Discipline
At College Community Schools, we believe achieving social, emotional, and behavioral health for all is dependent upon collaboration across school, home, and community. It is important to clearly communicate and teach behavioral expectations to students with a focus on preventing unexpected behavior before it occurs.
Positive behavior is taught, acknowledged, and modeled by school staff. This promotes a safe and predictable learning environment and fosters healthy relationships in the school community.
Still, misbehavior will occur. Just like students will make errors in academic work, they may make errors in meeting the expectations of the school environment.
The Iowa Department of Education provides all school districts with behavior categories and definitions. At College Community, a representative team of teachers and administrators developed a behavior matrix to create consistency across classrooms and schools. The state categories, incident types, definitions, and levels, can be viewed at the links below.
A range of optional and required responses is established at the district level with the goal of stopping the unexpected behavior, teaching the expected behavior, and ensuring the success of every student. The manner in which school staff respond to unexpected behavior varies depending upon factors including, but not limited to, the student’s age and development, the impact that the situation had on others, the intensity and frequency of the behavior, and other contextual factors.