‘Rights Respecting Schools is a UNICEF Canada initiative, using the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a basis for building an inclusive and respectful school culture. In these schools children’s rights are adopted as guiding principles that inform a common set of values shared by all members of the school community. These common values create a sense of community and become the lens through which students, teachers, school administrators and parents make decisions, choose behaviour, and participate at their school.’        

                                                   Rights Respecting Schools: Toolkit for Canadian Schools

Montgomery Middle has been on the journey to becoming a Rights Respecting School since 2011. In that time, teachers, administrators and support staff have been engaged in a variety of educational workshops, students have taken part in focus groups and many opportunities to learn about and explore human and children’s rights, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child has become a central building block of the culture of the school.

The Rights Respecting School initiative has four building blocks: Awareness, Student Participation, Teaching and Learning through a Rights Lens, and Leadership for a Rights Respecting School. This year, our focus has been Student Participation and to that end we have started our inaugural Student Parliament, made up of democratically elected representatives from each class in the school. We have also started up the Rights Respecting Team, joining the Music Council, Rocks Crew, Library Council and MetoWe as school service groups.

We continue to work hard in classrooms, at the office, and in all areas of the school to empower students in understanding their rights and using rights respecting behaviours. This is just one of many ways in which we will continue to make Monty a wonderful place for students to learn and grow as citizens of the world.