Category Archives: From the Office

From The Office

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Welcome back after the Christmas Break to everyone. January has given us some real extremes with weather to deal with from plus temperatures all the way down to low minus 30s. What a wonderful province to be part of! Keep sending those students to school with the right jackets and ski pants, especially in the case of bus issues that could arise and students staying warm.

January is filled with finishing Semester 1 classes and studying for final exams and completing course end projects. See this newsletter for the exam schedule taking place the last week of January for the grade 10-12 students and encourage your student to study as much as they can. Assignments for all the finishing courses must be in soon if not already to make the course credit available, so students must be completing each assignment that is given by the teacher. Many students have been dropping in at the office for help with applications to various university or technical programs – that’s exciting to see! We also have our highest number of students signed up for the Youth Apprenticeship Program than we ever have, and that’s made available to graduating students a scholarship for $1000. That’s another exciting thing for our students.

This is a reminder that January 31st will be the “turn around” day between semesters, and not a school day for students. Report Cards for grades 6-12 will head home on February 6. I want to also remind our Grade 12 students that their second Work Experience full week is Feb 24-28 which follows the February break 17-21. We did schedule this on purpose so it wouldn’t break up their learning after the February break until the next one in April.

The School Community Council would like me to mention that we still have a few Community Calendars available at the office for a reasonable $10.

That’s all for now. As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office or give us a call. Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.

From the Office

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I’m sure it makes us a heartier brand of people to live in a part of the country with such varied weather and to raise our children in the same environment. Given the level of heat in the summer, and the bitter cold in the winter we can live through, and the changes that can happen within 24 hours, we really should feel lucky to deal with it and be proud to live in Saskatchewan. While you’re being proud with me, can I remind you that we send students out for recess until minus 25 degrees, and that our bus drivers are expecting the students they pick up to have adequate warm clothing with them for the bus trips to school and back home.

The Career Fair we took the grades 11 and 12 to this last month was a good trip and had many students talking about their future plans. I’ve encouraged a number of students who are planning to pursue a trades career route to sign up for the Youth Apprenticeship Program at the office. The YAP helps students prepare for that trades career and gives them some rewards for starting their planning in their high school years.

I’d like to remind you that our school is continuing its focus on our multi-year School Goals. Our Literacy Goal and its supporting Professional Learning Community is about targeting students who are struggling with reading or are reading below grade level and making strides to help them improve. Our Math Goal and its supporting PLC measures students at three grade levels and looks for gaps in their prior knowledge, giving classroom teachers opportunity to reteach or supplement their lessons with help to get the students back on track. We’re looking forward to our future results. Take time to ask the staff about their work towards student success.

This next Monday is a day away from school for students as teachers have the day for class preparation. It also is the first of two weeks this year that the Grade 12s will be away at work sites for their Career Work Experience class. Good luck Grade 12s and work hard as your work placement may provide you with a great reference for your resume.

Parents, I hope you had a chance to sit down with your child and look through their report card and behavioural report this weekend. Reports went out on Friday, Nov 15. It was great to see the student progress and the comments about how they’re doing in class.

That’s all for now. For further information and updates from the students and classrooms, check out our school website at https://blogs.spiritsd.ca/hanley/.  As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office or give us a call. Talk to you soon.

 

From the Office

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We seem to be enjoying some favourable fall weather this month – and I don’t hear anyone complaining about it. It’s also given us an opportunity to see a few projects completed around the school yard. Just as an update, the playground equipment was straightened out after some frost heaving had pushed a few of the posts up, and some more pea gravel was added to the area. We also had a storage building next to the outdoor court resided and a general clean-up of the yard took place. The football shed received some finishing touches and the new scoreboard was raised and powered up. What a great environment for students to play and enjoy their school and school yard!

Our School Community Council is in the process of finishing off this year’s order for the Hanley Community Calendar. If you’ve been missed and would like to have your name on the order list, please call the school and talk to Mr. Tucker or Mr. Anderson.

The week of Oct 21-25 is a busy one. Bus Driver Appreciation Day is on Monday, Oct 21. Hanley Composite School is hosting our fall Tri-Conferences on Tuesday and Wednesday night from 5:00-7:30pm. Please call the school to book an interview time with your son’s/daughter’s teachers and bring along your student as well for a great interview experience focusing on behaviours. Progress Reports will be sent home on November 15th for grades 1-12.

Tuesday, Oct 22nd will also be busy as the School Community Council is sponsoring our annual Meet the Staff BBQ. Everyone is invited to drop in for a burger and cake, and we invite you to take time to visit with the staff and the SCC members as well.

