Efforts to boost students’ social-emotional skills have earned Washington Discovery Academy some national recognition. In a video presented to the Plymouth School Board last week, WDA Facilitator Kendall Hoover said that students are increasingly coming to school without the social skills they need to work out problems on their own.
“So we start each day with a morning meeting, and we start with each child saying where they are on that social-emotional scale,” Hoover explained. “Sometimes, everybody is a one when they go around, which they are ready to go, ready to learn. Sometimes, we are more of a two. We might be a little bit tired or not feeling well. Or there are others that have had more traumatic things happen, and they’re a three, a four, or a five.”
The school has also expanded those efforts to staff meetings. The thought is that if staff members can learn to discuss their own problems with each other, it will be easier for them to help students do it.
Principal Lauren Cooper told the school board that Washington Discovery Academy had been selected as one of the New Tech Network’s demonstration school for a couple years. Now, the social-emotional learning effort has helped the school be named one of New Tech’s first Spotlight Schools.
WDA Social Worker Brenda Lewis said in the video that the designation is a great honor. “I think this is a movement that will probably spread across the nation,” she said, “and that’s why I was so excited when this came about because I was like, ‘This is something I’ve been wanting for years.’ It was so important for us to be addressing that side of students’ learning, not just the academic, but are you addressing the whole student?”
Cooper said Washington Discovery Academy is one of the first two or three schools in the country to get New Tech’s Spotlight School designation and probably the first elementary school.
