Empathy Program
At each grade level, QMS offers a comprehensive empathy and behaviour program. Our Junior School program is outlined in detail below.
Junior School student behaviour programs and policies:
All students in the Junior School know and understand our behaviour policy. Our “No hands on” rule is simple and prevents most inappropriate behaviour. The students understand that they are not to push or touch other students. This includes ‘play fighting’ and ‘horsing around’ on the playground, in line-ups, in the halls, or the cafeteria. In addition we expect students to be inclusive with their friends and new classmates as well as visitors to the QMS community.
The Junior School teachers use the Second Step program as part of our overall approach to behavioural expectations and student discipline. This program is a violence prevention curriculum and emphasizes the creation of a safe classroom culture that epitomizes care and respect, clarity and consistency, curiosity and creativity, connection, competence and celebration. The program creators realized the importance of teaching specific social and emotional skills. It is designed to “promote social competence and reduce children’s social and emotional development:
-
empathy
-
impulse control and problem solving
-
anger management
Second Step is taught to every student in the classroom rather than to selected children” (Excerpt from Second step: A violence prevention curriculum, Administrator’s Guide, 2002, Committee for Children, Seattle, WA.).
The program uses many strategies including puppets, role-playing, photographs of situations, discussion prompts, videos and writing assignments.
As well, our Junior School teachers use the Ministry of Education’s Focus on Bullying in conjunction with the Second Step program. The intent of this program is to provide specific instruction to students about what bullying is, the school plan for dealing with it, and specific strategies students can use when encountering bullying.
For further details on our policies and programs, consult our Junior School Handbook by clicking here.
