At this week's assembly, I spoke to students about the survey results.
I know many of you found this survey to be a bit too long, so I appreciate you taking time to complete it, as it provides the school with important feedback about how engaged you are in the work you do here at Greenwood. Because other schools, mostly American, also take part in the survey, we are able to compare our results with them. We plan on participating in the HSSSE next spring, so we can also compare our results against previous years. Both types of comparisons allow us to set school-wide goals related to student engagement.
You’re probably thinking, why is engagement important. Engagement matters because there is a strong correlation between engagement and success in school. If you take an active interest in things related to school, such as participating in class, playing on school team, etc., you are more likely do to well in all areas of school life. Researchers at the University of Indiana, who designed the HSSSE survey, analyze these results and advise schools on how they can best engage students.
The questions you answered on the survey relate to three areas of engagement: emotional, social and intellectual. Emotional engagement focuses on how connected you are to your school and how you feel about being a part of the school. In comparison to other public and independent schools, this was our highest level of engagement. This result reinforces the great work our teachers and staff do with you on a daily basis. The next area of engagement focused on the social dimension, which looks at how connected you are to people in the school. Once again, we achieved excellent results in this area. Many of you noted that your friends at school are the main reason you attend Greenwood.
The final area of engagement looked at how engaged you are in your class work. The results in this area of the survey indicated you learn best when you work with others and when the learning is connected to some aspect of technology. One result that we would like to improve on during this year relates to you feeling challenged by the work you do in your classes. Some of you indicated you could be working harder than you are. Ensuring that every student is challenged to his or her potential is the most complex part of developing the whole person. If you feel you are not being challenged in all of your classes, speak to your teacher or adviser about it. I promise you this will not result in more homework. Instead, what we want to do is see all Greenwood students take advantage of the opportunity to maximize their potential.
