All Middle School students are placed into Homeroom/Pastoral Care
classes. Pastoral Care classes meet for 15 minutes each morning
and 55-minutes each Monday morning. Each Middle School Pastoral Care
class consists of 21 students and 2 Pastoral Care teachers.
Pastoral Care is an essential time for students and teachers to
be together. During this time teachers serve as mentors and have
the opportunity to get to know their students outside of assessed,
academic subject areas. The Pastoral Care teacher also serves as
the immediate point of contact for general communication between
home and school.
A key focus of Pastoral Care classes is on building relationships
between teacher and students as well as with students and students.
Pastoral Care time allows teachers from different subject areas
to work together to plan lessons targeted at whole-child development.
This time enables teachers to get to know students from the whole-child
point of view.
Pastoral Care classes support students by teaching and reinforcing
Organization Skills and Time Management. Pastoral Care time also
allows for incidental teaching of highly important issues that do
not always fit neatly into other curricular areas, e.g. bullying,
study skills, peer pressure, community and service projects, goal
setting and organization. This time also covers health and social
issues with Health and Physical Education/Health and other curricular areas.
Pastoral care blocks are also used to accommodate grade level and Middle School assemblies and
thus preserve instructional time in other classes.
The Pastoral Care program at WAB aims to be responsive to student
needs. As Grade 6 is a transitional year into Middle School, much
time in Grade 6 Pastoral Care classes is devoted to helping students
with their transition to Middle School and in carefully reviewing
the Middle Years Programme.
