John Barsby Community School SD#68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith

I. General Information

School Name: John Barsby Community School

School District: SD#68 Nanaimo-Ladysmith

Inquiry Team Members:
Suki Davis: suki.davis@sd68.bc.ca
Jenn Ottenbreit: jennifer.ottenbreit@sd68.bc.ca

Inquiry Team Contact Email: suki.davis@sd68.bc.ca

II. Inquiry Project Information

Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study

Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Secondary (8-12)

Curricular Areas Addressed: Other: Inclusion

Focus Addressed: Flexible learning, Inclusion and inclusive instructional strategies, Social and emotional learning

In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? How do we increase opportunities and access to spaces that foster success?  We believe that the deficits are in our learning structures and our environment, not in our learners. How will the Hive model, IST support for spiky classes and the whole class literacy interventions (Grade 8) identify and reduce barriers caused by deficits in our learning environments and systems and increase success for learners?

III. Spirals of Inquiry Details

Scanning: Our scanning tells us that some students find so much failure at school. We became curious about opportunities to change the story of each learner, so that they could experience more success. The last few years have caused trauma and turmoil for many of our families, and our scanning revealed that many of our kids are disconnected and feel unsuccessful at school. To our understanding, students would rather seem uncooperative than unsuccessful, so behaviours escalate. By keeping our learners at the centre and focusing on opportunities and alternative spaces for students to experience success, we believe that students will develop a stronger connection to staff. As well, we will create more flexible spaces, schedules and methods to demonstrate learning.

Focus: As a PLC, we had a three-pronged approach: increased literacy levels for incoming and vulnerable students, ‘behaviourist’ support in spiky classrooms and increased cross pollination between the various support rooms: SFL and the Outreach program. We created ‘the Hive,’ which is a co-regulation/support room, developed and ran whole class literacy interventions in Grade 8 classes, Outreach and SFL and offered IST support for teachers of spiky classrooms.

Hunch: Our hunch was that if students had increased access to various support areas staffed with safe consistent adults where they could learn and practice regulation skills and be seen and cared for, they would experience more success. Whether they are dysregulated or suffer too much anxiety to be in a regular classroom, some students need an alternate space to re-regulate, complete class work, or check in with safe adults so they can return to class.  Students would feel more comfortable at school and more able to take risks in their learning.

By focusing on spiky classrooms and IST support (i.e. coaching, support, adapted resources, problem solving and advocacy with admin), colleagues performed better, classes functioned more efficiently and additional support was directed to difficult areas.

Our hunch was that if we worked on increasing fluency and comprehension in whole class, leveled literacy interventions, students would experience more academic success in subsequent courses. Our goal was not only to increase fluency with repeated readings (first intervention) and on comprehension using randomized groups and vertical whiteboards (second intervention), but we also wanted to remove barriers to learning and develop consistent relationships with individuals, so that incoming and at-risk students could build trust and comfort at Barsby.

New Professional Learning: We talked with our colleagues and read books: The New Normal, Different but not Less, The Teacher’s Guide to Task Avoidance, Wahi Wah Indigenous Pedagogies: An Act for Reconciliation and Anti-Racist Education, Sorting it out: Supporting Teenage Decision Making, Spiral Notebook for Student Changemakers, Making Thinking Visible, What I Wish My Teacher Knew, Building Thinking Classrooms, Don’t Start Teaching Until Everyone is Listening, and Rebuilding Joy.  We attended meetings of VSB NOIIE teams and the NOIIE conference to learn from each other. We accessed district staff and other professionals to learn more about resources, opportunities and initiatives. We studied and talked about literacy interventions at the secondary level, attachment theory, Reggio teaching methods, self-regulation (Shanker), trauma-aware practice, neuro-divergent affirming pedagogy and polyvagal theory.

Taking Action: The Hive offers diverse benefits: personal and structural. Although the beginning of each block is check-ins and the space is quiet, attendance increases as students finish work or are unable to stay in class for regulation reasons. Between 7 and 22 students attend each block. On average, 218 students use the Hive each week. Attendance is greater in the afternoon when up to 20 students attend each block. Most do not stay for the whole block. Approximately 90% of students working in the Hive have IEP’s. We are not tutors. Our success is not attendance in the Hive. Our job is to help students, their families, teachers, and admin to identify and reduce barriers in the classroom. Some students have support blocks in the Hive and others have a plan to reintegrate into regular classrooms.

