SESS School Plan 2026–2027
Year 3: Student Wellbeing
Rooted in Pedagogy, Growing Through Connection, Communication and Executive Functioning
Over the past two years, our inquiry into student wellbeing has evolved as we have listened to student voices, examined our practices, and reflected on the impact of our actions. Our work began with questions about belonging and mental wellness and grew into an intentional focus on student-adult connections and two-way communication with families. As we enter our third year, we are continuing this work while turning our attention more deliberately toward executive functioning and the role our pedagogy plays in supporting student wellbeing.
SCANNING: What is going on for our learners?
Similkameen Elementary Secondary School (SESS) is a Grade 5–12 school in Keremeos, BC, with just over 300 students. Approximately one-third of our students are Indigenous, and our school community is diverse in terms of abilities, socioeconomic circumstances, family structures and cultural backgrounds. We continue to navigate the unique challenge of building one school identity while responding to the different developmental, social, emotional, and academic needs of our elementary and secondary learners.
Our inquiry into student wellbeing began in 2024–2025 when, following two years of focused work on literacy, we recognized that our interventions were not having the impact we had hoped. We decided to look further upstream to better understand what might be influencing our students' ability to engage in learning and experience academic success.
Our initial scanning, which included student surveys, the MDI and YDI, attendance data, student and staff forums, and observations, revealed concerns about student engagement, belonging, attendance, safety, and perseverance. Only 28% of SESS students responded positively when asked if they liked school, compared with a provincial average of 43%. Fewer than half of our surveyed students reported feeling a sense of belonging at SESS. When we scanned more deeply, mental wellness emerged as a common thread connecting these areas.
During our second year, we focused on strengthening intentional student-adult connections and increasing meaningful, two-way communication with families. Teachers identified students they wanted to know better, made deliberate efforts to connect with them and their families, and reflected on the impact of these relationships.
Our 2025–2026 evidence, including student wellbeing surveys, staff observations, family feedback, attendance data, and the YDI and the MDI, suggests that this work is making a difference. We saw encouraging growth in belonging, particularly among elementary students. More students identified trusted adults, described positive school experiences, and demonstrated a greater willingness to seek help.
However, our scanning also revealed that these improvements were not consistent across all areas of wellbeing. Secondary students continued to report concerns about anxiety, feeling overwhelmed, motivation, and attendance. Across both divisions, students continued to experience challenges managing stress, persevering through difficult tasks and applying self-regulation strategies consistently.
This has led us to an important realization: feeling connected and supported at school is essential, but it does not necessarily mean students have the skills or structures they need to successfully navigate the demands of learning.
As we reflected on our evidence, we began to wonder about the role of executive functioning in our students' daily experiences. Are students struggling to begin tasks, manage their time, organize their learning, regulate their emotions, or persevere when learning becomes challenging? Are our classroom routines, instructional practices and assessment approaches helping students develop these skills, or are we sometimes unintentionally creating additional barriers? We also wonder about examining classroom practices to identify the executive functioning skills that may contribute to student wellbeing.
We recognize that these questions require further investigation.
FOCUSING: What is going to give us the biggest impact?
Our first two years of inquiry have reinforced the importance of meaningful relationships, connection, and communication in supporting student wellbeing. We want to continue building on this work while exploring how our pedagogy can more intentionally support students in becoming confident, capable and increasingly independent learners.
For 2026–2027, we have chosen to focus on executive functioning as an area of professional learning and inquiry, with particular attention to how our instructional practices can support students' ability to plan, organize, initiate tasks, regulate emotions, manage their learning and persevere through challenges.
Rather than viewing executive functioning solely as a set of skills that students either have or lack, we want to examine our own role in developing and supporting these skills. We are curious about how predictable routines, explicit instruction, appropriate scaffolding and responsive assessment practices might reduce unnecessary stress, increase student engagement, and help students experience success.
We also recognize that our learners bring diverse strengths, needs, cultural perspectives, and experiences to the classroom. Our approach must be inclusive, culturally responsive, and flexible enough to meet students where they are while maintaining meaningful opportunities for growth.
Our metaphor tree represents our evolving understanding of this work. Pedagogy forms the roots of our inquiry, professional learning strengthens our practice, and student growth is supported through connection, communication, and executive functioning. Student wellbeing remains our overarching goal.
OUR INQUIRY QUESTION:
How will an intentional focus on developing executive functioning skills through responsive pedagogy impact student wellbeing?
DEVELOPING A HUNCH: What is leading to this situation? How are we contributing to it?
As we enter our third year of inquiry, we recognize that while our intentional work around connection and communication has contributed to improvements in student wellbeing, many students continue to experience challenges with engagement, perseverance, self-regulation and feeling overwhelmed by the demands of school.
Our emerging hunch is that the way we structure learning environments, deliver instruction and establish classroom routines may have a significant impact on students' executive functioning and, ultimately, their wellbeing.
We want to turn our attention inward and ask ourselves how our daily practices might be supporting students' ability to plan, organize, initiate tasks, manage emotions, and persevere through challenges. We also want to consider whether some of our expectations and practices might unintentionally create additional barriers for learners.
As a staff, we will reflect on how we are impacting student wellbeing through executive functioning in our classrooms and throughout the school. We will consider what we are already doing well, where students may be experiencing challenges and what we might need to do differently.
Questions to guide our hunching
- How might our instructional practices and classroom environments be supporting or hindering students' executive functioning?
- Are we explicitly teaching the skills we expect students to demonstrate, or are we assuming they already have them?
- How might our classroom routines, transitions, assignments, and assessment practices contribute to students feeling overwhelmed?
- Where are we providing appropriate scaffolding, and where might students need additional support or opportunities for independence?
- How might our own understanding of executive functioning influence the expectations of our students?
- What are our students telling us about the challenges they experience in managing their learning?
Through this reflection, we hope to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between our pedagogy, students' executive functioning, and their experiences of wellbeing at school.