October 28, 2022

Greetings Gunston Families,

It was great fun to see many families last week for Parent-Student-Teacher conferences.  I particularly enjoyed asking students what they were proud of from the first 7 weeks of the school.  It is not easy growing up and navigating increasing responsibilities and increasing expectations.  Asking students to think about and share what they are proud of is a way to make a deposit into the “confidence account”.  If they can remember feeling success about things they thought were going to be difficult, or the feeling of doing a great job on a project that was complicated, and then have a memory of having to talk about it. . . that is a significant contribution.  Ideally, when students encounter future challenges and complicated projects, they will remember being successful in the past and approach the current challenge with some of the confidence from that “confidence account” that has been building up over time.  We want to be intentional about creating those opportunities and we want to include families in that practice when we can.  Students participated in a SEL (Social Emotional Learning) survey this week.  The survey asked students about self-efficacy, social awareness, growth mindset, positive feelings, emotional regulation, and sense of belonging in student friendly language.  The responses were anonymous, so we are not able to identify individual responses, but we will be able to see themes across grades and different student groupings.  We will use the results to plan activities to respond to the data to support students’ growth in the identified areas.  In another message, I will share themes from this survey and our responses to the data.  Students will take the same survey again in the spring, so we will be able to see the impact of our actions and see if we have been able to support students’ social and emotional growth.  So, more information to come.Lastly, one homework assignment for families!  We will be sending you a short survey through TalkingPoints about conferences last week.  Your feedback is important to us too!  Have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the fall weather.

Warmly,

Dr. Wiggins