Core Routines

Whether in the classroom, at a museum, or outdoors, protecting the right to safety is a priority and a shared responsibility among all members of the learning experience. Staying within co-created boundaries, assessing potential hazards and establishing defences is a familiar conversation with students of all ages at Balsam.

As we operate in both urban and natural settings with our students, and setting boundaries is a routine we familiarize students with very quickly and intentionally at the start of the year.
Safety checks are completed with student participation and/or awareness when arriving in any uncontrolled learning space. In an urban setting we may be on the lookout for hazards like sharps: needles, glass, garbage. In a more forested learning space we would discuss hazards such as: animals, toxic plants, and landscape features (water, cliffs). With a safety check complete, students and faculty will co-plan boundaries, identify hazards and defences, and agree on the safety plan.

With co-created boundaries students are empowered knowing that within those boundaries they have the right to wander, explore, learn, play, and wonder with a sense of security. There is also significant ownership of, and responsibility for, upholding these agreements as a collective.

Coming together in a circle has long been a practice for bringing people together in a way that implies that we are all equal, and we are all connected. When we come together in a circle with students we uphold the expectations that each member of the circle will support the rights of the other to learn and to have their own ideas. There is also a shared understanding that each voice in the circle matters, and that only one voice should be heard at a time. The job of the non-speakers is to be active listeners, and share their excitement, understanding, empathy, or other reactions through American Sign Language. Balsam students know the expected behaviour in a learning circle, and can embody these expectations across any learning environment.

We ground conversations with students as much as possible in Rights Based Language, using the UN Rights of the Child. Every classroom has this Rights Poster hung somewhere in the room.

Rights based language is the basis of our classroom agreements and our school code of conduct, and guides our expectations for behaviour, problem solving, and learning routines on the UN rights of the child – students participate in this process.

Examples of routines/procedures at school connected to rights:

• Quiet/mindful time after lunch – we protect our right to rest.
• Disruptive behaviour during a lesson – reminders to protect others’ right to learn.
  • Example:  student continues to talk with a friend during a lesson, remind them once of their friend’s right to learn, second reminder is “In order to protect your right to learn, as well as the rights of the class, I’m going to ask you to move away from your friend to a spot where you can focus on your learning.”
• Unsafe behaviour – reminders and conversations to support the right to safety

Other examples of using Rights Based Language with students:

• Remember to give your friend’s “Think Time” instead of shouting out the answer, this protects everyone’s right to have their own ideas, and their right to learn!
• Please line up for recess, respecting everyone’s right to personal space/consent.
• This is your first reminder to stay focused on our lesson, having a side conversation takes away from your own and your friend’s right to learn. If it continues I will ask you to move to protect the right to learn.
• Thank you for using your words instead of your hands when you felt frustrated! You helped protect your friend’s right to safety.
• Staying inside the boundary helps protect your right to safety.

See the Risky Play document for more examples of using rights-based language with students in various situations.

We have a high-output program with high expectations for collaboration, problem solving, and both physical and academic rigour. Taking time away from others to connect with your own thoughts, rest your body, and be in nature ‘alone’ to notice, appreciate, wonder, or simply let your mind wander is invaluable. Sit spot is also a profound way to contribute to a sense of place, repeated visits to the same sit spot deepen relationships with the land in all of its elements.

Sit spot is introduced and practised steadily through the primary grades, often modelled by older students as well as teachers. We build stamina starting in kindergarten, and before long students are able to calm their bodies, find stillness, or boredom, or connection with the world around them. Many older students advocate for Sit Spot and recognize how this time alone, often in nature, helps to regulate their nervous system.

“I like how at recess and on the walk we were all excited and stuff but then in our sit spot we just are in nature and I felt so calm, and could just sit in nature and think about stuff.” – Grade 6 student

We connect the expectations for sit spot with our ability to protect our own, and others right to Rest through our own self-awareness, impulse control, and mindful behaviour.

Free Exploration is a core routine at Balsam, it often includes risky play and is a key factor in developing not only resiliency in the outside world, but also a student’s independent risk assessment. There is significant research on the benefits of Risky Play in childhood, and Balsam creates an environment where this crucial part of development can be nurtured by our faculty. During Free Exploration there is no agenda, no set curriculum, simply time for students to follow their own instincts and curiosities with friends or by themselves in nature. This core routine protects the child’s right to play and to have their own ideas.

When navigating risky play with students, our faculty will often use the phrase “What’s your plan?” to create the opportunity for a student to think about their actions and make choices that protect everyone’s rights to safety, body space, and play.

There are 7 principles of Leave No Trace, and all students are expected to be familiar with them as they move through their years of learning at Balsam.

1. Plan ahead and prepare
2. Travel and camp on durable surfaces
3. Leave what you find
4. Pack it in, pack it out
5. Be fire safe
6. Respect wildlife
7. Be considerate of others

Leave to Trace principles are explicitly taught in Kindergarten, and should be reviewed each year with Balsam students. These principles extend beyond our outdoor learning environment, and are used as prompts for thinking about how we move through the world (and therefore all of our learning spaces) with intention and awareness of our impact, and interconnectedness.

Balsam considers our learning environment to be inclusive of our campuses, our natural environment, and our city/civic environment. This means that when students leave their classrooms they are not leaving their learning environment, and they understand that learning happens everywhere.

Some aspects of environmental literacy include:

• Understanding that this place has a long history, and knowing about the first peoples and languages that were first here and continue to have an important relationship with this place.
• Knowledge of local plants and animals.
• Developmentally appropriate opportunities to build resilience and competence recreating and learning outdoors in all weather/seasons: including knowledge of weather/temperature related illness (frostbite, heat exhaustion etc.)
• Paying attention to environmental print (signage, direction markers etc.)
• Looking at the environment through a curricular (or transdisciplinary) lens, for example:
  • How the landscape was formed (natural & human made)
  • Continuity and change
  • Mathematical thinking

Making our communities more accessible is not only about physical accessibility. Knowledge of basic ASL has a multitude of benefits, including the ability to engage in group learning as an active listener in a more interactive way – as well as making our community a more accessible place for people who communicate using ASL as their primary language.

Many common ASL words and phrases are incorporated into daily learning routines at Balsam, as a way to interact with the speaker (ex: making connections, showing empathy or emotional reactions to other people’s sharing, silently indicating you agree or disagree with someone’s thinking etc.).

Using ASL as an opening to discuss other ways that differences are supported and/or other needs are met in our communities, and making connections to the right to special help.

Using ASL words/actions below, our school (students and faculty) can also identify the Core Competency categories, and “shoutout” students who are displaying or practising these skills. Can also be used for students to identify which Core Competency they will be drawing upon for a certain learning task.