I. General Information
School Name: Charles Hays Secondary School
School District: SD#52 Prince Rupert
Inquiry Team Members: Karina Anderson: Karina.Anderson@sd52.bc.ca
Vania Ling: Vania.Ling@sd52.bc.ca
Billy Nelson: Billy.Nelson@sd52.bc.ca
Kelly Blow: Kelly.Blow@sd52.bc.ca
Raegan Sawka: Raegan.Sawka@sd52.bc.ca
Kelli Clifton: Kelli.Clifton@sd52.bc.ca
Tina Robinson: Tina.Robinson@sd52.bc.ca
Coretta O’Brien: Coretta.O’Brien@sd52.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: carla.rourke@sd52.bc.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: Indigenous Education Impact Initiative
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Secondary (8-12)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Applied Design, skills & Technology, Arts Education, Career Education, Mathematics / Numeracy, Science, Social Studies
Focus Addressed: Indigenous Focus (for example, Traditional Knowledge, oral history, reconciliation), Land, Nature or Place-based learning
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? How are we facilitating student confidence, sense of belonging, leadership, voice, and positive personal identity?
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: We scanned 124 students in grades 10-12 through a combination of questionnaires and a small group interview to gain insight to how they felt about feeling safe, a sense of belonging, and connection in school. We wanted to know their thoughts on opportunities to grow their confidence, leadership, voice, and explore their identity at CHSS.
Focus: Through the scanning process we determined we wanted to focus more broadly in this 3-year IEII study than our previous transitions inquiry. We wanted to explore how we are facilitating student leadership to enhance our school community as a place where students feel welcomed, part of leading school-wide events, and belonging to the cultural fabric of CHSS.
We distilled this down to: “How are we facilitating student confidence, sense of belonging, leadership, voice, and positive personal identity?”
The changes we were hoping for our learners were to move away from the educator-led clubs, events, land-based educational initiatives to a more student-driven model that we could learn alongside and support through facilitation.
Hunch: Our hunch was if we grow strong student leadership towards the goals of belonging, confidence, voice, and strong cultural identity, it would create momentum that could be passed down to future students, thus increasing the sustainability of the model. It would be more powerful coming out of the learners vision for our school community.
Reflections for Year 1: It was more astonishing than we could have anticipated. There was a surge of student-led groups such as the Git Waas Drummers, the ongoing Young Matriarchs group, and this year the annual Welcoming Luulgit (Feast) was almost entirely student-led. Parallel to this were student outdoor groups, leadership clubs, and regular equity-based school-wide learning events. The coalescence of these efforts had a synergistic result. The confidence, leadership, and sense of belonging rippled through the building amongst the student body.
Plans for Year 2: We want to grow and expand along the same lines as this year. We are excited that the student leadership is equal through the grade cohorts so there will be ample opportunity for learner to learner mentorship going forth. Additional educators who facilitated similar themed projects this year are interested in collaborating on IEII next year. We believe there will be a wonderful cross-pollination of inquiry and ideas.