Sown To Grow

Every Student Seen, Heard, and Learning at Their Best!

Sown To Grow empowers schools to improve student social, emotional, & academic well-being through an easy & engaging, check-in, reflection, & feedback process. Designed by a team of educators, Sown To Grow offers a simple Tier 1 practice to lift up student voice and build belonging in the classroom, while producing real-time insights on well-being to proactively identify & support student needs.

bookmark_border

Bookmark

Shortlisted

play_arrow

Overview

HundrED shortlisted this innovation

HundrED has shortlisted this innovation to one of its innovation collections. The information on this page has been checked by HundrED.

Web presence

2015

Established

360K

Children

1

Countries

Target group

Other

Updated

May 2024

Through our innovation, we hope to bolster trust between students & educators, while also empowering students to assume ownership of their learning journey. By helping students to develop critical life skills through a consistent reflection and feedback process, we strive to set them up for strong academic achievement, readiness for higher education, & long-term success in various facets of life.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

Sown To Grow addresses the need for a practical, proactive, & scalable solution to support whole child well-being. As educators, we saw student support that relied on observable behaviors & students seeking help, which resulted in biased referrals and many students falling through the cracks. We developed an accessible routine for all students to share & schools to proactively support their needs.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

Sown To Grow is a proprietary student check-in, reflection, and educator response platform intended for Tier 1 classroom implementation. Each week, students select an emoji to describe how they are feeling and respond to prompts designed to help them share their thoughts, experiences, and needs. Teachers respond to students with support from our research-backed response suggestions, while administrators monitor for usage and insights.
Access to a consistent space for students to reflect on their emotional well-being and build relationships leads to meaningful growth. Partner districts have consistently shared that students using Sown To Grow who initially felt a low sense of belonging, end the school year self-reporting increased feelings of happiness at school. Independent research teams at Stanford, UCLA, WestEd, and LeanLab have also conducted research that validates the feasibility and positive impact of Sown To Grow on student relationships, school culture, and academic outcomes.

How has it been spreading?

Sown To Grow has built a scalable platform that is used by more than 350,000 students in over 1,500 schools to build relationships & inform proactive student support. Recently, we have concentrated efforts on developing advanced technology that feeds into schools’ and district’s MTSS. Notably, our tool flags concerning language in student reflections & notifies administrators, which has helped ~18k students receive the support they need. Looking forward, we plan to develop an integrated MTSS portal that uses technology to identify, group, support, & progress monitor students for Tier 2 & 3 interventions. We are also expanding our tool to more explicitly support educator capacity and well-being. With these robust features, we hope to grow to serve 1M+ students annually in the next 2 years.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Sown To Grow provides information sessions for schools and for districts that can be scheduled directly through Calendly. In addition, we hold a weekly webinar to allow individuals to drop in to see how Sown To Grow works and ask questions about implementation. The information sessions and webinar can be scheduled through the following link: https://calendly.com/sown-to-grow-demo-meetings

Media

Certifications — Leanlab Education

Increasing Educator Capacity to Act on Learner Well-Being Data for Improved Academic Outcomes

https://edredesign.org/resources/every-student-known-building-systems-support-through-nashvilles-navigator-initiative-0

Implementation steps

Upfront Planning & Training

The Sown To Grow implementation support team spends upfront planning time with school and district leaders to discuss their student support goals and determine the appropriate structures to support a successful implementation in their unique context. From there, Sown To Grow provides training and tactical guidance to school administrators, student support staff, and teachers at individual school sites to build buy-in and provide them with a strong foundation on which to effectively use our tool.

Classroom Implementation

Each week, teachers have students login to Sown To Grow to check-in and reflect using laptops or tablets. Students choose an emoji that corresponds with how they are feeling and respond to prompts that are designed to help them build relationships as they share their thoughts, experiences, & needs. Teachers then respond to student reflections with support from research-backed response suggestions populated by Sown To Grow’s advanced technology.

School-level Support with Coaching

Sown To Grow conducts ongoing training for school administrators, support staff, and other leaders to facilitate deeper practice. Staff members receive targeted support in better understanding the emotional well-being of their school and addressing gaps in school culture. The training team offers thought partnership to troubleshoot issues with classroom implementations, and educators have the opportunity to share best practices with one another.

Implementation Monitoring & Systems Integration

School leaders & support staff use Sown To Grow’s real-time data dashboards to review trends in student growth, proactively apply interventions, and make adjustments to school-wide initiatives where necessary. School administrators review alerts on concerning reflections, and use these insights to inform a proactive MTSS centered on student voice. Where applicable, district administrators review data on student well-being and usage to monitor impact and course correct if needed.

Deepening Practice

Schools ready to focus more deeply on SEL skill building utilize Sown To Grow’s curriculum to help students apply SEL skills to their own lives in practical & consistent ways. Teachers deliver a weekly 20-minute CASEL-aligned lesson, spanning a 40-week scope, differentiated by grade level (K-12). Schools wanting to deepen personalized learning can also use Sown To Grow’s weekly academic check-in, in which students report their grades each week and reflect on how they can improve in the future.