Many school district staff are overworked and, as a result, suffer from a decrease in personal wellbeing. Satchel Pulse’s online product suite is a holistic platform that aims to reduce workload and increase wellbeing in school districts across the US. Here’s a rundown of just three ways Skills, Surveys, Climate, and Voice can help do just that.

We help reduce workload burdens

From Skills to Surveys, all our products aim to reduce the overall workload for all users. Because Satchel Pulse is a holistic product suite, each solution can be accessed from the same internet page, whether you use just one of our solutions or all. Our product suite has a simple interface and is easy to use. We have a personalized onboarding process led by Satchel Pulse and education experts, so we’ll be there to guide and support them as they get acquainted with their new platform.

Workload burdens on teachers are a large part of the current teacher wellbeing crisis, which in the 2020-2021 school year saw nearly one in four teachers feel they were likely to leave their jobs before the school year ended (Steiner; Woo, 2021). Teachers frequently have many responsibilities to do in too little time and two-thirds of teachers even reported taking on extra work responsibilities during the pandemic (Doan; Woo, 2022). For those looking to implement social emotional learning in their classrooms, there’s our SEL content library. Here, educators can find a wealth of SEL resources, including whiteboard-ready SELessons and no-prep-required SELf Study home tasks for students. Having a library of social emotional lesson plans takes the weight off of teachers who may be short on time for lesson planning. This library also includes CASEL-aligned interventions, which is particularly helpful for school counselors looking to target specific competencies with the students who need that help.

Our Climate solution automatically sends out surveys throughout the school year, meaning no manual distribution is required from district leaders or other district staff. Then, the collected data is instantly collated on-screen, so users can check the tool at their convenience to get a feel for the current district culture and climate. But we don’t just give districts their culture and climate insights, we also help them take action from them, too. Here are some examples of the high-level advice we offer for different types of feedback trends:Yearly paper surveys bring district leaders inaccurate and often outdated information while offering no guidance on actionable next steps, potentially causing more stress to staff members such as school principals who are among the most affected by poor wellbeing (Doan; Woo, 2022). Using our Climate solution will not only automate the majority of the process but also works with users to improve and reflect on the collected information.

Learn more: What is culture and climate?

We help get to the root of staff attrition

Furthermore, staffing is one of the main issues that school districts face on a regular basis because, given the high rates of teacher attrition, attracting and retaining educators is a prevalent issue. Satchel Pulse’s Climate solution, as well as our communication platforms Voice and Surveys, are dedicated to getting district leaders to the root of any staff attrition issues. We do this in three main ways:

1. Finding out why teachers are leaving or thinking about leaving
2. Finding out how to improve on these issues raised
3. Finding out why teachers are staying

Staying in frequent contact with staff is critical for keeping your finger on the pulse of their feelings and concerns throughout the school year - and don’t forget that Climate will do this automatically! If data insights point toward a trend into which you’d like to dig deeper, simply create a survey on that topic, asking the exact questions you want to ask, and distribute it to your target audience in over 40+ languages. This way you can hone in on the main issues your district is facing and ensure your next steps are as informed as possible.

Another way to stay in touch with staff is to offer them the opportunity to feedback whenever and from wherever they’d like to. Voice is a simple platform that embeds directly onto a website of choice and allows community members, such as teachers, to give feedback at any point. This feedback is then sent directly to the appropriate response team for maximum efficiency.

Learn more: Build school community relationships with effective feedback forms

We help build inclusive school communities

School communities are important not just for wellbeing but also for student academic and social emotional success. Satchel Pulse’s Climate and Voice platforms promote school community building in many ways, such as by facilitating the process for community members to use their voices and connecting these voices in one place for ease of access and efficiency.

However, the strongest school communities are inclusive, and one quick win to promoting inclusivity in your school district is to make sure the surveys you do send are understood by all. Some districts, particularly those with large populations of ESL students and families, should consider translating their surveys into community members’ strongest languages. Our Surveys platform allows users to create free surveys and offers a service where translations are typically completed and returned within 24 hours. This service operates within the Surveys platform, so there’s no need to worry about sending emails, communicating with vendors, and translations being returned in inefficient formats. All of your survey data, whether in English or in one of 40+ other languages to choose from, will be processed and available to view on the same platform.

Learn more: The benefits of translating surveys

Satchel Pulse’s four solutions - Skills, Climate, Voice, and Surveys - were built to work with school districts to help them in many areas, such as reducing staff workloads, understanding staff attrition issues, and building inclusive school communities. They work well individually but are even more powerful when used as a holistic solution. For more information on how one or more of these products can help you, fill in the form below!

References:

Steiner, D.E; Woo, A. (2021). Job-related stress threatens the teacher supply - key findings from the 2021 state of the U.S Teacher Survey. RAND Corporation. Read it here.

Steiner, D.E.; Doan, S. (2022). Teacher and Principal Stress Running at Twice the Rate of General Working Public, Hindering Pandemic Recovery. RAND Corporation. Read it here.

Author: Fern Dinsdale

Posted: 05 Sep 2022

Estimated time to read: 5 mins