WEYBURN - A host of challenges and a series of objectives greet the professionals who are engaged in providing student services in the South East Cornerstone Public School Division.
Cheryl Anderson, co-ordinator of student services, and Raylene Forseth were on hand to illustrate and explain some of those challenges to school board members during the Jan. 17 meeting in Weyburn.
Anderson and Forseth were invited to the session to help the board members gain a more complete understanding of what they and their teammates do to help steer students, some with complex needs, down various pathways to success in their educational pursuits.
Anderson led off by noting how the provincial education plan not only involves traditional learning and assessment, along with Indigenous education, but also mental health and well-being and student transitions.
Cornerstone is missing one full-time psychologist with one other providing expertise in that section. Anderson explained this school division was not alone in experiencing shortages in that category.
That psychologist will be supporting a practicum student in the spring. Nine psychologist assessments were completed to the end of November and three more have been contracted.
In the past, the division has engaged two to 2 1/2 full-time equivalent psychologists with 56 and 54 assessments completed in total in 2021-22 and 2022-23, respectively.
Anderson detailed some priority action plans that included learning assessments and tracking students’ growth and achievements to understand when interventions are needed. The screenings are held three times per school year and are connected to Alberta’s learning outcomes pattern that, in turn, is connected to the Western and Northern Canadian protocol, a common curriculum framework.
Early literacy, reading skills and math skills are all tested at various levels from Grades 1-9. The screening process aides the instructors in identifying skill gaps so interventions can be put in place where and when required.
Anderson said that when fairly new practices of intervention tracking processes and supports are introduced, they have been smooth with less paperwork involved and increased efficiency within the professional ranks. She noted that 302 intervention plans had been introduced in the 2022-23 academic year and so far in the 2023-24 school year, there have been 174 plans introduced that focus on individual students. There are also 117 group classroom intervention plans underway that began last month.
Homeschool enrolment continues to increase, even after the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions have been settled, with 342 students now being homeschooled compared with 129 in 2014-15. A big jump, as would be expected, happened from 2019-20 to 2021-22 when the number jumped from 183 to 310.
Asked why the homeschooling numbers continued to rise, even after the pandemic, Anderson said she expected those numbers to continue to rise on a modest scale as personal/family values worked into the equations. She also outlined the various support requests that had been made for homeschoolers that included everything from athletics, school courses, textbooks and internet accesses, and that communication among the homeschool communities was good, as were connections to the school division.
Anderson also spoke about incident reporting, behaviour screening, and tracking and professional development modules during her portion of the presentation, noting that universal screening was slowly descending which was a good thing in terms of students at risk.
Counsellor data indicated that a reduction of one full-time position had been invoked on the division this year, leaving them with 15 FTE positions. The counsellor workloads averaged from 46 to 74 projects per month and included students in individual sessions and classroom presentations. She also spoke of violent threat-risk assessments and the background training that takes place to make assessments and plan responses.
Forseth began her presentation with a rapid-fire introduction to Youth Wellness Day for Grade 6 classes including the Nakota Medicine Wheel and outdoor education processes.
She also explained trauma-sensitive workshops that had taken place in Arcola and Hillcrest Schools, as well as compassion fatigue workshops for early learning teams at McNaughton High School in Moosomin and Yellow Grass School. She noted how 14 families had been engaged in tackling difficult conversations in the family engagement conversations held in spring and fall sessions.
Spruce Ridge School held a Wellness Day for Grades 3-5 in November 2023.
“We went on a quest,” Forseth said, noting there had been 125 students involved in the experience. She added that two other schools have expressed an interest in a similar project in the near future.
An interesting conflict-resolution communication activity was also launched at Radville Regional School in November, she said.
“This walkthrough conflict” dealt with some scenarios that were resolved without speech, that “helps students build skills”, she said.
Conflict Time Machine projects were also held at Yellow Grass School for kindergarten-Grade 4; Stoughton Central School, Grades 2-7; Arcola School, Grades 7 and 8; and Pleasantdale School, Grade 3.
A staff wellness collaboration project that included wellness card packs had also been introduced.
Anderson and Forseth fielded a number of queries from board members during their presentations and were thanked by board chairwoman Audrey Trombley.
