LOCAL COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH RESOURCES | LOCAL COMMUNITY HAPPENINGS
Making Mental Health a Priority 
We were pleased to have received Alberta Education’s Mental Health and Wellness Grant in 2023.
As part of the grant expectations, we committed to the following goal:
“We will build a healthy online learning and teaching community where student agency is fostered and students’ mental health and wellness is supported so they experience academic, social and emotional success.”
Our key partners include the Center for Trauma Informed Practice and Just Imagine Happiness, a psychological, social work and counseling services agency. Both have been an important part of helping us develop a system oriented model where relationships are as important as education and academic success for the mental health and wellbeing of our students and staff.
We created a plan to systematically merge our teaching and learning pyramid of intervention with social, emotional and mental health strategies and supports. We continue to enhance strategies for all, as preventative measures, so that we can continue to ensure success for our students.
We did this by implementing the following supports and services:
- Training all staff as trauma-informed practitioners in
- Building a digitally secure learning environment for teachers and students
- Programming that included Olympic athletes, project based-learning, virtues education programming, public speaking, and teen empowerment and confidence building.
- Students celebrated and had their accomplishments recognizes through virtual assemblies, during our face to face events throughout the year as well as at our celebration of learning and graduation at the end of the school year.
| Our October 2023-2024 Alberta Education results indicated that we are building a safe and caring teaching and learning community. Students are demonstrating that by addressing their social and emotional learning needs they are able to continue learning, complete high school, and improve their levels of achievement.
All of our teachers are now trauma informed in their pedagogical and assessment practice. We have 3 very active Child Youth Practitioners who are in our classrooms on a daily basis. Students know how to reach out and ask for help and do so daily. We feel more confident about our digital security and the structures in place to ensure safe and secure navigation of our domain and use of our tools. |
The grant also allowed us to hire supply teachers while our staff are engaged in professional learning. Further, we were able to purchase a robust survey tool that will allow us to anonymously survey our parents and students regarding their mental health and wellness to inform next steps needed for support and improvement. This information continues to inform next steps needed for support and will help us gauge the success of our strategies in improving overall mental health and wellness for our students and families
Follow this link to read more about our data and evidence resulting from the Mental Health and Wellness grant.
Our Primary Partners
Our primary partners are an important part of helping us develop a system-oriented model where relationships are as important as education and academic success for the mental health and wellbeing of our students and staff.
Our partnerships with the Center for Trauma Informed Practice and Just Imagine Happiness (social work, psychological and counseling services) continues to deepen awareness in the online teaching and leadership community and help establish online practice standards.
Center for Trauma Informed Practices
CTIP offers trauma-informed practice training for educators including Violence, Threat, Risk Assessment training for teachers and its application to online teaching and learning.
Just Imagine Happiness
Psychological, counseling and social work services: direct support for students and families, connecting them to local supports and services and access to mental health benefits for students who do not have access to support.
Other Key Partnerships
The Virtues Project
“The mission of the virtues project is to inspire people of all cultures to remember who we really are and to live by our highest values. The Virtues Project is a global initiative, inspiring the practice of virtues in everyday life. Its foundation is research into the world’s great wisdom traditions. The purpose of its programs, books, and materials is to make this timeless knowledge accessible in our individual and collective lives.”
We are pleased to have been awarded an exemplary badge as a Virtues Project Pilot School in the 2024/25 school year.
The Learning Bar surveys provide information needed to make evidence-based school planning decisions with confidence about critical topics such as student engagement, mental health, school safety and inclusivity, and many others.
Ready in Five
Ready in Five uses live movement experiences led by high performance athletes to prepare and inspire students to be at their best. These sessions are inclusive and tailored to the ages and needs of the students we work with. Our goal is to bring energy and wellness into online spaces, and increase the enjoyment, engagement, and wellbeing of participants. Students have the opportunity to interact live with top athletes, hearing amazing stories and important lessons.
IntelliBoard
The IntelliBoard platform highlights specific data points and sets of data that point to engagement (or lack thereof). These data points can include activities (forum data, assignment data, assessment data), completions, time spent on activity, course, or system, page views, comparisons within course, program or institution and many more within the LMS. These data points can be augmented by combining data from within the SIS, other external systems, virtual tools, spreadsheets, etc., to provide a holistic snapshot of engagement, potential engagement and potential performance at the individual, course, faculty, and institutional levels.
We are absolutely thrilled to begin this important work with our partners, stakeholders, and students and their families, and look forward to improved mental health and wellness outcomes for Ignite students. These improvements can only lead to better overall outcomes for our students.
