Expanded reflection response suggestions for teachers
Sown To Grow uses technology to identify the emotional themes of a student's reflection. Based on these themes, teachers are provided with relevant suggestions for responses. Our bank of response suggestions are written by SEL experts based on four pillars: 1) Acknowledgement / Creating Space, 2) Affirmation / Validation, 3) Inviting elaboration, and 4) coaching Several suggestions are provided for each reflection - different suggestions might make more sense than others based on the depth of the teacher-student relationship, and are meant to help both students and teachers increase their comfort level with emotional reflection.
Sown To Grow has expanded the pool of possible response suggestions from ~400 to more than 2,000, and has curated the pool to support more relevant content for teachers to use in responding to students. The new suggestions still abide by Sown To Grow's framework for acknowledging and affirming student experiences, as well as inviting elaboration and providing coaching. The update to the expanded reflection response suggestions only impacts the weekly emotional check-in module.
This process begun by identifying the most commonly used response suggestions from our original pool, eliminating outdated suggestions, and then adding in new response suggestions that echoed the sentiment of the most useful response suggestions, adding in length variety and diversity of speaker voice. The expanded list of response suggestions should give teachers increased options for how to respond to students and more culturally responsive options for providing relevant, authentic support to students.
Teachers will now see the fresh suggestion pool when responding to students' weekly check-ins. The app will display the three most relevant suggestions initially, but teachers can cycle through different options. These suggestions can also be used as a base for teachers to edit or expand on when responding to students. Our goal at Sown To Grow is to use technology like this response suggestion feature to support, not replace, teachers in the process of relationship building with their students by offering time-saving tools that deepen student-teacher connection.
