I. General Information
School Name: Ecole Ballenas Secondary School
School District: SD#69 Qualicum
Inquiry Team Members: Mindy Holman: mholman@sd69.bc.ca
Roman Wyllie: rwyllie@sd69.bc.ca
Paisley Hendricks: phendricks@sd69.bc.ca
Star Richardson: srichardson@sd69.bc.ca
Cheryl Beler: cbeler@sd69.bc.ca
Jessylee Spence: jspence@sd69.bc.ca
Kathryn Lindahl: klindahl@sd69.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: tcathrine@sd69.bc.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Transitions Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Secondary (8-12)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Not applicable
Focus Addressed: Core competencies (for example, critical thinking, communication, problem solving), Flexible learning, Inclusion and inclusive instructional strategies, Social and emotional learning, Transitions, Universal design for learning
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Our focus was specifically on the characteristics of spaces/adults that were elicited from our student interviews and responses – key question/theme: How do we build/promote spaces that inspire hope/belonging?
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: We interviewed all of our students with an Indigenous background. A theme that came up repeatedly was connection – connection to spaces and connection to adults/peers/community. We realize that we are still in a time where connection to school, community, and with others is still rebuilding.
Focus: We have also been engaged in an Equity Scan as a district and as a school. Something that emerged from that work was an opportunity to focus on Learning Environments. We saw this being connected to our scanning – specifically learners’ connection to the school and spaces.
Hunch: Our hunch is that there may be specific practices that could be enhanced. Profiles will be a focus for the upcoming school year. The voices of our students need to be shared more intentionally and broadly.
New Professional Learning:
- Time together through NOIIE Group Book Study: Wayi Wah!
- Next year: books groups through collaboration (titles TBD)
Taking Action: This will be the work for next year – now that we have our question and data from responses. We need to share with staff and decide what action we will take, collectively.
Checking: There is more to come here – now that we have our focus area and we’ve elicited a lot of qualitative data re:characteristics of spaces/adults – after we begin to implement some of the suggestions (or as decided by staff) we will be able to be more thorough in our checking.
What are we checking for? How will we know? How is this supporting transitions?
Reflections/Advice: We will share this list with our staff as we begin a bigger inquiry on engagement. It took us a while, through scanning, to find this focus area.