Earlier this month, the OCDSB hosted Deborah MacNamara, PhD, who spoke about Making Sense of Bullying - Helping Kids Navigate Bullying and Peer Challenges. The recording is now available online and is an excellent resource for parents and educators. 

The OCDSB is a community that values acceptance, appreciation, cooperation, empathy, fairness, integrity, optimism, perseverance, respect, and responsibility. As part of the Bullying Prevention And Intervention Plan, each school is required to select a prevention and intervention goal in our Well-Being Plan that will be reviewed annually and monitored throughout the year. This past year, our focus has been on promoting wellbeing by preparing lessons and embedding learning related to mental health into everyday teaching. Our strategies included:

• the weekly use of Community Circles in each class
• timetabling two weekly 20-minute blocks focused on social-emotional learning as part of the Health curriculum for all grades 1-6 classes
• using resources and lesson plans shared by our Learning Support Services Department. These resources include the OCDSB Conditions for learning Toolkit (based on The Third Path), and the resources available from School Mental health Ontario.

In the new year, we will be looking to create a Safe and Accepting Schools Team which will include at least one parent and one student. If you are interested in being a parent representative on this team, please email lakeviewps@ocdsb.ca.