School Wide Positive Behavior
Every Monday at West Creek Hills, we read this motto together as a school during the morning announcements.
It helps us remember how to support one another and be the best we can be every day!
At West Creek Hills, we utilize the practices of Caring School Communities.
The core belief of Caring School Communities promotes positive behavior through direct teaching of responsibility, empathy, and cooperation, creating settings where students feel heard, known, and cared for. Students become intrinsically motivated to contribute productively to a community they feel invested in, and where they know they matter.
The core belief of Caring School Communities promotes positive behavior through direct teaching of responsibility, empathy, and cooperation, creating settings where students feel heard, known, and cared for. Students become intrinsically motivated to contribute productively to a community they feel invested in, and where they know they matter.
The 7 guiding principles of Caring School Communities are:
- A focus on the whole school community: Community must include everyone: students, parents, school leaders, teachers, custodians, cafeteria staff, yard supervisors, and support staff.
- Relationships matter: Relationships underpin teaching, learning, and prosocial development. Building relationships and fostering a sense of community are hallmarks of the program.
- Comprehensive leadership guidance: The program includes everything a leader needs for a successful implementation, including step-by-step guidance and resources to help plan for, launch, and support implementation.
- A unique stance on discipline: No more gold stars. A focus on community, not compliance. Caring School Community builds on the powerful insight that when students have strong relationships within their community, they are more likely to acquire self-discipline and feel a sense of responsibility to themselves and to others.
- A year’s worth of teacher-friendly, easy-to-implement, grade-specific instruction: A full 30 weeks of daily, grade-specific lessons across K–8 that only require 30 minutes a day, with a comprehensive scope and sequence to build relationships, social skills, and competencies intentionally over time.
- Creating calm, orderly learning environments: Through consistent use of effective classroom management practices and structures that build relationships, the program helps teachers create calm, safe classrooms that are more conducive to learning.
- Addressing inequitable discipline practices: Our approach to discipline assumes that all children want to and can behave well at school and are capable of learning and changing their behavior. The program encourages teachers to treat students with respect at all times and to treat misbehavior as mistakes akin to those students make with academic work, not as signs of moral or character flaws. In response to misbehavior, Caring School Discipline guides teachers to focus on what students can do to restore relationships and repair any damage they have caused as well as what they might do differently in the future, rather than making students feel guilty or ashamed.
Every student at West Creek Hills will take part in daily classroom meetings. The purposes of these meetings are:
- To set a tone of respect and engaged learning
- To create the power of a positive community
- To model and practice social and emotional skills
- To merge social, emotional, and academic learning
At West Creek Hills, we have a School Wide Positive Behavior Support Plan. We teach our students to follow our Can Do expectations:
C-Calm Transitions
A-Always Do My Job
N-Nice Words and Honesty
D-Demonstrate Respect for People and Property
O-Objects, Hands, and Feet to Myself
Character Education
In addition to our CAN DO expectations, we also have a set of social-emotional and academic competencies that we teach and practice each month here at West Creek Hills.
At the beginning of each month, students come by grade level to hear a presentation from Mrs. Durham about the monthly character competency. Throughout the month, students will learn more about that competency from their teacher and will set goals for themselves in demonstrating that competency.
Our monthly comptencies are:
Respect
Growth Mindset
Academic Behaviors
Empathy
Self-Control
Responsibility
Assertiveness
Perseverance
Cooperation
Students may be nominated by a teacher for doing an outstanding job of demonstrating one or more competency. These students will receive a “Super Student Certificate”.
Click here for more information on each competency.