Facilitator Guide
How to use this data for meaningful adult reflection and professional development
What This Data Is For
This survey serves a specific function: student voice as a mechanism for adult reflection. Adults will view aggregate responses during a facilitated session designed to prompt self-examination of their own practices, biases, and institutional participation.
Critical Framing:
- This is not a school climate assessment
- This is not an evaluation of students
- This is a listening instrument that surfaces student experience so adults can sit with what they hear
"Adults are not all terrible; nothing needs to be burnt down. But something might need to change—and that change starts with honest self-reflection."
Questions for Self-Reflection
What adults should leave asking themselves
"What risks am I willing to take to create equitable conditions for students?"
"What do I need to change in my own behavior?"
"What habits of mine create inequities, and how do I shift them?"
"What institutional supports do I need to be better?"
"How do I stop taking things personally when I hear difficult feedback?"
"What gets in the way of my valuing the humanity of all young people?"
"Do I hold equally high expectations for ALL students?"
"Do I create conditions where students can succeed as who they are, or do I require them to become someone else?"
"Am I cultivating genius, or asking students to be fixed?"
"Where is joy in my classroom? Where is it absent?"
Note: The survey surfaces content that prompts these questions. It does not ask students these questions directly.
Research Frameworks
The theoretical foundations informing this survey
CR-S Education Framework
NYSED Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework (2018)
- • Centers students' cultural knowledge as legitimate
- • Positions students as capable of academic success AND sociopolitical consciousness
- • Affirms multiple ways of being, learning, and knowing
- • High expectations must be paired with high support
Muhammad's Five Pursuits
From Cultivating Genius by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad
- • Identity: Students see their identities as assets
- • Skills: Taught alongside identity, not in isolation
- • Intellect: Curiosity, deep thinking, confidence
- • Criticality: Ability to question power and inequity
- • Joy: Essential to learning, not separate from rigor
11 Theme Domains Explored
What the survey surfaced in each area
How students experience belonging through specific moments and conditions
Physical, psychological, and emotional dimensions of safety
When learning works, when students feel invested, where joy exists
What supportive relationships with adults and peers look like
The line between productive challenge and overwhelm
Comfort expressing themselves and whether adults truly listen
Whether content feels relevant and culturally sustaining
How environment supports belonging and participation
The implicit "Westover Girl" archetype and multiple ways of being
What "home" means for boarding students
Consistency, transparency, and fairness in enforcement
Receiving Difficult Feedback
How to stay open when the data is hard to hear
Do
- • Sit with discomfort before responding
- • Ask "What can I learn from this?"
- • Remember: patterns, not individuals
- • Focus on what you can change
- • Seek support from colleagues
Avoid
- • Explaining away or dismissing feedback
- • Personalizing aggregate patterns
- • Catastrophizing ("everything is broken")
- • Defending before understanding
- • Looking for who said what
Remember: Adults viewing this data may have minimal readiness for complexity, defensive reactions to critical feedback, or tendency to personalize or catastrophize. The goal is to invite reflection, not trigger defensiveness. Frame findings to preserve possibility for change while maintaining accountability.
Resources
Prepared by Nesolagus for Westover School • December 2025