Context
This Safe and Peaceful School Action Plan is aligned to our School Success Plan and promotes adherence to Law 19 /Bill 56 requirements and obligations to prevent the escalation of conflict, bullying and violence in schools (see Law 56). The WQSB has used the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) as a core means of meeting its Law 56 requirements.
Mandate of the Safe and Peaceful School Committee
The mandate of the Committee is to analyze and assess the ongoing climate/ethos of the school, and provide strategies for students, parents, staff, and community to promote a safe, healthy and peaceful school. Although we are using the term ‘bullying prevention’ as outlined in Law 19, the language that is commonly associated with our plan and within our school community is: ‘caring, respect, safety, attachment, belonging, peace, empathy, kindness, and compassion’ all of which contribute to a positive school culture with an emphasis on a peaceful community.
Our annual objective
Increase community involvement in the school, deliver ongoing and offer new activities to engage all our students and parents, enrich the educational experience, develop a sense of empathy and compassion in all students, and promote a safe and peaceful school through education, citizenship, sports, the arts with an emphasis on focusing on playfulness and access to play and nature.
Our main actions
Analyze the current school climate through: student/staff/ parent surveys; classroom meetings; parent workshops.
One of the main goals is to improve the current school climate leading to a greater sense of inclusion, sense of belonging, collaboration and cooperation by re-organizing supervision during recess (additional staff); providing alternative opportunities during recess (sports, games, reading quietly); facilitating leadership opportunities for senior students (student’s council, mentoring, reading buddies, Playmakers, games leaders, environmental club, etc. Another goal to create a more peaceful school is facilitated through intergenerational projects in French and English (fostering our values of compassion, honesty, respect, and dignity); volunteering in the community (L’Arche); student, parent and staff sports evenings; and participating in a Gordon Neufeld professional learning community to discuss and better understand the sources of frustration in our children and the potential for promoting a caring, kind environment for the expression of emotion.
School wide implementation of the Plan
All staff (teaching, support, lunch time supervisors and daycare) have had some training in the understanding of the developmental attachment- based approach (Neufeld approach). Our Safe and Peaceful School Committee has seven members (two teachers, behavior tech, CLC coordinator, principal, VP, and a consultant. The Committee will meet regularly to monitor the school climate, discuss classroom meetings, organize town halls, promote our safe school to parents, organize activities to involve and engage students and parents. The Committee are currently working on a model / approach that will help students, parents and staff identify different sources of frustration and potential conflict in school and which provides strategies to help students resolve conflict or potential conflict on their own or with the help of an adult. This tool can also be used by teachers during classroom meetings to help provide students with a language to name a frustration or conflict (yellow, orange, red). The model consists of 4 quadrants green, yellow, orange and red. Each quadrant represents being at peace or a level of conflict. The green quadrant represents kindness and peace; the yellow the potential for conflict; the orange represents being in conflict and red represents bullying behavior. This tool has been designed to include the following – a common language for frustration and conflict; how to identify the level of conflict; how to ask for help when conflict arises and strategies to help resolve conflict.
The Western Quebec School Board’s Crisis Intervention Resource Team (CIRT) is available to support schools in times of crisis. There also is an In-School CIRT that has received training to allow them to cope and assist in critical incidents.
Violence
“Any use of force – verbal, written, physical, psychological, or sexual – against any person, by an individual or a group, with intent to directly or indirectly wrong, injure or oppress that person by attacking his or her integrity, whether psychological or physical well-being, rights or property.”
Art.13, LIP 2012
Bullying
“Any behaviour, spoken word, act or gesture, whether deliberate or not and of a repetitive character, expressed directly or indirectly, including in cyberspace , in a context characterized by a disparity in the balance of power between the concerned persons, having the effect of engendering feelings of distress, injury, hurt oppression or of being ostracized;”
Art.13, LIP 2012
Our Philosophy for a Safe and Peaceful School
Our approach to Anti Bullying is derived and framed by our focus on community and on promoting strong positive behaviours. This broad approach has several influences –
- WQSB Safe Schools Policy – which states “The WQSB recognizes that a school and center that is physically and emotionally safe and secure for all students and staff promotes good citizenship, increases student attendance and engagement, and supports academic achievement. The WQSB believes in teaching self-control, self-respect and self- discipline to help students prepare for a satisfying and productive life.”
- A safe and peaceful whole school approach, promoting a community approach and values- respect, responsibility and supportive community. The focus of a peaceful school is student-centered and strength based with an emphasis that the school environment should be safe and caring. The culture in peaceful school communities is based on the three well-proven principles that foster human resilience: caring relationships, positive expectations and beliefs, and opportunities for participation and contribution. Its components are those of an ideal learning culture which is participative, proactive, collaborative, communal and given over to constructive meaning. The safe and caring culture is created and sustained by the students, teachers and the whole school community.
In this context, a core goal of the schools caring approach is to develop inclusion, a sense of value and community for all students in every classroom, thereby to overcome the risk of isolation and acting-out behavior and other problematic student behaviors. - A Developmental Attachment-Based Approach (AKA Neufeld Approach) Neufeld’s philosophy of understanding frustration, aggression as well as resiliency and play. Most of what we call play is not true play, so knowing its essence is key to making sense of the relationship. Recent breakthroughs from a number of academic traditions have converged on play and playfulness as being surprisingly effective in setting the stage for the emotional journey of resilience. Understanding the relationship of play to resilience can also shed light on such mysterious findings as, for example, that schools with choirs have the highest ratings of emotional well-being in their students.
Using these approaches, the school has taken a proactive and preventative approach to focusing on peaceful initiatives to help reduce the number of bullying incidents by creating a safe and peaceful school ethos. This anti-bullying approach has been well-framed within our overall efforts as a caring community to create a safe, peaceful and protective environment for all. This has been accomplished by the staff’s progressive approach and commitment, as shown by the wide-range of clubs and extra-curricular activities offered in the school on a daily basis. These perspectives have fundamentally transformed the culture of the school and have facilitated a high level of student engagement and created close attachments between students and staff. In addition, we believe in the importance of giving students a real voice in helping to create a shared mission to prevent violence and abuse. As such, classes opportunities to perform plays, skits or songs during our weekly assemblies, in order to help us in our goal of creating a caring and compassionate school environment. We place a high importance on developing positive relationships with students and parents so that they can confidently trust our processes in responding to any bullying type behaviour.
In this context, we strongly acknowledge the very serious impact that bullying has on individuals and the school community, but we also believe that not all problematic behaviours should be labelled bullying – some behaviors can be seen as teasing, meanness and conflict – all of which students and adults need to be able to identify and to respond to accordingly.
This Safe and Peaceful School Plan is also inspired by the values of the educational project of the school:
- Mission: Promoting individual success and well-being in a safe, healthy school
- In partnership with faculty, parents and the community at large, our students are encouraged to be compassionate citizens who interact in ethical ways and are sensitive of their roles and responsibilities in a democratic world