Writing a SASSY Lil’ Manual for Teachers
Here’s an update on the development of our Self-Advocacy and Student Success (SASS) manual. At this point, we’re working towards a preliminary draft that will be further knocked into shape by our teacher, student, and community stakeholder focus groups in July and during our Sept – Dec 2026 open trial in 15 classrooms.
On the core development team, we’ve got a talented artist, Kay Liang, who is the brilliant originator of Tiny Town (a digital playground for kids). We’ve also got Katie Healy, who is a social justice champion and highly insightful human being.
Together, we spend hundreds of hours researching, discussing, and planning the preliminary learning activities for both teachers and students. Above, you can see us two years ago, workshopping the concept for the manual at the Ontario CEC, and two weeks ago… grinding it out in our weekend author’s meeting. Kay and Katie are full time teachers, so we have to find the time to collaborate when we can. Amazing what you can make time for when you really care about a project! Coffee FTW.
Each of our modules will have student facing worksheets that are delightful, disarming, and playful. Here’s an example of one of the preliminary sketches. We love the imperfections! In this worksheet, we are trying to encourage learners to notice their interests, but also to DEVELOP interests that may be just taking root. In the manual, teachers will learn that interests drive motivation, academic engagement, social connections, and student success, and that students can actively develop them when properly encouraged and supported.
So, each module will have student worksheet-activities, and a series of point form notes for teachers that outline key research related to the topics we cover. Writing these notes is an art! In conversation with our high level research team, including established scholars from the University of Toronto, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, York University, and Queen’s University, we agree that the teacher-facing information should be SUPER accessible. We think of it as bowl of M&Ms that you can dip into – each handful a tasty little bite. We want to give teachers the freedom to take as much or as little as they want; nobody should feel like they have to sit down and read a module from start to finish in order to engage and learn.
Here’s a SASSY little training note I found myself writing to the University of Toronto research assistants who are supporting Kay, Katie, and I in the development of the text. I think it expresses the values of the work nicely. We are working hard, learning, making mistakes and figuring things out together; we have high standards for the quality of the research we present; and we have and a ton of empathy and respect for the needs of the teachers and students who will use our work.
Just a little update on our progress and process. Please feel free to share the website or this blog with your colleagues. Thanks for reading!