  • Structure:
    • The Hive includes 3 areas: 2 quiet break-out rooms and a larger communal area. It also has an overflow area for when the Hive is too busy, where students can extend into the Indigenous Education area.
    • The Hive serves 4 purposes: SEL, academic, extension and community/connection/sense of belonging.
    • It is open 4 blocks a day throughout the week. When IST leave the room to run literacy or support interventions, the Indigenous Education staff supervise the area.
    • Students choose from needle felting, knitting, colouring, sewing a stuffy, jewelry making, Coast Salish weaving, painting, fidgets, sand garden, Playdough, kinetic sand, puzzles, games, card making, collage, or the whiteboard table. These activities serve to build relationships, re-regulate students and increase sense of belonging. Students can also work on Chromebooks.
    • Some teachers also request an alternate learning environment for small group work, test writing and to separate feuding classmates.
    • The Hive is a community building space with clubs and activities during lunch hour. This connects more learners to the space and to the safe people in the space.
  • Personal
    • We listen and observe: empathy/motivational interviews to move from ‘problem fixing’ to ‘possibility seeking’.
    • We consciously build relationships:  2 x 10 (2 minute conversation with a student 10 days in a row) and learn names of students’ pets and details of our students’ lives.
    • We support our 10-12’s with more concrete support in identifying transition and graduation goals.
    • We support our grade 8 and 9’s need to develop a sense of belonging and connection to this ‘place’.
    • We connect with classroom teachers about student progress and alternate ways to demonstrate learning.
    • We co-design learning with classroom teachers to support diverse students to demonstrate their knowledge in ways that work for the student.
    • We adapt materials for students to use.
    • We support students to complete courses and catch up on missed work.
    • We connect with families about student needs and progress.
    • Whole Class Literacy Interventions: We screened all Grade 8 students in the fall and discovered that almost 80% were reading below grade level.  Whole class intervention was chosen not only for inclusion purposes, but due to universal need. Round one was based on The 6 Minute Solution where students focused on fluency, repeated reading, and self-assessment/reflection. Post assessment showed significant improvement across the board with now only 58% reading below grade level. Round two continued focusing on fluency, and repeated reading, and also added the comprehension skills of summarizing, making connections, inferencing, and questioning. We used the concept of vertical classrooms as a model. Students were able to collaborate, make thinking visible, and share ideas with the whole class. We found engagement to be very good across classes and when we looked at the data, most students made improvements. The exceptions were usually those with low attendance.
    • Feedback from one Grade 8 class in our second comprehension reading intervention indicated the following: Some students felt that three consecutive days with the same stories made the second and third days bland, some students thought reading the story a 4th and 5th time was unnecessary, students liked working with peers, they liked the hashtag assignment but thought the bubble summary was challenging, could consider putting the bubble summary closer to the end, and possibly introduce the strategy/focus before a group reading so students are aware of the purpose for reading. This might be beneficial for making connections and inferences. Next year, with the school’s return to the semester system, we hope to use the same process with both grade 8 and 9 classes.
    • Behaviour support for spiky classes.
    • We offered Support Needs Assessment for all classes, especially new teachers and those teaching Grade 8.
    • We offered in class support for a classroom teacher over a 4-6 week period with gradual release to the teacher.
    • We coached teachers through trauma-informed neurodiverse affirming information and conversations to reframe behaviour.
    • We discussed self care strategies and collegial support.
    • We adapted work and created adapted materials for teachers and students.
    • We advocated with administration and at SBI for increased support.

Checking: Although we have changed the experience of our learners by offering students a place to go when there are obstacles to attending class, the numbers in our support room show that there are significant barriers and some students are unable to access the curriculum in our mainstream classes. Increased attendance in the Hive shows a sense of belonging, but belonging is not enough.

We recognize the importance of building capacity with classroom teachers to differentiate and reframe behaviour with a trauma-informed, neurodiversity affirming lens. We have cultivated strong relationships, as well as trust with our colleagues, yet there is not enough time or structure to offer significant support. A few teachers misunderstand the use of the space; this is not a punitive space.

In addition, dysregulated students also often struggle socially. This meant extra staff vigilance and participation to maintain peace in The Hive. Some students have found loopholes and attended The Hive without permission. This increased workload for Hive teachers to monitor and educate students about the purpose of The Hive. When a student arrived in The Hive, staff made a plan with the student about how time would be spent. Constant active supervision was necessary.  Expectations for behaviour in The Hive were prominent on the whiteboard and were constantly referred to. Cell phones were an issue and with some students, had to be consistently monitored.

Next year, a narrower spectrum of responsibility and less time supervising the support space would mean more energy and time for developing in class interventions.

Reflections/Advice: Next year, we hope to partner with Outreach in a mutually supervised space. By doing this, the Literacy team could support interventions and have more time to  build relationships with vulnerable Outreach students. Additionally, Outreach students would find reprieve in the space. Next year, our hope is to offer support blocks before students fail and ensure that the credit recovery is systematized. With sufficient time, whole class literacy interventions could offer a third interaction which would involve literacy stations and more targeted skills.

Also, an unexpected teacher sick leave meant that we did not gather the amount of learner input that we had hoped. The Google survey was created but not administered.

Next year, as the literacy support team/the Hive, we would like to communicate better with staff. We would ask to present earlier at a staff meeting about our roles and initiatives. We spent a lot of time this year in a place of uncertainty, wondering how we could ‘do things better’ for the students.  We talked often and considered the impact of the nervous system on learning, as well as the concept that “autistic behaviour is stress behaviour in an inflexible system.”  In our conversations, we challenged each other. We return to the FPPL often to refocus and to keep all learners at the centre and the heart of the work:

  • Learning ultimately supports the well-being of the self, the family, the community, the land, the spirits, and the ancestors.
  • Learning is holistic, reflexive, reflective, experiential, and relational (focused on connectedness, on reciprocal relationships, and a sense of place).
  • Learning involves patience and time.