connections and to effectively handle challenges?
- Compare data from teacher/student connection activity (February and June);
- Conduct empathy interviews to hear from diverse students across our school about what they need to improve their mental health and to inform our next steps; and
- Gather data from the Gr 7 Students Learning Survey on the specific questions that relate to mental health and design a school-based survey to get more detailed feedback from student across all grades.
First Peoples Principles of Learning
The Mental Health Goal needs to ensure that:
- Learning requires exploration of one’s identity;
- Learning is holistic, reflective, experiential and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and sense of place); and
- Learning ultimately supports the well-being of the self, the family, the community, the land, the spirits and the ancestors.
- Plan and teach lessons in Grades 6-8 that provide students with a toolkit of strategies for their own mental health/wellbeing and strategies to help a friend;
- Engage staff in rich professional learning on the topics of mental health, SOGI and anti-racism education; and
- Develop a process that identifies a “go to adult” for every student in the school.
Over the 2023-24 year, we will track progress on our initiatives identified in this year’s plan. More specifically:
- We will provide regular opportunities at staff meetings for teachers to share lessons and teaching ideas with colleagues, so that all teachers are increasing opportunities for students to add to their toolkit;
- We will provide regular opportunities at weekly leadership meetings for staff to assess our ongoing professional learning, and conduct empathy interviews with students to inform our next steps;
- We will work together as a staff to identify strong adult connections for all students, and develop a plan to actively build stronger connections with students. We will revisit this in the spring to assess our progress and ask students for their feedback; and
- We will design a school-wide survey to ask every student at ROMS about the adults they feel connected to, and ask them to identify what aspects of Mental Health they would like to learn more about.
Summary learning, based on evidence gathered over the year, will provide us with key learnings to guide next steps for the 2024-25 school year and beyond.
