Behind the Scenes: Student Voice Posters

Terrence Fradet Data

Near the end of last school year we wanted to send a gift to school and district administrators as a token of appreciation for their partnership and their work supporting students. I’m a designer at Panorama and was excited to work on this end-of-year surprise for clients. To up the ante from previous years, I suggested that we create a poster from our dataset that captures feedback from 500,000+ (now well over 1 million!) students about their teachers and school using the Panorama Student Survey.

Improving SEL with Measurement Twitter Chat

Liz Breese, PH.D. Events, Social-Emotional Learning

Panorama hosted an EdWeek webinar on “Improving SEL with Measurement,” showcasing social-emotional learning at Fresno Unified School District, Woodridge School District 68, and Dallas Independent School District. Fresno USD Superintendent Michael Hanson, Woodridge 68 Assistant Superintendent Greg Wolcott, and Director of Operations Planning and Implementation Tricia Baumer at Dallas ISD shared learnings and strategies from their districts. Educators joined the conversation by live-tweeting the event with the hashtag #SELWebinar. Webinar participants shared photos, graphs, and, most importantly, their perspectives on improving social-emotional learning. Follow along with the live chat log via Storify!

Sharing SEL Priorities With Your Team

Liz Breese, PH.D. School Leadership, Social-Emotional Learning

What is social-emotional learning (SEL) at your school? This year, school and district leaders are rallying teachers, staff, and students around specific facets of SEL that matter for their school communities, and principals and SEL coordinators are establishing common visions for SEL. One effective way to get a campus or district team on the same page about social-emotional learning priorities is to introduce the terminology and reasons why your community is focusing on SEL during a staff meeting or professional development session. But you don’t need to start your presentation from scratch.

Are We Thinking About Growth Mindset Too Narrowly?

Jack McDermott Data, Social-Emotional Learning

An analysis of a nationwide measure of 23,000 students’ perceptions of growth mindset shows meaningful differences in what students believe they can change and a gender gap.

Last school year, David Andrews, a social studies teacher at Piedmont Hills High School (Calif.), noticed something in his students that puzzled him.

As a teacher of 6 years, Andrews had read the research by Stanford Professor Carol Dweck and others that showed the impact of having a growth mindset on students’ learning and academic achievement. Andrews promoted this belief that people can work deliberately to change their most basic abilities — namely their intelligence.

“Students are so varied when it comes to their mindsets,” Andrews said. “I’m still working to crack the enigma of how to support all my students’ beliefs about themselves.” He would overhear students saying they were good at social studies, but would never be good at math. Other students would say they could always work harder to do better in class, while some felt they just weren’t that talented.

Colorado Community Embraces SEL Reflections

Liz Breese, PH.D. Social-Emotional Learning

In Grand Junction, Colorado, students will use SEL measures to reflect on their social-emotional development and skills. Local news channel KKCO covered plans at Mesa Valley School District 51 to measure more than academic achievement to better support students’ growth and needs. To learn more, KKCO visited the district to interview district administrators and parents about their motivations for asking students to reflect on their social-emotional learning.

A Year of Panorama Data in School Districts

Jessica Owen Data

When measuring feedback from your students, parents, teachers, and community, set yourself up for success with a targeted timeline for collecting and reviewing data, and then acting on results. As you plan ahead for feedback and analysis in your school or district, use this suggested year-long timeline for your data needs.

We started this timeline in the fall to align to the school year, but be sure to customize these target activities to whatever schedule fits best with your own goals!

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