It has been an amazing start to the year. Check out all the exciting things that have been in place so far this school year..

Sea to Sky School District supports the importance of our students learning and taking action about the critical topic of climate change during their projects at school. One example is that all schools in our district will be tackling a student-led inquiry project this year to create school based policies related to the refusal of plastic products in our schools. Also, some schools and classrooms are organizing site based climate change and related learning rallies at their school site. In order to ensure the safety of our students, we do expect full attendance at school during organized times for protests. As is always the case students may be absent from school with their parents’ permission and supervision.

We at Myrtle Philip are took further action on Friday September 27th. We had two classes of students driven to participate who collaborated with their teachers to find a meaningful way to attend and participate in the march in Whistler.

Teachers have filled out proper field trip forms and will be following our protocols to ensure students are benefiting from this learning activity, and able to share their voice in a respectful way. It was an amazing experience for the students, who represented our school in the community strike.

We have also just utilized our collaboration time ton Sept 25th to organize a march here at the school where classes share with each other and describe what actions they will take to promote a healthy environment and combat climate change. We also met as an intermediate team to start to plan an inquiry project around the driving question:

“What are some positive solutions to disrupt environmental inefficiencies in our own community?”

Our school culture and ambition is to create a place where students work together to create a better world. I am excited about the opportunities for our students and the team of teachers we have to help them along on this journey.

Three of our grade 6/7 students set out to organize a lunch time intermediate Dodge Ball tournament. Over 50 students from grader 4-7 have taken part in this student run and lead initiative. Huge congrats to our student leaders for putting this together for their classmates.

On Monday Sept 30^th we gathered in the school gym, dressed in orange, to recognize and honour our Residential School Survivors. Monday was one small act towards our united community in building reconciliation. Residential schools are a part of our Canadian history that requires a humanistic understanding that runs deeper than seeing it as a fact on a time line, or a bump in our past. It requires us to develop a level of understanding that will enable us to see this act for what it was, so that we can start to move forward with understanding equality and social justice. It is about honouring the voices and stories of the past.

“Reconciliation will be about ensuring everything we do today will be aimed at a high standard to restore the balance of the relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples”.

Orange Shirt Day is about honouring and remembering the stories of the past. Every child matters, and every voice needs to be heard.

Kukwstumckacw,

Jeff Maynard

Our School came together September 13th to honour Terry Fox. Mrs. Unurh's class put together an amazing assembly and organized run.

Thank you to all the parents and our RCMP who came out to support our students. Mrs. Unurh's class raised just under $200 for the Terry fox foundation.

Our primary students worked today with Juno Award winner Norman Foote, in participation with his upcoming concert. Mrs. Edwards has been working with the students to learn some of his songs, and students had fun this afternoon joining him in song.

More info to come about this exciting opportunity for our students.

Our education plan, Pathways to Learning, was collaboratively developed in 2012, and has been a gratifying success. In the past six years, we have seen our Indigenous and special education graduation rates soar, our overall graduation rate grow in similar fashion, our grade-to-grade transition rates improve significantly, and our suspension rates drop precipitously. More of our students are staying in school for engaging learning and then graduating with much-improved life chances.

But after six years, it has been important that we ask ourselves, “What else do we know about our students and how might we support them in making even greater gains?” To this end, we recently embarked on an Education Plan Refresh Process. As in 2012, this has involved multiple partners working together to examine community input, student data and research. We are very excited about the resulting refreshed plan which includes these notable key elements:

Diversity is a strength

Inclusion is a right

Personalization is the way forward

Pathways to Learning is much more than a document. The key elements guide our actions, including budgeting, staffing, staff training and, of course, instruction. They are intended to inspire great learning and you should hold us accountable for that.

The ideas represented in these plans are yours – the result of extensive consultation with hundreds of stakeholders. We invite you to ask our staff or students about the learning in our schools and around our communities. We have every confidence that with this plan to guide us, our students will, as our District vision suggests…love to learn here!

– Rick Price, Board Chair

Click below for access to our Educational Plan

https://sd48achievement.org/