From the Principal
Greetings, families!
It was lovely to meet some new families last week at the PTA general meeting on Tuesday, our SUN Leadership Council on Thursday, and at the parent coffee on Friday. We chatted a little bit about the physical and developmental changes that happen with tweens and teens, not just in their bodies but in their brains as well. Outside of the womb, there are two big growth spurts that happen to the brain: one in toddlerhood and one right as they hit middle school. So, no big surprise that some of the behaviors are nearly identical, too. For the curious, I highly recommend this OPB presentation from Frontline, which shares interviews and ongoing research on how our brains transition from childhood to fully adult thinking patterns.
We also talked a little bit about some school data that will be released in a few weeks from the Successful Schools Survey that 7th graders, Jackson teachers and staff, and parents took last winter. This was a survey to establish baseline data on how students, staff, and families feel about Jackson’s sense of community, our strategies and communication around school behavior and discipline, how safe students are at Jackson, and how well connected students feel to teachers and school. All of these are important indicators of a school’s and a system’s overall success. Those surveys were tallied and crunched by Panorama, which does this for schools and organizations all over the country, so we are able to see how the responses of our community compare against national data sets and other schools within our own district.
On the plus side, our data compares quite favorably to middle schools across the country, and to other schools within Portland Public Schools. School climate, which included questions about the energy and prevailing disposition of the school, the facility, and overall enthusiasm of staff and students about being at Jackson, was our strongest indicator across all surveyed groups when we examine our aggregated results. Looking at the same data by student group, however, highlights that we do have some room to grow to improve the sense of belonging of all students and particularly students who are gay, bi-sexual or questioning. This is valuable information for us, especially when we already know that LBGTQ adolescents across the nation are at higher risk for depression, addiction, homelessness, and suicide. What we are doing already isn’t getting the results we want for kids, so we will be considering and applying new ideas, tools, information and practices over the course of this year. Expect more information as we go!
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sing Awareness Around Anxiety