Chancellor State College near Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast was the last school visit on the research trip. Roger Pearson (Behaviour Support Worker) gave a generous amount of time to me during the day and I am afraid that I even interrupted some restorative conferences that required running – hopefully they can be completed on Monday with success.
CSC is a virtually a brand new school in a growth area. The Junior school is on a separate campus a short distance away and with the Middle School and Senior School sharing a campus. Although the school is designed to eventually accommodate around 1300 students, there are less than half that number currently enrolled – and with no students in yr 12 (final schooling year) until 2008. The school has been modelled as a ‘technology school’ – with a firm emphasis on IT and associated fields.
Chancellor State College works to a charter that recognises the 5C’s: Care Courtesy, Cooperation, and Challenge. At the heart of the school’s approach towards fostering positive behaviour is an emphasis on responsible thinking which reflects the need to provide:
- Whole School Behaviour Support – to reaffirm relationships
- Targeted Behaviour Support – the repair (damaged) relationships
- Intensive Behaviour Support – top rebuild (damaged) relationships.
This hierarchy of proactive to reactive processes is a model developed by Brenda Morrison – I have often seen this model appearing in school literature on my travels and is a simple yet insightful way of understanding the importance of connections between people in the functioning of a high-achieving school.
CSC works with a horizontal pastoral care structure with Year Level Coordinators given some time allowance for their duties. CSC has a comprehensive and active school life that works at the lowest level, affirming relationships. The list of activities that bring students together in positive ways is long and need not be listed here but include class meetings, award systems, special events, anti-bullying programmes and more.
Much of Roger’s work represents the ‘targeted behaviour support’ (#2). Roger staffs the ‘Re-Think’ room which is central to the Re-Think process – a similar provision to the one that I saw at Elanora the day before. In the Re-Think process, teachers who are troubled by students who are constantly disrupting the teaching/learning process can temporarily relocate the student to the Re-Think room. In the room, Roger will assist the student to reconsider their behaviour choices and give ‘coaching’ for the student to negotiate with the teacher their re-entry to class. If required, Roger will help the student create a Personal Management Plan which is a document that stipulates realistic and specific actions towards better behaviour.
As a vital element to the targeted and intensive relationship restoring initiatives, Roger runs considerable numbers of conferences. This may be between students or between staff and students. I happened to meet Barry Dittman (Deputy Principal) who enthusiastically declared that the use of RPs has allowed him and others to negotiate tricky situations with confidence. In Barry’s opinion, the biggest block towards the adoption of the philosophy by some staff is the inclination to talk ‘to’ students rather than ‘with’ them. RPs are used as a process to reintegrate students back into class or school following traditional discipline responses such as suspensions.
Roger described some defining conferences involving outside events that did much to build the school’s confidence in this way of working. CSC has a neighbouring university that students have conditional approval to walk through to get home. Teenagers being teenagers, a very small group took liberties with this privilege by interfering with university property. This clearly put the ‘access arrangement’ at risk but following a very successful conference with security staff from the university, the current arrangement still stands. In fact, so impressed was the Head of Security (also oversees security for the college also) in the restorative process that he has adopted elements of it for dealing with issues within his own staff.
Another conference that proved the value of working restoratively was following a sports dinner where some students did minor but significant damage to the facility The school’s name had been harmed but following the conference, the owner of the restaurant re-declared his faith in the school for allowing such a satisfactory solution to be arrived at.
Roger believes that although parents have not yet been involved in many full conferences, this will probably be an area of development.
Thanks to Roger and the friendly staff at Chancellor State College for a very encouraging finish to my study trip. Best Wishes to You All.
