On January 30, Region II of the Comprehensive System of Personnel Development, in partnership with Havre Public Schools, offered free training for schools who utilize the Quaglia Student Voice or any of the other Quaglia surveys. Janelle Deanon and Jordan Heilig, two educators from Meadowlark Elementary, attended this training to fully utilize the results of the data collected from students.

The workshop, entitled Vision and Voice, was presented by Steve and Kim York at the Havre Inn & Suites. Steve York, who is a Montana native raised in the Mission Valley and currently living in Polson, has been actively engaged with Quaglia Institute for School Voice and Aspirations for 14 years. He has experience training Montana educators to successfully utilize voice data and leading student and teacher focus groups as follow-up to survey collections.

Also a Montana native, Kim York was raised in Shelby and holds a Master of Science Degree in social work. She has designed and led student focus groups as well as helped schools establish action plans through the use of SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound, and a SMART goal is a short statement that can lead individuals in the direction of what they want to accomplish.

The Quaglia Student Voice survey is named after Dr. Russell Quaglia, who along with his team at the Quaglia Institute for Student Aspirations has been collecting information about what education stakeholders think, believe, and feel about their schools. The data from these surveys has shown that eight conditions must be present in school for students to reach their fullest potential: Sense of Belonging; Heroes; Sense of Accomplishment; Fun and Excitement; Curiosity and Creativity; Spirit of Adventure; Leadership and Responsibility; and Confidence to Take Action.

These eight conditions, which are organized under the three guiding principles of Self-Worth, Engagement, and Purpose, help educators ensure that the work they are already doing fosters an environment characterized by positive relationships, engaged learning, and sense of purpose.

The online surveys, which Meadowlark students in grades four through six completed in mid-January, will provide administrators with reports that the school’s improvement team—guided by these principles—can then use to develop goals and objectives for inspiring meaningful improvements within their schools.

The focus with these surveys is on students’ perceptions and on what students have to say about their school experience. Much like a satisfaction survey, students receive a list of statements called Likert items. These are statements that the respondent is asked to evaluate based upon a rating from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree.

Because the statements are written by a consultant for the Montana Behavioral Initiative (MBI) to ensure that they produce an objective measurement, they are not targeted to a specific school. However, MBI often collects the areas of concern at their Summer Institutes, where educators convene to address issues like bullying or nurturing a sense of purpose, as well as strategies for resolving them so that MBI schools have resources for creating behavioral supports and a social culture that establishes social, emotional, and academic success for all students.

According to Meadowlark Elementary School Principal, Jon Martin, MBI is an organized, data-driven system of interventions, strategies, and supports that positively impact school-wide and individualized behavior planning. “We have used the Student Voice survey at Meadowlark for the past couple of years since I have been here as part of our MBI program,” he said.

With the guidance of the Vision and Voice presenters, Chinook school personnel learned the benefits of using data to inform decisions. They not only gained strategies to analyze their school’s student voice data but learned how to formulate questions to design and conduct Focus Groups. From these Focus Group responses, school improvement teams can track trends and then develop concrete action plans to effect positive change in students’ perceptions of their overall school journeys.

“The data collected from this Voice survey is put into practice after Focus Groups discuss the results and ask questions like, ‘What can we do to change or to improve that issue?’ or ‘What will we do to make an impact in our school?’ These Focus Groups are diverse student groups who are involved in the problem-solving process. Sometimes, they have to define what respect looks like, for example, or tackle whether a statement may have led to misunderstanding,” Heilig explained.

Additional strategies included how to assess future surveys to determine if an action plan needs modification or whether any interventions are having an impact on the process of changing a school’s culture.

“Although we learned how to mine the data we collect so that we can determine which strategies to implement that will produce the positive change students are seeking, the most valuable aspect of the workshop for me was affirming the students’ voices by ensuring we close the feedback loop. We have to send the message to the students that we care enough about their concerns to do something about them,” Heilig reported.

Deanon agreed that the critical aspect of the workshop was the reminder that the Voice Survey doesn’t just produce data that allows the school to put numbers on a graph. “When Focus Groups tackle the issues of concern, their work sends a message that we want to create a safe place where students experience a sense of belonging,” Deanon said.

According to Deanon, the MBI Leadership is comprised of a team of sixth graders. Getting the students involved is important so that they take ownership of their behavior and of creating the social/emotional climate in their learning spaces that contributes to academic success.

“The students have proposed some really good ideas for addressing issues highlighted in the past, like recess buddies for students who feel left out on the playground or lunch pals so that no one has to eat alone,” Deanon explained.

In addition to Deanon, Heilig, and Martin, other school personnel serving on the MBI Team at Meadowlark are third grade teacher, Bobbi Weinheimer; sixth grade teacher, Bryce Weinheimer; fifth grade teacher, Jill Paulsen; and school aide, JoEllen MacLean.