Santa Cruz Gardens brings SEL and Student Leadership to the Capitol!

6 Student Leaders attended the SEL & Wellness Summit in Sacramento to present on a panel about their incredible work to bring a positive impact to their campus inclusion and climate. The Summit Session and Santa Cruz Gardens student leadership has been facilitated mainly by Counselor Sue Robinson and Speech and Language Pathologist Julianne Wolf, with assistance from Principal Carlo Albano. 

Being a Kelvin Education focal site allowed the school to use their student and family-friendly survey “pulses” to gauge areas of growth and strength in areas such as Connection, Emotional Experiences, and Opportunities for Student Voice and Leadership. 

“One of the personal passions for me is to activate as much Student Voice and Agency as possible through areas our kids can have a direct impact on,” says Principal Albano, “I’m so proud of SCG students’ growth and ownership of their ability to make changes in natural phenomena through environmental stewardship practices embedded in our SAGE Program, and in social phenomena through our Student Leadership Team, Green Team, and Peace Pals.”

SCG Student Leadership notably rose to this challenge this year as they grew their praxis and use of real-world data to discover trends from their peers’ Kelvin Pulse surveys and find areas where students needed help. The Leadership team decided from these results what they would do as an action step. They decided to teach every class in the school about brain science and coping skills with the guidance of Counselor Sue Robinson. See their Presentation Slides and work here!

“We noticed that students were low in coping skills, figuring out what to do when things get hard to be resilient,” says Student Leader and Summit Panelist Rainer King, 4th grade. “Sometimes kids around third grade lose this spark and begin to realize life is hard and not fair or easy.” 

The Leaders taught each class about key brain parts and their function- the Hippocampus (memory), the Amygdala (quick reaction and protection), and the Prefrontal Cortex (the wise decision maker). They used this information to talk about how specific coping skills help these areas of the brain to make us more kind, compassionate, and stable. They taught about emotions and having self-awareness to use skills like positive self-talk, walking in nature, and ways we can have help from friends, school staff, and family. 

“The student leaders and their commitment to bring positive change to our campus always impresses me; however, this year, their work went above and beyond. Their passion, eagerness to learn, and drive to learn the subject matter and then teach it to their peers were inspiring. I am so proud and honored to work with them,” shares Sue Robinson.

In late May, SCG visited Sacramento to present at the annual CalHope SEL & Wellness Summit with Principal Albano, Ms. Robinson, and Wolf alongside student 5th graders Evan Arnold, Lily Dudley, Audra Noland, and 4th graders Victoria, Esmeralda, and Rainer King. These student leaders were very active and strong representatives of their data analysis and next steps amongst their group of 20 SCG student leaders in total.

They presented to about 50 audience members from across California in district, site-level, and state-level positions. 

“We were so impressed and proud of the students’ bravery in sharing their experience and ideas with a room of adults! Each student had an opportunity to share a step of the SCG process, as well as field questions from the audience,” recalls Julianne Wolf. 

The Question and Answer section of the session brought glowing reviews to the students and their work to truly make a difference. Perhaps of most excitement to the SCG team were the statements about their work as a very reproducible model that they could do at their site or district to encourage student voice and participation in making their school a better place for all. This was a great desire to hear! 

“We walked away feeling like our school can have positive ripples near and far to support many other kids on their path to empower students and reactivate the spark that Rainer spoke of,” says Principal Albano. “We feel so proud of our students, and so grateful to help them see their greatness!”  

The facilitation of SCG Student Leadership’s work has resulted in a Transformative SEL award from CalHope, a continued partnership with Kelvin Education, and a Thriving Schools Gold Award from SEL4CA.