By Naomi Tsuang
Online News Editor
All Costa students took the Stanford Survey of Adolescent School Experiences on Feb. 1, in order for Costa’s Social and Emotional Wellness committee to measure students’ perspectives on aspects such as homework, extracurricular activities and stress.
Costa created the SEW Committee, consisting of students, parents and Costa staff, in 2015 in order to assess the school climate at Mira Costa and to identify the problems and root causes that contribute to student stress, SEW committee member and MBUSD Board President Jennifer Cochran said. Costa partnered with Challenge Success, a research organization based out of Stanford University that aims at creating a more balanced and academically fulfilling life for kids to administer the survey to students this year.
All students in middle and high schools that partner with Challenge Success take the survey. According to Challenge Success School Program Director Margaret Dunlap, since 2009, over 70,000 students from more than 100 schools have taken the survey.
Photos: Students take the Challenge Success Survey
“The [survey] helps schools understand more about the student school experience and narrow down where to focus possible policy and practice changes to create a climate of care conducive to student well-being, balance and engagement with learning,” Challenge Success School Program Director Margaret Dunlap said.
The Challenge Success staff is currently in the process of analyzing the data, organizing the results and once completed will send a comprehensive report back to Costa in March. The report will help Costa learn about students’ overall high school experience and ways to improve student stress, Cochran said.
“The Challenge Success staff helped Mira Costa to customize the survey so we can learn specifically about some of the initiatives that we are working on at Mira Costa to assist with alleviating unhealthy student stress,” Cochran said.
Link: View Challenge Success’s website
In addition to the survey, the SEW Committee planned Shadow days, a week in which Costa staff and parents shadowed students in order to experience the different schedules that each student faces, and the Fishbowl activity that took place in the fall in which students shared their experiences with common causes of stress faced by the student body.
Link: Find out more about the SEW committee
The SEW committee will use the data gathered from the survey, along with the data gathered from Shadow Days and the Fishbowl activity to analyze the root causes of unhealthy stress at Mira Costa and take the next steps, Cochran said.
“Our hope is that we can make recommendations to improve the climate of care at Mira Costa and help promote healthy students,” Cochran said.
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