This year at our school we have been hard at work on kindness to self, others and to place initiatives in hopes that this will make a difference in the way students feel connected to each other, to our community and in their sense of personal and social well-being. We believe that when are students feel good about themselves and connected to others, they are more ready to learn and apply their learning to make our communities and world a better place to be.

Our Grade 5 students partook in the province-wide Middle Years Development Instrument survey.  The survey had our students respond to questions about to what extent they feel connected to adults and their peers at our school as well their sense of empathy and happiness with their life in general.

In the attached results below, most students indicated a high level of empathy when they were asked 'if they care about the feelings of others' and if 'they helped someone who was hurt.'

Grade 5 students indicated high level of self-esteem and happiness when reflecting on the statements that 'a lot of things about me are good' and 'I am happy with my life.'

Students have also indicated mostly high levels of belonging with adults in the school, with their peers and with their close friends.

I believe our consistent focus on teaching kindness in the classrooms and school-wide over the past three years have contributed positively to our Grade 5 students' feelings of connectedness to our school community.

This work is of course never done.  Kindness is a work in progress in all of us that harvests rewarding results in all the lives that it touches. Whether we decide as a staff in September to continue with this focus or not, it will continue to be the foundation of our work with students at Diefenbaker.