A leader builds positive working relationships with members of the school community and local community.
Demonstrates a sensitivity to and genuine caring for others and cultivates a climate of mutual respect
One of the best parts of A.B. Daley school is the staff and community that makes our school such a great place to be. This year, we kicked off our year with an A.B. Daley School Amazing Race activity as an icebreaker and an introduction to the Town of Nanton for our staff. On each team was a variety of experience from new staff to veteran staff, and they had to work together to navigate around some key spots in Nanton, using clues they were provided. Staff went to local coffee shops for snacks and introductions, visited some common field trip locations (Bomber Command, Boomers Hill), met our Mayor Jennifer Handley at the Town of Nanton, and some fun spots too (The Nanton Candy Store!). It was a great way to connect with teach other as a team, remind us of the important role we play in the community and allow for new staff to meet our community members!
Creating a welcoming, caring, respectful and safe learning environment
Student Led Virtue Assemblies
Family School Liason Counselor Programming from K-6
Tree of Kindness
AMA Safety Patrollers
"Gotcha!" Bracelets and weekly draws to recognize students going above and beyond
AMA Safety Patrol Training
Annual Pink Shirt Day Assembly
Creating opportunities for parents/guardians, as partners in education, to take an active role in their children’s education
Two examples of parents and community taking an active role in students education this year has been our Career Fair (held jointly with JTF) as well as our Breakfast Programming both of which were made possible by our parent and community volunteers.
Breakfast Program 2019 This program has been a huge success and we are hoping to maintain this for next year, if not expand. We have 20 parent volunteers who work on a rotation schedule to make this program possible, using money from the LRSD Nutrition Grant. We have upgraded our kitchen, purchasing new equipment such as fridge and freezer and cooking utensils. We have been able to provide our students with a healthy breakfast each morning and on special occasions an afternoon snack! We have between 50-75 students accessing on a daily basis, with almost 90% of our students accessing it throughout the year at some point.
Uses Effective Communication, facilitation and problem-solving skills Fostering Effective relationships has been a focus of mine, and a passion I have in the leadership realm. For me, Relationships are EVERYTHING and balancing the positive working environment, with effective communication and also laying out clear expectations for staff has been an area I have worked a lot on this year. I highlight a few areas below that I have used as strategies to maintain a positive working environment with our staff, students, families and our local community. At each parent council meeting, I prepare a Principal's Report in order to relay school messages that are positive and engaging for our parents, and give them more of an insight into the day to day operations of A.B. Daley School. We also communicate with a monthly newsletter which gets power alerted out and includes a principals message and programming highlights for the upcoming month, as well as volunteer opportunities, Learning support updates, a column from our FSL, Learning Commons news, Music news and classroom updates. This is a collaborative effort between staff to communicate the highlights out to our families. Parent Council Meeting Agendas and contact information can be found on our website and by clicking this link. Another effective tool for communication this year, has been the "Friday Focus" which is the weekly email sent out to staff, containing celebrations, PD updates, School updates for the coming week and ends with a weekly school message that teachers copy and paste into their weekly email to parents. This helps to communicate out reminders and info. to teachers so we can plan our next week, as well as to remind staff of school-wide commitments and expectations such as bench marking progress, reporting of student assessments, and report card updates/protocol. This has been really effective in keeping everyone focused on our priorities and eliminating stress and confusion by increasing our communication between staff meetings. We also have a collaborative staff Newsletter that goes out with staff members each maintaining a section and having responsibility to update. Check out our April 2019 Newsletter! We also regularily communicate with parents through our website www.abdaleyschool.ca and through our power alert system. Lastly, we have bi-weekly staff meetings, where we organize our meetings around our school's Education Plan. This allows us to focus our topics around the heart of our goals at the school, and then deal with our administrative tidbits at the end, and through our Friday Focus and other means of communication. Using our time wisely to impact student learning as much as possible.
Supports processes for improving relationships and dealing with conflict within the school community Below is an example of information provided by the admin team and FSL, regarding our approach to conflict within the school community. Our parent council reps indicated to us that there was a need for more information in this area and for some clarification regarding our school process. We presented to our parent council as well as through our newsletter and social media account in order to help improve relationships and outlining our steps and approaches for dealing with different types of conflict.