Lockport School Student Handbook 23-24
LSSD Student Code of Conduct
Lockport School is a learning community that has high learning and behaviour expectations. These expectations are constant, clear and communicated to all, several times during the school year. Structures are put in place to allow for the creation of a school culture where learning and safety are at the forefront of education.
We believe that our school code of conduct represents our highest aspirations for all of our students. We will demonstrate that all staff members share the same high expectations for student behaviour. By ensuring that our students behave in accordance with these high expectations, our goal is to improve learning and achievement while protecting safety for everyone in our school community.
For students to make responsible choices at school, we believe that their teachers must teach what is expected while they are at school. Our approach to school discipline is based on clear expectations, effective teaching of the desired behaviours, and consistent support from all adults. We invite parents to partner with us in the process of teaching children to become respectful, responsible, and considerate individuals.
We believe that, for students to achieve the high expectations we have set for our school, they should not only be informed of the school and classroom expectations, but they need time to practice and reinforce the skills as well. Once students have learned to follow procedures and routines, they can save their most important thinking for what matters the most at school - challenging learning tasks in the classroom.
We believe that, as a school staff, we must not only teach classroom, school, and Divisional expectations, but also the language of respect including respectful body language; respectful facial expressions; respectful tone of voice; respectful self-talk; disagreeing respectfully; using words to solve problems and conflicts; presenting and supporting differing points of view; and honouring and recognizing others. We do so through classroom lessons, character education, classroom meetings, guest speakers, themes, and assemblies. All staff are committed to modelling respectful behaviour.
We believe that students come to our school to learn and achieve their fullest potential, and, in times of trouble, we make every effort to keep the emphasis on learning rather than consequences. We believe the word discipline is an umbrella for positive skill development.
We believe that the more students are engaged in high-level, meaningful, developmentally appropriate, and challenging tasks, the more likely they are to be positive learners who devote their energies toward learning and achieving, and not toward making poor choices regarding their behaviour.
We believe that the behaviour of students should improve with time, guidance, and interventions. Therefore, we expect our Grade 8 and 9 students to be role models to each other and to the Grade 7 students as well. To build this maturity, the staff will require older students to take on responsibilities and leadership.