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Respect, Responsibility and Community are the newly revised values for Kyabram P-12 College, forged through consultation and consideration from students, parents and teachers.
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The college has recently undergone professional learning to implement a School-wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) framework into the college, an initiative which was started way through last year and has already started to see positive changes to the school’s value system.
Through reviewing the system and surveying parents/carers, students and teachers, the school were able to go from five values to three – Respect, Responsibility, and Community.
These three values were a part of the previous value system, meaning the school does not have to start from scratch; however, Assistant Principal, William Barnes, said that they want to begin “explicitly teaching” the values to the students.
“We don’t want to assume that they know these values,” Mr Barnes said.
“We want to make sure that it’s a part of their daily interactions in the way that they talk in the way that they interact with each other.
“Through the review, we were able to hear from our parent community, our staff, and our students and look at all of the values that possibly would stick to our vision of what we want the school to be moving forward,” he said.
One of the ways that the school will actively implement the value system in everyday life is through the newly minted points system.
The points system encourages students to live by the values of Respect, Responsibility and Community.
When a student actively demonstrates those values, they will receive a digital token that they can trade in for either a physical reward like a sticker or a sensory tool or an experience such as having lunch with their favourite teacher.
When the student receives a certain number of digital tokens, a notification is sent to that student's parent, letting them know that they are living by those values.
Mr Barnes said that he hopes the points system will not only encourage students to live by the school values but also strengthen the parent-teacher relationship.
“Historically, when the school calls home, parents could be thinking, ‘What have they done wrong?’ but we wanted to try and change that angle and make parent/ teacher communication a positive thing.
“Some students have already got up to 35 to 40 positive acknowledgments since the start of the year, and for every ten increments, they get a value award that is recognised at assembly.
“It’s not just about the values, but also about the positive celebrations and creating a positive space for all students,” he said.
While the points system has been active since the beginning of the year, the points shop, operated by staff, will be introduced in Week 3 of Term 2 for primary students on Wednesdays and secondary students on Fridays.
Mr Barnes hopes that this system will encourage students to think about ways to be good community people, which extends to outside of school hours.
“This is a broader picture – these are the kind of core values that people need to have in the community.
“We want our students to grow into esteemed leaders of the community,” Mr Barnes said.
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