If that wasn’t enough going on Tuesday, I wanted to bring to your attention that the Saskatoon Health Region will be holding a Flu Immunization Clinic in the gym from 3:00-7:00pm.

Some slow but steady progress is also happening in the planning of the renovations for our Practical and Applied Arts programs. The two PAA areas should see a facelift this year as PSSD continues its work throughout the division investing funds in the updating of its PAA facilities. Plans will also include new equipment and a selling/auctioning off the old equipment being replaced. For more information if you’re curious, you can contact the teachers, Mrs. Burgess and Mr. Tyndall.

We’ll be taking the grade 11s and 12s to the See Your Future Education and Career Fair on November 5th in Saskatoon. If you can find time to talk to your student between now and that day, ask them about what career plans they’ve been considering to get them thinking about it before that Tuesday.

That’s all for now. For further information and updates from the students and classrooms, check out our school website at http:// blogs.spiritsd.ca/hanley/. As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office or give us a call. Talk to you soon.

From the Office

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As seems to be the case every year, it feels like we’ve already been here for months instead of weeks, as so much seems to fill the day and the before and after school times for the students and staff at Hanley Composite School. It’s great to see the students back in the school and in the gym and on the field. The SRC is also busy making plans for the year’s events and we’ll look forward to their contributions to our positive environment at school.

High School students are settling into their timetables, and our encouragement will be that parents be involved in conversations with their children about credits and prerequisite courses for any programs students may want to enter after Grade 12.

We welcome the new students to our school, including our Grade 7s from Dundurn. We hope you make plans to have the best year you can and remember, now it’s your school too, so get involved! We have a total beginning enrolment of 230 students this year K-12 which is up a little from last year, and also, great to hear!

This morning, our new Kindergartens made a tour through the school, stopping by the office on a scavenger hunt of clues about our school. It was great to see the wonder and curiosity on their faces as they begin their education in the school system today.

We have a number of teams that have been at practice and competing already this month. We’ll be looking forward to hearing the progress and the accomplishments of the Senior Girls, Junior Girls, and Junior Boys Volleyball teams, the Junior Golfers, Cross Country runners and the Football team this fall. Students should continue to do their best to become involved where and when they can as it continues to make their experiences at Hanley Composite School the best. I heard mention this week of a Chess club starting as well – sounds like a great idea!!

I’d like to give a formal welcome to the three interns we have added to our staff this fall. Mr. David Woods will be joining Mr. Graham, Miss Nicole Andre will be joining Mrs. Bain, and Miss Chantelle Fransoo will be joining Mr. Kirk in their courses as well as teaching a lot of those courses over the semester.

I like to update you when I can over the improvements to our school and grounds to keep you aware of changes. We spent a $10000.00 grant this summer on four sets of permanent bleachers for our track and field area, six metal benches, and netting for the hockey net frames in the court area we worked so much on last year. I’d like to give a big thanks to Dwight Thall for his work in auguring out the holes for the benches. The grant was awarded last spring as part of our improvement proposal for the court area and grounds – thanks again to Darice Carlson, the Town of Hanley administrator, for her work applying for this grant. Another grant from the Roughriders made it possible to finish the siding of the Football Shed this last week! The materials were provided by Prairie Steel. I’d also like to thank James and Marie Mann for their generous donation of a new scoreboard for the Football Field! Plans are in place for it to be mounted in the ground as soon as we can this fall, with mounting beams supplied by Elance Steel and Mike Prosofsky and the electrical work to hook it up by Ryan Grindheim. For a guy like me, the bigger numbers are going to be a lot easier for my old eyes to see. Thanks to each of you mentioned for your support!!

That’s all for now. For further information and updates from the students and classrooms, check out our school website at https://blogs.spiritsd.ca/hanley/. As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office or give us a call. Talk to you soon.

From The Office

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By the calendar on my wall beside me, it appears there are only six more school days ahead for students. That num- ber includes days for writing final exams that start this week on Thursday. The whirlwind that is final class trips, exams and studying, marking, comments, report cards, cleaning up rooms, course selections for next year, supply lists, student handbook revisions and class lists is in full swing and we’re all running to catch up.

We’ve had a number of special events take place since I last sent out a “From the Office” message and I’m pleased to see so many things still happening at Hanley School in the last week.

Good luck to our graduating students as they finish off the school year and make their plans for this summer and next year. Everything looked and went wonderful on June 14. Thanks Mrs. Burgess and Mrs. Prakash for your work as advisors and helping the plans of the graduates take shape for their celebration.

