Dear Families,
I just wanted to send out an update early this week in preparation for students returning to school on September 3rd.
Firstly, thank you to all families for your patience and flexibility in making alternate arrangements to adjust pick and drop off routines at our temporary school sites. Although, it would have been great to all start together at our new school, I think the silver lining to this three week delay will be that staff and students will be better able to build important relationships together more quickly. Having classrooms established, and many learning routines in place, prior to the transition into our amazing new school building will be helpful.
Last week we met as school staff to ensure that we have a good plan in place to make these first fourteen school days positive and productive. We have also been at all of the alternate school sites to ensure that our temporary classroom spaces have appropriate furniture and supplies for the students.
In general, our goal during this three week transition phase is going to be to keep our school start up routines as similar as possible to what was planned had we all been together at c̓əsqənelə. For example,
- Wherever possible, we have intentionally clustered grade group classrooms at host schools so students can work with staff and peers who will likely be in their school PODS and classrooms in our new school.
- We have planned our school’s recess and lunch times to be at slightly different times than our host schools so the students can begin to make connections and focus on playing with their new c̓əsqənelə peers right away.
- Our plan is to move students into their new classrooms on Tuesday September 10th. We chose this day to ensure that we had enough time to meet and work with all of the students in order to build balanced classrooms.
For students in grades 1 through 7, there will be canopies with c̓əsqənelə school signage in front of both Webster’s Corners and Albion. We will have staff and maps at these canopies to ensure students and parents can find their temporary classrooms easily. We will also be doing a “soft start” each day with classrooms open every day from 8:15am onwards and attendance done slightly later each day. Kindergarten families should have already received their gradual entry information and we will continue to follow this same schedule just at the Kanaka and Blue Mountain school sites.
I will send another update towards the end of this week with additional start up information such as partial student school supply lists. I am very much looking forward to beginning this exciting new adventure with everyone very soon!
Mr. Wheatley