Grace, courtesy, and the work of belonging.

How to interrupt an adult who is speaking to someone else. How to ask a friend to move without being rude. How to carry a chair across a room without hitting anyone. How to say no, and how to hear it. In Primary these are short, formal, often funny lessons, practiced the way a material is practiced.

They are not manners for their own sake. A child who has a reliable script for entering a group is a child who can enter a group, and the alternative — hovering at the edge, or barging in and being rejected — shapes a childhood.

Every classroom has a peace table and a protocol: each child speaks uninterrupted, each restates what the other said, and they propose a resolution together. A guide sits nearby for the first year and progressively further away after that.

It is slower than an adult verdict, and in the first weeks it is much slower. By Upper Elementary, students run community meetings where real grievances — about the lunch rota, about exclusion at recess — get raised and resolved without an adult speaking.

Our counsellor works in the classrooms rather than waiting in an office, so children know her before they need her. She runs small groups, supports guides on individual observation, and meets with families.

We are a small school and we are honest about our limits. When a child needs specialist support we do not have, we say so early and help families find it, and we maintain relationships with occupational therapists, speech pathologists, and educational psychologists across the North Side.