September 15, 2021
– Kate Kerr, Sunshine Coast School District
Throughout the 2020-2021 school year, the Sunshine Coast School District (SD46) took a focused approach to strengthening student and staff engagement with the MDI, from exploring key concepts of well-being before the data were collected in January, to engaging in conversations about school-level results once reports were released in June.
Kate Kerr (Director of Instruction for Inclusive Education, Inclusion Support Services – now Superintendent) and Vanessa Marie (District Elementary Counsellor; SOGI District Lead) at SD46, in partnership with Gail Markin (Langley School District SEL Lead) and Alex Gist (Health Promotion Specialist, BC Children’s Hospital) led this work through a grant to support rural and remote school districts and communities. This is their story, which includes key resources and outcomes to help to guide other school district champions/leaders who are interested in engaging in similar, school-based initiatives.
The work began in February 2020, the district team invited participants to join an Exploring Data MDI workshop as school-based teams, which included principals, inclusion support teachers and counsellors. Kate Kerr reflects, “The excitement and the energy was palpable. People were so interested in learning about what the students had been saying.”
At the end of the workshop, teams were asked to reflect on what they had learned and to develop a plan for what they would do based on the data they saw, and what support they needed to take that next step, and share with the district team.
A prominent theme emerged: school staff really wanted to engage their students more in the conversation with the data, aligning well with one of the goals in the district’s strategic plan to raise up children’s voices: “Our students’ voices will be respectfully heard and acted upon.”
To deepen engagement with both students and educators on the MDI, the district developed ‘MDI Lesson Plan One’, that aimed to support students to explore the concepts of well-being, assets and resilience. As part of the lesson plan development, students asked questions directly to Dr. Kim Schonert-Reichl, the lead researcher of the MDI project about the MDI.
In January 2021, the first iteration of the MDI Lesson Plan was introduced to educators through a professional development session who, in turn, worked through the lesson with their own students. The results were affirming, as Kate shares: “[The lesson] really generated excitement and curiosity, and students wanted to know, when do we get to see the data?”.
Through a second professional development session in May, the district team introduced staff to a new lesson plan to support the exploration of MDI data and to develop action plans with students. These lessons were carried out with students in Grades 5, 7, and 8 across the district in June 2021.
As part of the MDI Lesson Plan Two, the district team built in a feedback loop between themselves, and educators and students. Students and educators were provided the opportunity to share their reflections on the MDI data and ideas for next steps, and the district responded back to the participating classroom, as Kate Kerr describes “…again connecting that understanding that their voice really does matter and that there are adults that they may never see, like me, that do care and really want to make sure that their voice is heard and that we’re putting things in place based on what they’ve told us.”
A field guide to well-being in the middle years
A powerful tool to understand and support children’s well-being and positive development in the middle years
Faculty of Medicine
School of Population & Public Health
© 2009 – 2025 Human Early Learning Partnership
