Culture & Values

Daily Morning Meetings

Every morning each teacher designates 20 minutes of their day to develop CASA’s core values through: goal setting, practice scenarios, team building exercises, and studying the character strengths of other successful people. Our curriculum also infuses social emotional lessons by week and we send home information about the topic.

School Wide Community Meeting

Once a month our entire school gathers to celebrate the wonderful achievements of our students throughout the week. We discuss the core value of the week, as well as give students the opportunity to compliment, or “shout-out,” other students who have demonstrated core values. In addition, we recognize our Dragon of the Month winners. These are students who have consistently demonstrated all of CASA’s core values for weeks and even months. These awards represent the highest honor of core value achievement at CASA.

Restorative Approaches

Restorative approaches focus on repairing the harm through reconciliation with victims and the community at large. Traditionally, when a student breaks a rule at school, that child would get a consequence and everybody would move on without giving much thought to the impact the actions had on the victim and the community. With restorative approaches, we encourage the student to take responsibility for their actions, understand how their actions affected the community (classroom, school, community at large, etc.), and then take appropriate steps to restore or fix the relationship that has been broken. This system has been effective in reducing the number of suspensions and referrals, which keeps students in school, in the classroom, and learning.

At Cole Arts and Science Academy, we believe that each child has the ability to demonstrate the appropriate behaviors to be a strong leader in the classroom. In order to do this, all classrooms follow the "Ladder to Success" when it comes to behaviors. We believe a predictable path for earning rewards and consequences helps set students up for success. All classrooms will follow this ladder as this will help increase consistency across the school and create a positive environment for all students.

Every Month our staff engages in a variety of professional development.  This system provides teachers with the opportunity to regularly develop and hone their craft. The more effective and developed our teachers, the better we can serve and develop our CASA students, as well as the CASA community.

Some examples of the many professional development programs in which our teachers are involved are: literacy instruction, data analysis, co-planning with grade level teachers, math instruction, and social emotional learning. This collaboration is essential to our overall academic success at Cole.