SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Building a Socially Responsible Learning Community at Thomas Kidd WHAT IS SHARP? The SHARP acronym stands for our five core values that help guide our decision-making at Thomas Kidd. Being SHARP means being:        Safe                     Helpful         Accountable              Respectful               Positive These values were chosen by the staff, students and parents  of  Thomas Kidd as actions that we believe make Kidd a special learning community. These are core values we want to foster, teach, value, acknowledge and celebrate each day at Thomas Kidd. Our SHARP program is really a way of thinking about social responsibility that is based on three main principles: 1) We need to teach social skills, social responsibility and pro-social behaviours. We need to teach students appropriate ways to interact with others. It is not good enough to tell a child not to do something; we must teach the child what they can do instead. For example, SHARP allows us an opportunity to teach kids how to play Safely on the playground, and also some language and a frame of reference to come back to when debriefing unsafe behaviours. 2) We want to catch students being "good." This approach builds from strengths, provides a vehicle for positive interactions, and kids recognition for what they are doing well. Importantly, it provides a chance to have a conversation about something very specific that a child did well. For example, when a child is SHARP, we can say, "I like the way you asked the new student in your class to join you in a game at recess. That was really Helpful" or "You were being very Respectful when you sat facing me and put your hand up to answer my questions. Thanks for being SHARP". These conversations reinforce and celebrate the hundreds of positive things our kids do each day. This feedback is far more important than the cards they get - because these little talks provide kids with very specific guidance on how to be socially responsible in our community. 3) Social responsibility is a developmental process and is learned behaviour. We don't expect that two year old children will be able to share toys easily and we do not expect that children in the K- 7 years are always able to make good choices when working with others. Just as kids learn to read and write, they also learn how to make friends, solve problems peacefully, understand another person's point of view, and to care about the community and world in which they live. And just as some kids develop skills in reading and writing quite quickly and some need extra help, some kids pick up these social skills easily and naturally while others need small group work and even one- on-one assistance to develop these social skills and abilities. An important extension of this thinking is that every behaviour issue is a learning opportunity. We need to ensure that students understand that unsafe, harmful, irresponsible, disrespectful and negative behaviours are not tolerated at Thomas Kidd. But we must also see these actions as a chance to teach a child right from wrong, how their actions impact upon others, how to make amends and how to make good choices in the future