I. General Information
School Name: Enver Creek Secondary School
School District: SD#36 Surrey
Inquiry Team Members:
Selena Ireland: ireland_s@surreyschools.ca
Jason Anderson
Jaspreet Takhar
Ryan Braich
Karen Schmelcher
Ashley Ford
Samantha Sew
Inquiry Team Contact Email: Ireland_s@surreyschools.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Secondary (8-12)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Not applicable
Focus Addressed: Experiential learning, Inclusion and inclusive instructional strategies
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? We worked on increasing student engagement by connecting passion to school-based events and classes, as well as providing safe and welcoming spaces for our students.
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: We asked variations of the 4 key questions to our students one-on-one, and understood that our students already felt that they had adults to rely on in the building. We came to the conclusion from the responses that the students wanted to build their community and find safer spaces in the building, while also studying things that were significant and relevant to them. We took our time to talk with our students, and we tried our best to gauge how our students felt at that time with regards to their learning.
Focus: We wanted to build our community, as this is a large part of any successful education system. We wanted to ensure our students felt safe, happy and included in our school, and to know that their were active adults trying to advocate for them. We also wanted to build this community amongst our other students and school.
Hunch: Our hunches were that if we had social gatherings and incorporated larger school-wide projects, that we would instill that safe sense of community that the students needed and would benefit from. We hope that including these activities would help students enjoy school more and thereby help them succeed in their studies.
New Professional Learning: We used the Spiral of Inquiry, and this helped us to focus on what we wanted to achieve and how to get there. We also tried our best to incorporate adults in the building from various teaching backgrounds, so that we could collaborate from various perspectives. Each teacher had creative thoughts on how to incorporate the First Peoples Principles of Learning and tie it into what we wanted to achieve for our students.
Taking Action: We were able to put a few different actions into place over this school year and plan on continuing this into next year as well. Firstly, we had monthly luncheons for our Indigenous students in the library. All of these students were invited to indulge in various Indigenous dishes (such as bannock), and had the option to socialize or do activities which were set up by our facilitator. At the least, students could just gather and have a safe space to talk and have lunch. We also had a Spring Festival in which our Indigenous students and their families, as well as the Indigenous students from our neighbouring elementary schools, could come and we had games, food, and prizes. This again allowed for community building and celebration with not just our current students, but with our future students. We incorporated Indigenous In-Residence Week presenters, and had them come to various classes; this helped engage the whole school and bring awareness to various ideas surrounding the Indigenous experience. We had events specifically for Truth and Reconciliation and Red Dress Days, and this again involved the whole school. Lastly, we wanted to engage the whole school in a weaving project. For this project we were going to have every student in the school participate and they would be weaving together a blanket to be displayed in our school. The weaving is an important part of many Indigenous cultures. This was meant to be a visible representation of the Indigenous community, which the whole school would have been involved in making. Each student would weave their piece of the blanket with a quote or word that was meaningful to them. This last project is still in progress, and we will continue with it next year. We also want the blanket to be an ongoing project for all of our grade 8 students to add to every year as they enter high school.
Checking: From the feedback we got from students, it seemed that they were happy with these changes and felt represented in the school. However, I feel that more changes need to be made and that the consensus coming from the students is that they would still like more school-wide engagement which we feel can be achieved from our weaving project. The students did feel that they were given safe spaces in the school and made good connections with our staff, however as previously stated, we would like to achieve more next year.
Reflections/Advice: We learned that our students really want to have safe spaces and an understanding on a school-wide level. They want representation, but they also do not want to be segregated, or seen as “different” in any capacity. I believe working as a school and including everyone from every background would be the most beneficial way of creating the relationships and close knit community for our students so that they succeed together. I did hear that some students felt singled out due to the fact that they are Indigenous and that they really would like to have everyone involved, so that they do not feel that way in the future. My advice would be to incorporate everyone as much as you can in these projects, so that the students do not feel self-conscious as this will hinder learning instead of help it.