Dimmitt Middle School and Evergreen High School students and teachers, along with Sound Discipline staff.
In August, a group of six youth and six educators from Dimmitt Middle School and Evergreen High School, along with Sound Discipline Facilitators, came together to create a secondary social emotional learning curriculum. This project, called "Designing Their Own Learning", was funded by The College Spark Foundation and the Youth Development Executives of King County (YDEKC). The group worked together over the span of 2 weeks to develop useful tools and meaningful social emotional lessons for middle and high schools, creating nine lessons that can be used right away in classrooms in their schools.
They described the experience in their own words:
This eight-day experience exceeded our expectations in our sense of connection with each other, the products we developed, and the hopes we have for bringing this work back to our schools. Together we developed a list of highlights we would like to share:
What we did:
- We intentionally built community and created a team, which allowed us to have honest conversations and listen deeply to each other.
- We changed student and teacher relationships and built strong authentic connections.
- We learned to open up and get out of our comfort zones in a super supportive group of people who all want to make change for our schools.
- We listened to, and prioritized, student voice. We experienced student-led teaching and learning; it is so meaningful and important.
- We came to understand that experiential learning is powerful.
Our Hope for our Schools:
- We will build more possibilities for connectedness for students and teachers.
- Driven by student voice, we will build a stronger community of connected, engaged, enthusiastic learners.
- We will change the mindset in our schools toward an understanding that this work is pivotal for the kind of school community in which every person can thrive.
These students and educators who gave up a big piece of the summer to do this work are our Sound Discipline Champions. We are grateful for their enthusiasm, commitment and willingness to lean in to deep learning and collaboration. We hope to have them share updates about their work throughout this school year.
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