St Peter's News

Cranbourne Campus News

School-wide Expectations - The St Peters College ROCKS a refresher

 

By now all members of the community should be able to recite the schoolwide expectations of St Peters College. The ROCKS - represent the desired behaviours of respect, organisation collaboration, kindness and safety. These are the five basic elements needed to support the creation of safe and predictable learning environments for all students. The St Peters College ROCKS was created in a collaborative exercise in 2019 with staff and students and that included parent input. The ROCKS help to codify the types of behaviours that will best support a whole school approach to positive behaviour support and create the type of conditions in which every member of the community feels valued for who they are and is given the opportunity to grow.

 

Many of you may recognise that these schoolwide expectations are framed in more positive language than the type of restrictive ‘do's and don’ts’ that were part of our era as students in schools. School Wide expectations are framed within our Positive Behaviour Support Plan which focuses attention on the desired behaviour. This change of focus to be more positively framed, is in recognition of the fact that in schools like St Peter's College, more than 80% of the community do the right thing. 

  • We are proud that the vast majority of students show respect and pride in wearing their uniform correctly, 
  • we are proud that the vast majority of students demonstrate organisation in bringing the correct books to class and arriving on time, 
  • we are proud that the majority of members of the community collaboratively work together to problem solve, 
  • we are proud of the fact that the vast majority of the community - many inspired by the example of Jesus - show great kindness, understanding and compassion when communicating and 
  • we are proud of the fact that the vast majority of members of the community support a safe environment where each person can be themselves without fear of ridicule or vilification. 

However, it is worth also acknowledging that having a clearly stated set of positively framed schoolwide expectations like the St Peter’s College ROCKS, does not in any way dilute from the high standards we continue to cultivate here at St Peter's nor the fact that in some cases, consequences and explicit teaching and re-teaching of what is expected, is required to help a small number of students to redirect their behaviour in line with the school-wide expectations. 

 

Furthermore, the setting of routines is a simple way to reinforce schoolwide expectations. For example, to further support and reinforce the elements of respect and organisation, our Year 7-9 classes have all returned to the routine of standing quietly behind a desk at the beginning of each lesson and waiting to be formally greeted by the adult before being instructed to sit and begin work. While some parents may see this as old-fashioned, we are finding that it is a small and manageable change of routine that is seeing significant changes in the vast majority of classes, to the standard set for the rest of the lesson. 

The part that parents play in supporting the school and our young people to meet these schoolwide expectations cannot be underestimated. For example, your morning battle to get your young person in the correct uniform and out the door to school early enough to be in tutor group at 8:50am is a small but significant battle that we see as worth having, as it establishes a routine that prepares the young person for the day ahead. A student arriving out of uniform dishevelled and late rarely recovers to have a seamless learning experience where they maximise their potential and they are usually the ones going home grumbling that they had a bad day. 

 

Environment and Youth Min collaborative initiative

 

In a joint initiative between the Youth Ministry Class at Year 10 and the Environment Club a House plant has been gifted to each House for cultivation. The idea behind the initiative is to raise awareness of the environment in the spirit of the Pope’s encyclical Laudato Si and the growing issues we face with an environment that thrives on flora and fauna. In handing over the House plant on the 8th of June, Talia Unsworth, our college environment captain, gave each House a set of instructions on how to care for it.! Moving forward on the 8th of every month, members of the Environment Club will move around the Houses to judge the health of each plant. By drawing attention to what is needed to help a plant thrive, the hope is that awareness of taking care of our natural resources will become more of the St Peters College culture.  In this sense, eight becomes a significant number to the project as there are 8 houses that will have their eight plants checked on the 8th of every month and this will be for a period of 8 years thereby becoming an initiative that reaches beyond us now into the next St Peters College students to come. 

 

Each House has elected a student of the House to take care of the plants over holidays.  These students were then asked to not only take care of the plants but also to take photos of the plant to help us celebrate the growth. 

Some of the House plants have even been given names to personalise the project even further, we would like to introduce: 

Assisi - KiKi after the Japanese word for tree "Ki"

Glowery - Groot

Kolbe - Percy the plant 

Marian - Michael after St Michael  

Romero - Oscar after "Oscar Romero"

 

Here are some photos from the plant's adventures over the holidays!

 

Report by: Talia Unsworth and James Cortese

 

Jeremy Wright

Deputy Principal - Head of Cranbourne Campus