Building a healthy school culture is a complex task, but also one essential to success both academically and in life. It involves a careful balancing act of key ideas such as providing for safety, implementing appropriate consequences when needed, and teaching students the skills they need to be adults. As a school we accomplish this with rules and guidelines, but also with a focus on admirable character traits. We use R.E.S.P.E.C.T. to remind our students about the value of...
- Responsibility
- Empowerment
- Sharing
- Patience
- Excellence
- Compassion
- Teamwork
These character traits are those of the well-rounded individuals that we are guiding our students to become, but they are not always easy. It is sometimes challenging to have compassion for someone who has been rude to you, work as part of a team with an individual you may not especially enjoy or be responsible enough to take ownership for mistakes. While these can be difficult, our wonderful young people are fortunate to have so many adults in their lives to care for them and set the example. When we as parents, teachers, and staff work together to reinforce these ideals we see remarkable growth and learning. Sometimes we reinforce our values through reminders, sometimes through consequences, and sometimes by acting them out ourselves. By constantly modeling our values, and enforcing boundaries around them, we are all creating the recipe for success.
