Strong Start in a Secondary Setting
Secondary Strong Start includes these components:
Greetings
Goal Setting
Community Building
Purposeful Partnering
Breathe & Focus
For more guidance on how to implement Secondary Strong Start, check out the implementation deep-dive.
Secondary Strong Start is a set of rituals and routines that get students ready to learn by fostering a sense of safety, belonging, community, and self-agency. The routines begin as students enter their homeroom and continue as students transition to each class. These practices can be embedded into academic content as well as modified to meet the needs of the learning community and schedule. During times of crisis within the school community, Strong Start can be used to create a safe place where both students and staff can come together to collectively navigate the challenges, rather than dealing with them in isolation.
See a sample week of Strong Start activities.
Goal Setting
Students set a daily goal for living out the classroom agreements.
Community Building
A class-wide routine fostering unity through shared joyful experiences.
Purposeful Partnering
A ritual that fosters peer connection between students.
Breathe & Focus
Guided breathing teaches strategies to self-regulate emotions.
Adapting Secondary Strong Start to Fit Your Needs
The time invested in establishing the Strong Start routine creates opportunities for students and staff tombuild meaningful relationships. Each practice is designed to work together to support students in building connections. However, the way you implement Strong Start is flexible to fit the needs of the academic block and class schedule - see below for a few suggestions. Consider weaving components of Strong Start into learning so that academic content and social-emotional learning happen simultaneously.
