I. General Information
School Name: Maquinna Elementary
School District: SD#70 Pacific Rim
Inquiry Team Members: Sheena Falconer: sfalconer@sd70.bc.ca
Alex Tom: atom@sd70.bc.ca
Diana Olson: dolson1@sd70.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: sfalconer@sd70.bc.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3), Intermediate (4-7)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Social Studies
Focus Addressed: Local Indigenous Knowledges, Core competencies (for example, thinking, communication, personal and social), Other: Attendance
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Does attendance improve if we create joyful and engaging opportunities for our school community to connect with Nuu-chah-nulth culture.
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: We asked Grade 4 and 7 students in two classes the key questions. We also asked individual students. A number of students in Grade 7 were involved with the National Indigenous Day celebration the previous year. We asked them how they felt about the celebration and learned that they would like to share their culture with the school on that day. They talked about dancing, singing, and lahal. In the previous year, we had focused more on the sharing of food. We thought that with this new information, we could work together to focus more on the cultural aspect of the day and weave that in throughout our year. We wanted to honour the student’s desire to have more culture and language embedded into the school community. We will continue to use the First People’s Principles of Learning through honouring the role of Indigenous knowledge, generational understanding, and recognizing that time and patience are important.
Focus: We wondered if involvement with cultural celebrations will result in increased attendance at our school.
Hunch: We had a hunch that honouring student knowledge and voice would increase connectedness to school. We hoped that this connection would have a positive impact on attendance.
New Professional Learning: We utilized the Toolkit for Raising Attendance Rates of First Nations Students in British Columbia as our basis for professional learning. This resource was created by the First Nations Steering Committee and the First Nations School Association. The Toolkit was very helpful as it provided information on how to define and understand poor attendance, as well as providing a section entitled, “What Students Say” which gave explicit information around reasons for missing school. Further, the Toolkit provides information for schools on how to address poor attendance. One aspect included Making Schools Places Where Students Want to Be, which spoke about the importance of connecting students through the creation of strong interpersonal relationships.
Taking Action: We built upon the two activities from our last project to engage students in cultural learning. The first activity was the Nuu chah nulth word of the week. Each Monday we announced a word and put clues around the school. We shared this with staff as well. Students would come up to us and provide the meaning for the word, as well as pronounce it. We built on our success from last year. While it varied, we generally had a core group of students who would search out the meaning and pronunciation of the word each week. The second activity involved embedding student voice into our event for National Indigenous Day. We honoured this by having them help with the organization, as well as participating in the opening ceremony and acting as student volunteers.
Checking: We decided we were going to use two different ways of measuring attendance. Firstly, we were going to create a snapshot of attendance by comparing attendance on the day of the celebration against other days that week to determine if holding an event made a difference with attendance. As we aren’t holding the event until the 22nd, we will analyze that date following the event. Secondly, we reviewed our Indicators of Success data. As we went through that data, we could see that students who were involved and participating had lower absenteeism. We are happy with the level of involvement our student volunteers are displaying. They have come up with the idea for a student from each of the Nuu chah nulth Nations to introduce themselves in Nuu-chah-nulth during the opening ceremony, as well as talking about the importance of Indigenous Day. They are also creating puppet shows, singing the Nuu-chah-nulth song, and showing other students different games and activities such as Dot Art, Bracelet Making and creation of a Paint Wall. We have seen that some of our more vulnerable students have become very engaged with the ceremony and are excited to participate. We feel that this may have helped them feel more connected to the school and thereby increased attendance.
Reflections/Advice: We have learned a great deal about attendance and this has been very helpful. We realized that it was difficult to tease out our activities as a factor in attendance, although we can say that students who have been engaged have had good attendance despite other challenges in their lives. However, this may have been due to other factors. In upcoming projects, we would spend more time designing how to analyze attendance trends. When we were reviewing the data, we could see that there are students who we could include in the future in the hopes of creating connection and engagement with the school. Sharing the knowledge we have learned with the broader school community will be very beneficial and we believe this knowledge will become embedded within the school community. Engaging students in celebrating their culture has been a very positive experience and the students have enjoyed being part of the process. We would like to keep working on bringing student voice into our schools as a means of increasing connectedness. If other schools were planning to do this, it is very helpful to engage with students early to get their ideas.