Dear Brebeuf Jesuit Families,
As you have heard already this year, the Brebeuf Jesuit community has been seeking to implement new ways to equip our students to manage the different stressors and pressures in their lives. I am writing to let you know about a new initiative we are undertaking, in which your students will take part during the week of March 28, by completing an anonymous survey during their English classes.
The survey questions cover areas such as personal values, empathy and kindness, depression and anxiety, substance use, social media, and relationships with family and friends. The goal of the study is to better understand the concerns of children growing up in our community and, accordingly, to learn how best to continue promoting positive development among our students.
The survey is an extension of Dr. Suniya Luthar’s efforts to study and promote positive youth development. Dr. Luthar is currently a professor at Arizona State University and has previously been a senior professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and also a research scientist at Yale University. You can learn more about Dr. Luthar and her research by clicking here.
Brebeuf Jesuit recently had the opportunity for Dr. Luthar to give a presentation to our faculty, about what she sees as trends among students who attend academically rigorous high schools, many of whom come from affluent homes. The faculty felt that her research is very relevant to Brebeuf Jesuit students, and that it could help to guide us to more ways that we can help.
The questionnaires that Dr. Luthar will use in her research were developed from several standard measures that ask youth questions about their feelings and behaviors. As in Dr. Luthar’s past research, all of the information submitted will remain completely anonymous. Your child’s name will not appear anywhere on the responses, and questionnaires are all stored according to random ID numbers, specially allotted for this survey. When analyzed, survey data will be presented to Brebeuf Jesuit school administrators only in terms of age-level trends.
To insure maximum usefulness of the data, we need the maximum participation of students; however, your child does not have to participate. If you do not want your child to participate, please reply to this email to that effect by Monday, March 28, 2016. Also, please know that, if your child begins a survey but decides during the survey that he or she wishes to withdraw from the project, he or she may do so at any time. Thank you very much for all that you do to keep the Brebeuf Jesuit community one that is supportive for all of our students.
AMDG,
Greg VanSlambrook
Principal
