During our first meeting, the team gathered to look back at our previous ideas for reinforcing dependability in our school community. In our discussion, students and staff shared lessons learned from those attempts and brought about new ideas for this year's pilot program. Students emphasized the importance of having an equal voice. They also shared the importance of having more than one-sided conversation by ensuring that no group is overly dominant over the other. Together, we recognized that true dependability and open communication are interconnected, as they help both students and staff feel equally heard and included.
While we reflected on last school year’s attempt towards promoting dependability through incentive-based strategies and other similar initiatives like gift card giveaways, we noticed a pattern. We realized that while there were some positive responses to the pilot program, students gave up coming to school early after having earned the incentive. As we all reflected on this outcome, we came to understand that maybe we needed to try a different approach this time. With this in mind, the team organized a new action plan centered on accountability and shared responsibility. This year our plan is to create a “Question of the Day” activity that we hope will contribute to student engagement and active participation by getting them involved in hosting these activities at the beginning of their class period. Students will also create suggestion boxes so that each one can input ideas for questions of the day, twice a week. With accessible spaces and clear roles, the team is committed to creating a dependable, collaborative environment where staff and students share responsibility by working as a team.