Through our continued journey to implement common threads to help unite our teaching in classrooms and shared experiences for the school, we landed on our Gilmore Core Values. The core value that was the most evident for us was BELONGING. This was not only evident on our word cloud (see attached), but also through scanning our Gilmore community. It became evident as a theme that arose time after time in our school conversations and also in our conversations with students and families. We continued to believe as a community that to be able to be successful in their learning, students need to feel a sense of belonging, which we defined as the need to feel safe and comfortable at school. Another theme that became evident as we continued to revisit and test our theories, was the importance of home and school working together. To do this authentically and efficiently, it was extremely important to us that staff and families felt this same sense of belonging - safety and comfort - so that collaborative decisions can be made that are in the best interest of the students. This process helped us to land on our School Story Inquiry Questions:

HOW WILL A SENSE OF BELONGING FOR ALL HELP STUDENTS FEEL MORE SUCCESSFUL WITH THEIR LEARNING?