At our November staff meeting, staff were asked to complete a survey with a focus on elements of our school story. The survey contained the following questions:

• What have you noticed about your students so far this year in terms of their growth mindset, resiliency and adversity?
• What is a strategy that you use when faced with a new challenge or something that is hard, that you think would be beneficial for your students to learn and try?
• What do you think we could do this year that would make the biggest impact for our students?

Here are a few quotes from the survey:

• "That I need to have explicit lessons on growth mindset and introduce the words “resiliency” and “stamina”.  I have students who give up or avoid tasks that they find challenging and I want to bring them to a space where they can notice feeling challenged and frustrated and choose resiliency over giving up."

• "We have had to teach students how to ask for help – as a coping mechanism – to build resiliency.  A lot of them don’t have this."

• Focusing on ways students can take care of themselves in terms of choices they make for their learning, asking for body breaks or brain breaks when they needed it, using positive self-talk

• Modelling language that is universal for students to self-advocate

• School-wide focus to build those grow mindset strategies & language

After analyzing the data, it has become clear that a school wide focus on growth mindset and the use of common language is one way we can go deeper with our learning about resiliency.