How North Side Community School proactively addresses online drama & increased family engagement with #WinAtSocial
As charter schools continue to grow, so do the challenges they face—from declining student engagement to rising tech and social media-related conflicts.
Over the past 5 years, charter school enrollment in the United States has increased by nearly 400,000 students. As these schools expand, it becomes harder for school leaders to keep up with the needs of students, educators, and families, especially as social media continues to evolve.
Almost half of all K-12 teachers, not limited to charter schools, reported that student engagement has declined since 2019. On top of limited student engagement, many charter schools experience challenges with family involvement in students’ education, a lack of data-driven insights, and conflicts arising from group chats and social media
How can charter schools increase classroom participation and family engagement while proactively addressing online drama that impacts student learning and well-being?
Jessie Tavares, Social Worker at North Side Community School, knew her school needed an easy-to-implement solution that would help her empower students to navigate social media, tech, and interpersonal conflicts in healthy ways.
In 2023, the school implemented #WinAtSocial: a comprehensive suite of solutions proven to increase student participation, strengthen student-teacher relationships, and address important issues like A.I. and device policies, cyberbullying, screen time, and online privacy.
The Social Institute recently spoke with Tavares to discover how #WinAtSocial helps North Side Community School support the needs of their students, educators, and families. In this case study, discover:
Addressing social media-related challenges and group chat drama
North Side Community School is a K-8 Charter School that serves low-income, underserved neighborhoods in St. Louis, MO. Their mission is to improve each student’s opportunities in education and life by developing the skills, knowledge, and personal qualities necessary for success.
At North Side, their strategic priorities include improving family engagement, closing student learning gaps, and increasing access to behavioral supports. When the middle school saw challenges relating to social media impacting students’ ability to learn, they knew they needed a solution that aligned with their goals.
“Before we decided to implement #WinAtSocial, we were having a lot of social media drama coming up with our kids.” Jessie highlighted. “As someone who helps with conflict resolution and interpersonal conflicts between our students, that was something I was handling every single day.”
As a result, North Side looked for a program that would keep educators up-to-date on social media trends impacting students, educate students on responsible tech use, and engage families – and they landed on #WinAtSocial.
“We loved that there were lots of different lessons to choose from, and that we could easily implement those lessons within the systems that we already had.”
#WinAtSocial provides North Side Community School with a comprehensive suite of solutions, including lessons that empower students to use tech in positive ways and increase their engagement in class. Each #WinAtSocial Lesson also contains Huddles, short classroom discussion questions that schools can run in 10-15 minutes, making the program easy to fit into any school schedule.
Fueling student engagement through interactive lessons and #WinAtSocial Insights
When creating a plan for running #WinAtSocial Lessons, North Side found that the program fit easily into their advisory class and did not add any extra work to educators’ plates. Within that class, teachers use #WinAtSocial lessons to build essential life skills, like responsible decision making, social awareness, and self-management, that support student learning and well-being.
After implementing #WinAtSocial Lessons, the school quickly noticed an increase in student engagement and classroom participation:
“Engagement in our Advisory class is up. Having each student interact with #WinAtSocial themselves on their own Chromebooks that they have through school has been awesome for engagement.”
Tavares highlighted how well #WinAtSocial Trending Lessons resonate with the middle school students and keep them engaged. Trending Lessons are released monthly in #WinAtSocial to address current events, tech & social media trends, and news stories impacting students.
Sports lessons, such as the Honoring the women who broke March Madness boundaries and brackets Trending Lesson, are a crowd favorite across North Side, along with Black History Month Lessons, like Reflecting on untold stories of student leaders during the civil rights movement.
Part of what keeps students so engaged with #WinAtSocial Lessons at North Side Community School is the #WinAtSocial Student Insights integrated within each lesson. During a lesson, students are asked to answer questions about their thoughts, feelings, or experiences on a particular topic. Once they answer, they see how their peers anonymously responded across the classroom, school, & globe, and huddle as a class.
“Students love the part of a #WinAtSocial Lesson where they can see how other kids in the school voted. I usually try and have the school do the same Trending Lesson across grades on the same day so the school-wide responses populate. When it is populated, the students love to see what other people in the school say when it comes to those questions.”
Not only do these questions help engage students, but they are a valuable tool for educators, counselors, and school administrators. #WinAtSocial Insights delivers powerful, real-time insight into school culture & student experiences by capturing and analyzing student perspectives and well-being.
This data helps teachers better understand their students, counselors identify social media challenges to address, and school leaders create tech policies, like cell phone use, that align with the needs of their school.
Empowering families through the Family Toolkit
Part of North Side School’s mission and strategic priorities is getting families involved with their students’ education. With every #WinAtSocial partnership, all families in the school community are equipped with the Family Toolkit – an online tool that offers family discussion topics, expert advice on tech & social media trends impacting students, and insight into social situations that children face daily.
“We gave all parents access to the Family Toolkit, and we brought in The Social Institute to give a parent presentation on social media safety and helping children navigate group chats, and they really enjoyed it.”
With the Family Toolkit, families can continue the conversations that #WinAtSocial started in class with Family Huddles. Family Huddles are short conversations that stem from #WinAtSocial Lessons about common social and social media scenarios. Families can huddle with a child to build trust and prepare them to make thoughtful, real-time decisions.
Not only did North Side Community School effectively engage families in their school community, but they also equipped them with the resources to support student well-being and academics outside of the classroom.
Overall, #WinAtSocial helped North Side Community School proactively address social media-related challenges, increase student engagement, and strengthen family involvement in each student’s education.
Is your school facing similar challenges and needs an easy-to-implement resource to proactively address social media, tech, and A.I.-related challenges? Request a demo of #WinAtSocial today and see how you can support students, educators, and families in your school community.
In the meantime, check out previews of these popular #WinAtSocial Lessons:
- Trending Lesson for grades 3-5:
- Trending Lesson for grades 6-8:
- Trending Lesson for grades 9-12:
The Social Institute (TSI) is the leader in equipping students to navigate learning & well-being in a tech-fueled world. Through #WinAtSocial, our interactive, peer-to-peer learning platform, we empower students, educators, and families to make high-character choices online and offline. #WinAtSocial Lessons teach essential skills while capturing student voice and actionable insights for educators. These insights help educators maintain a healthy school culture, foster high-impact teaching, and build meaningful relationships with families. Our unique, student-respected approach empowers and equips students authentically, enabling our solution to increase classroom participation and improve student-teacher relationships. Through our one-of-a-kind lesson development process, we create lessons for a variety of core and elective classes while incorporating timely topics like social media, A.I., screen time, misinformation, and current events to help schools stay proactive in how they support student health, happiness, and academic success.