YouthTruth Resource Backpack | Plan for Improvement

Choose the school level and theme you want to plan improvements for

Resources are grounded in specific questions and key themes of the YouthTruth Survey to help educators target improvements to a school’s unique findings revealed by YouthTruth reports.

Back to the backpack

Elementary

Student Engagement

Academic Challenge

Relationships

Culture

Instructional Methods

Student Engagement

Choose a question and explore activities to boost engagement in younger students

Does your teacher want you to do your best?

Does your teacher ask you to keep trying when the work gets hard?

Do you think your teacher wants you to work your hardest?

Academic Challenge

Choose a question and explore activities to strengthen academic challenge for younger students

Does your homework help you learn?

Does what you learn in class help you outside of school?

Does your teacher let you explain your ideas?

Do you learn interesting things in class?

Does the work you do in this class make you really think?

Does your teacher ask you to show your work?

Relationships

Choose a question and explore activities to improve relationships for younger students

Is your teacher fair to you?

Does your teacher give you extra help if you need it?

Does your teacher treat you with respect?

Do you like the way your teacher treats you when you need help?

Do you think your teacher cares about you?

Culture

Choose a question and explore activities to strengthen culture for younger students

Does your class stay busy and not waste time?

Do students behave well in your class?

Instructional Methods

Choose a question and explore activities to improve instructional methods for younger students

Does your teacher ask you if you understand what you are learning?

When you make a mistake, does your teacher help you correct it?

Can you find the things you need in your classroom?

Does your teacher tell you you can do well if you work hard?

Secondary

Student Engagement

Academic Challenge

Relationships

Culture

College and Career Readiness

Peer Belonging and Collaboration

Academic Support Services

Student Engagement

Choose a question and explore activities to boost engagement in older students

What I learn in class helps me outside of school.

My teachers’ expectations make me want to do my best.

I take pride in my school work.

I try to do my best in school.

I enjoy coming to school most of the time.

Have you ever seriously considered dropping out of high school?

Academic Challenge

Choose a question and explore activities to strengthen academic challenge for older students

The work that I do for my classes makes me really think.

Most of my teachers don’t let people give up when the work gets hard.

My teachers give me assignments that help me to better understand the subject.

Most of my teachers want me to explain my answers – why I think what I think.

In most of my classes, we learn to correct our mistakes.

Relationships

Choose a question and explore activities to improve relationships for older students

How many of your teachers make an effort to understand what your life is like outside of school?

How many of your teachers connect what you’re learning in class with your life outside of school?

How many of your teachers believe that you can get a good grade if you try?

How many of your teachers are not just satisfied if you pass, they care if you’re really learning?

Culture

Choose a question and explore activities to strengthen culture for older students

Most students in this school want to do well in class.

Discipline in this school is fair

Most students in this school treat adults with respect. / Most adults in this school treat students with respect.

Adults in my school respect people from different backgrounds. (For example, people of different races, ethnicities, and genders.)

College and Career Readiness

Choose a question and explore activities to support college and career readiness for older students

My school has helped me figure out which careers match my interests and abilities.

My school has helped me understand the steps I need to take to have the career that I want.

Peer Belonging and Collaboration

Choose a question and explore activities to enhance peer belonging and collaboration for older students

Note: YouthTruth’s elementary-level student surveys do not ask questions about peer belonging and collaboration.

I really feel like part of my school’s community.

Most students at this school are friendly to me.

I can usually be myself around other students at this school.

Academic Support Services

Choose a question and explore activities to bolster academic support services for older students

This year, have you participated in an advisory class at your school?

Distance Learning

Improving the Quality of Distance and Blended Learning

Restarting and Reinventing School: Learning in the Time of COVID and Beyond

8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom

Trauma Informed Distance Learning

Transform Homework into Home Learning

Improving the Quality of Distance and Blended Learning

This brief is one in a series aimed at providing K-12 education decision makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students during and following the novel coronavirus pandemic. Click here to learn more about the EdResearch for Recovery Project and view the set of COVID-19 response-andrecovery topic areas and practitioner-generated questions.

View the brief here.

Restarting and Reinventing School: Learning in the Time of COVID and Beyond

Across the United States, state education agencies and school districts face daunting challenges and difficult decisions for restarting schools as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. As state and district leaders prepare for what schooling will look like in 2020 and beyond, there is an opportunity to identify evidence-based policies and practices that will enable them to seize this moment to rethink school in ways that can transform learning opportunities for students and teachers alike.

Take a look at the report here.

8 Strategies to Improve Participation in Your Virtual Classroom

Educators share their best synchronous and asynchronous strategies to boost student participation during online learning.

View the article here.

Trauma Informed Distance Learning

Trauma-informed teaching cannot be simplified to cookie-cutter practices. Take this example: a teacher worked with a student to develop a silent signal that he could use when he needed extra breaks during class. Hearing how well it worked, another teacher tried to apply the signal without first building a relationship with the student. It bombed. With the second teacher, the signal became “an angry ear tug instead of a trauma-informed ear tug,” said Alex Shevrin Venet, who shared this story during a recent webinar on trauma-informed distance learning.

View the article here.

Transform Homework into Home Learning

Far too often, students view any schoolwork that they need to do at home as an imposition—something to get through, or worse, avoid completely. This age-old problem has always been an impediment to learning, but it takes on new significance during the COVID-19 pandemic and the remote teaching and virtual learning it has necessitated. We must address this problem head on, because if students and their parents are of the mindset that learning at home will always be a form of drudgery, then our best efforts to teach remotely will be compromised. Think of it as trying to plant a garden on a concrete slab: No foundation to support growth leads to the inevitable result—no growth.

View the article here.