Context
At Blackwell Education our aim is that our students should achieve their academic potential and lead independent and fulfilling adult lives. We enable this by building mutually respectful relationships with them and showing students how to have respectful relationships together and with others. This helps them to reflect and take responsibility for themselves, and is a form of discipline that is constant, immediate and consistent. We achieve discipline through discussion.
Blow explains our approach. The warmth, humour and pleasant firmness with which our staff engage with students from the moment they are met each day demonstrates the way in which we set boundaries on behaviour, and is reflected throughout the organisation.
Aims of our behaviour policy:
- To provide a structure that supports and enables effective teaching and learning
- To maintain clear expectations around mutual respect
- To create a safe and caring environment in which all students are valued equally
- To encouraged students to reflect.
Ethos
Our ethos revolves around awareness, understanding, consideration of others’ needs, compassion, equality, tolerance, and inclusion. Acceptable standards of behaviour are those which reflect these principles. Every tutor is responsible for creating this environment which enables young people to engage with effective learning. We believe that by treating our students as individuals and providing them with comprehensive support they will be able to fulfil their potential.
We also believe that education can and should be fun, and that our students benefit from the sense of playfulness that permeates each session, and the creative opportunities we offer.
Our ethos aims to:
-Encourage mutual respect
- Help each student to develop a sense of responsibility for his/her behaviour
- Foster each student’s emotional wellbeing, including their ability to express their feelings and emotions
- Develop each student’s social and communication skills.
- Develop a sense of social and moral responsibility within the the wider community
Our practice
Building relationships and using praise. At Blackwell Education, everything we do is based on building mutually respectful relationships with our students. We explain our practices to students, offer them reasons to work with us and encourage reflective dialogue and self-regulation. Our tone can be light-hearted and playful, which can be liberating and enabling for young people who may previously have felt stifled by authority figures, and does not in any way dilute our messages.
We treat students as individuals, ensure that the curriculum is appropriate for each student and that teaching styles are varied, and we use praise as our main tool. There is a lot of encouragement in our organisation and because we are quick to tell a student when they are behaving inappropriately, we constantly reinforce the thresholds that differentiate respectful behaviour from inappropriate behaviour.
Reward System
At Blackwell Education we operate a weekly reward system based on the Engagement System. This awards points that equate to a weekly monitory reward that can be ‘cashed in’ to buy experiences or gifts.
The Points System
The points system aims to
- Raise self-esteem and confidence
- Recognise and reward good and improving behaviour
- Reinforce and maintain good behaviour
- Motivate learners to engage and participate
- Modify behaviour Incentivise achievement
- Develop relationships and pro-social behaviours and problem-solving skills
- Develop resilience and independence
This system is based on both behaviourist and learning theories, which demonstrate that awarding points with rewarding consequences encourages acceptable/appropriate behaviours whilst discouraging the inappropriate/unacceptable behaviours by not gaining points. In relation to boys, specifically, in group situations a system of this kind can promote both individual motivation and a manageable, healthy element of competition. To support all of this, we adopt a child-centred caring approach which scaffolds our learners basic needs whilst, at the same time, allowing each individual to develop a sense of belonging and to become self-actualised independent learners as they grow emotionally.
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