A leader understands and appropriately responds to the political, social, economic, legal and cultural contexts impacting schools and the school authority.
Responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic
The Owl's Nest News was created as a collaborative project with staff to continue to connect with our students in creative ways during the Covid-19 Pandemic. It was a steep learning curve for the adults, but we knew we wanted to create something fun and educational that would keep our school community connected during remote learning.
Creating an A.B. Daley Weekly Update for parents vs. a monthly newsletter also allowed us to communicate with parents, allowed factual information to be communicated and gave parents a weekly opportunity to reach out to administration if needed.
Responding to Community Context... and declining enrollment
Recognizing that a reality of small rural schools is declining enrollment (and budget) but also wanting to continue to provide our school community with the highest quality of education, we began exploring possibilities of a Combined Grade Structure (Click for more information)
Community Schooling and Ensuring Transitions for All students from K-12
Increasing collaborative planning between elementary and Jr/Sr High Sites in a community has always been important to me. It supports continued growth and positive relationships at both sites as well as provides a way to ensure our students needs are being met, and to ease the transitions between sites for students as well as to offer a wide range of programming. Some of the different strategies we have used have been collaborating on presentations and guest speakers, joint Welcome Back BBQ for both schools, pep rallies, author visits, grade six orientation and most recently sharing FTE for specialty teachers. Another initiative was to blend our CTF programming in order to better access specialty teachers on both sites. Such as multi-graded CTF program where students from grades 4,5,6 participate in areas of interest to them. With options such as Digital Citizenship, STEM Building Challenge, Science Lab, Robotics, Band, Shop, Sewing. This has allowed us to offer some unique programming to our students and have our staff planning options together for students to take based on students input and staff expertise. Our plan for next year is to continue this program, and hopefully be able to increase some FTE specifically for CTF teachers to release them for Band/Music and Shop, as well as perhaps offer Foods programming and extend our sewing to grades 7 and 8 if possible. We also hope to integrate more community volunteers to lead small groups in areas that they are passionate about in order to offer more options for students. We are currently exploring French Programming as an option during CTF time as well.
These programming decisions were based on input from stakeholders, students, Accountability Pillar Results as well as OurSchool Survey results.
Supporting Students and Families with School Based Programming
School Based Programming to Support Students and Families:
FSL Counselor referrals and classroom visits
Family Oriented Programming (PUF & Early Literacy)
Theme 5 and Vaccinations with Health Nurse
Jr. Achievement Programs for Grades 4-6 (Financial Literacy)