Listening, Learning, and Redesigning Our Secondary Check-In Experience

High school students are asked to do a lot with very little control.

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They move through tightly scheduled days, navigate constant academic and social pressure, and spend much of their time responding to decisions made for them. So when adults ask students to ‘open up’ about how they’re feeling — especially through a required school activity — it’s understandable that some hesitate. Others disengage entirely.

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And honestly? Their feedback told us as much.

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At Sown To Grow, we’ve spent years helping schools create meaningful opportunities for student reflection and emotional check-ins. But recently, we heard a consistent message from some secondary students and educators using our 5-minute weekly check-in: parts of the experience felt too limiting, too repetitive, or disconnected from the way students actually express themselves.

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That feedback mattered.

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Because emotional reflection only works when people feel a sense of ownership in the process. If we want students to engage authentically, we have to design experiences that respect their individuality, emotional complexity, and need for choice.

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So we’re making changes—and we’ve partnered with Digital Promise, educators, and especially students to ensure the right people are heard to help achieve the desired results.

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Read on to learn how we're putting student voice at the center of the co-design process—and what these outcomes will mean for engagement, belonging, and well-being.

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How We Got Here

This redesign began with a challenge we couldn't ignore: our weekly check-in experience wasn't resonating as strongly with some high schoolers and educators in the way we intended. And so this redesign began with a simple but important question: How can we make the important practice of weekly reflection feel more meaningful for secondary students? 

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At the same time, Digital Promise was launching a new cohort to help school communities better support academic progress, career and college transitions, and well-being. Grounded in the Student Success Systems framework—which emphasizes holistic, real-time, actionable data—Digital Promise invited Sown To Grow to join four partner districts in a collaborative co-design project. Together, school and district leaders from schools in Wisconsin, Tennessee, and California came together to examine what was and wasn't working for students.

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During an in-person co-design session in Los Angeles in April 2026, participants explored the realities facing high school students, identified pain points in the current reflection experience, and worked together to uncover root causes. Additional classroom visits with students helped gain the authentic feedback necessary to ensure that their perspectives as weekly platform users remained central to the process.

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From Feedback to Features: The Process for Co-Designing a Better Check-In Experience

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Based on all of these collaborations, the insights became the foundation for the new features we're developing this summer, and piloting with four partner schools starting in the 2026-27 school year. The clear themes that emerged from the sessions helped narrow the check-in updates to focus on two core goals:

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🌱 Help students better express what they’re actually feeling

🌱 Give students more agency in how they participate

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From expanded emotional expression options to student-selected reflection prompts, these updates aim to make weekly check-ins feel less like another assignment, and more like a space students can genuinely make their own. Although the project is still in the development stages, the visual mockup drafts are exciting to review so far.

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The best is yet to come

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Along with our two main priorities, we're also exploring additional ways to bring moments of delight into the student experience without turning reflection into a game or introducing distractions that compete with the purpose of the check-in.

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The balance matters.

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We want the process to feel engaging and welcoming while preserving what makes reflection valuable in the first place: creating a meaningful moment for students to pause, think, and be heard.

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At Sown To Grow, we believe student voice should shape more than a reflection response—it should shape the tools themselves.

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These updates are one step toward a simple goal: creating check-ins that feel more relevant, more authentic, and more empowering for the students who use them.

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Because when students have more agency in how they reflect, they're more likely to engage honestly. And when students engage honestly, schools gain a clearer understanding of what young people need to thrive.

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