The Chinook School Division put the focus on their student services team recently in a report delivered to the school board.
It's a team of staff that work with students who have additional needs outside the classroom.
"The Chinook School Division continues to develop capacity in our staff," said Superintendent of Learning Kevin Kleisinger. "This is being done through ongoing training and by providing professional development opportunities in areas related to mental well-being. Building resilience in our students and increasing opportunities for academic success. I think it is translating into success across the board for our students."
Kleisinger said one challenge stands out.
"Every classroom and school across our division is unique and has reason to celebrate as well as some challenges that they may be facing," he said. "I believe that one challenge that is likely to present itself across all of our schools is the need to support our students around emotional regulation.
"This topic is one that our counselors are engaging with our students across the division. Our school division counselors as well as our school-based student support service teams are working every day directly with the students helping them build skills related to resiliency as well as various other strategies related to mental health and well-being. This is something that is a need that will continue across our division and across the province."
The school division highlighted a number of efforts by the student services department including:
- An increase in division capacity to deliver important training related to Mental Health First Aid and Non-Violent Crisis Intervention.
- Assessments and related supports continue for speech language development, English as an additional language, occupational therapy and psychological assessments for Chinook students.
- In 2023-24, in response to needs identified, an additional 1.0 FTE counsellor was staffed. All schools have access to these important professionals to support student well-being.
- Speech-Language Pathologists as well as SLP Assistants are active and working with our students and staff to support speech development and provide intervention time for our students.
- The coaching model is actively supporting schools in areas including mathematics, literacy, early years, and career counselling.
- Google Meet is being leveraged to provide efficient professional development to Pre-K and Kindergarten teachers.
- Family engagement strategies have been developed and piloted for incoming Kindergarten parents. Approaches supporting parent/teacher conferences, staggered entry, transition meetings and early learning bags are being implemented.
- School division committees are established and participants including administrators, teachers, coordinators and senior staff are collaborating and advising on direction in areas including mental health and well-being, early learning and specialist committees.
They didn't have specific data as to how packed their schedule is, but Kleisinger noted they are all as busy as their time allows them to be. That means they would certainly welcome any additional provincial funding for new team members.
"I do believe that if we had additional members, whether that be counsellors to support service teachers, speech and language pathologists, all of those professionals would continue to work across our division that the demand would be matched," he said. "They would certainly be working full time with students. I do see one advantage to increased funding and that would be by increasing the capacity of our student support services team, we would be able to spend more time on proactive learning rather than being reactive to children who might be approaching crisis. Building those skills on the front end, helping the children learn about resiliency and learning about monitoring their own behaviour would be a goal for all individuals working in the student support services team."