This Friday, our Elementary students will be taking part in the annual Try-all-athon with the students from Dundurn. Students will run, swim and bike their course and enjoy a day with the other kids as they participate. Great work, everyone!

Our annual Play Day and Track and Field Day went well on June 10th with the students from Dundurn again travelling to Hanley to take part. Students again enjoyed a day of activity and play with a great comment by one student I wanted to in- clude here, “Best Day Ever!”

I’d like to give you a quick staffing update for the fall to make you aware of some changes we’ll be seeing. Mrs. Martineau will be returning in the fall as our Kindergarten teacher. The class is large enough in numbers that the other elementary grades will see new combinations for next year. Grade 1-2 will have Mrs. Romanchuk as their teacher. Miss Adelman is returning to our school in the fall to teach Grade 3-4 until Jan- uary when Mrs. Koroll will re- turn from her maternity leave. Mrs. Pozniak and her family have made a move to St. Louis this spring and she doesn’t have plans to return to teach at Hanley. We’re sad to see you go Mrs. Poz, but we’d like to wish you well in the future! We’re also going to have to say farewell to Ms. Stefanson as she is making a bigger move to Ontario this year. Good luck to you as well in the future, Ms. Stefanson! The grade 5-6 class will have Mrs. Bishop Moisan as their teacher and we’ll see Mrs. Bain return in the fall. The remainder of classes will be taught by much the same teachers as this year in grades 7-12 with some minor shifts due to some splits in the grade 8 class. Everyone can agree that it’s better to have a lower student-teacher ratio for student contact, so we’ll take advantage of some various combinations to give them the best educational opportunities through smaller class sizes the next few years.

Lastly, I just want to leave you this year with a comment about my thanks again for the support you provide Mr. Anderson and I and the rest of the staff when we work together in the best interests of your students. We appreciate it. That’s all for now. As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office or give us a call. Talk to you soon.

Chris Tucker Principal
Hanley Composite School

From the Office

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It’s amazing that we’re looking back at more than eighty percent of the school year behind us and only a month and a half until the end of June. I look ahead at the field trips, special days and big events we have scheduled and know that there are so many more good experiences for students ahead before their summer starts.

I know that a number of you might have some questions about how the calendar is going to affect our school day next year. There have been some changes made by the Ministry of Education which I’ll try to summarize. The Ministry has decided that students need to start their school year after Labour Day in September and end before July. There need to be 950 hours of instructional time within those dates. Schools and families both agreed that it was important to continue to have a break in February and in spring. There also were contract issues with prep time for teachers to be included into the discussions. Next year’s calendar takes all those points into consideration but in so doing, our school day time will be increased by 9 minutes. Those 9 minutes will be added to our day by starting our first period in the morning at 8:55am and our last period will run until 3:04pm. Our morning recess and noon hour times will stay the same. We will no longer have early dismissal Thursdays for an hour of teacher preparation time. Those hours will be moved to full days during the year and the other teacher professional development days have been left off the calendar which will give us more time in the classroom.

Please be aware of the class trips as they are planned and keep an eye out for permission forms and due dates for any trip fees as they come up.

Our School Community Council will be looking for volunteers for the K-6 PlayDay/Track & Field day on June 10 to help around the concession cooking hotdogs and selling lunch. Please look for the note and lunch order form coming home next week.

Kindergarten orientation is scheduled for June 7. We look forward to our meeting our future Hanley Sabers as they and their parents come to school to get a look at Kindergarten for next year.

The June Final Exam schedule is included in the newsletter and on the website and should give some focus for our high school students to start studying. Good luck students on a strong end to another good year.

The last item I’ll add this month is a congratulations to all of our Grade 12 students who will be at our graduation proceedings next month before our last newsletter for the year. I sat with a grade 12 student today and reminded them that the end of the year will be the start of something new and that’s something to be excited about. Good luck to each of you and keep working hard for the next six weeks!

That’s all for now. As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office or give us a call. Talk to you soon.

From The Office

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I looked back last month at the “From the Office” and read that I mentioned we’d be having nicer weather by the end of March to see that “lamb”. I’ll bet you can guess how well that turned out – I turn around and see the piles of snow that still fill up our courtyard at the front of the school, and think back to the frozen puddles I slid over this morning – what a strange spring!

We’re on the slide towards the end of this school year, and while it’s a good chance to look back at how the school year has gone, this is the time of year I look forward to students and staff powering through to the end of the year, and I start to make plans for next fall.

Our school year calendar is still in the works – we’ll get some conclusion to that in the next few weeks I’m sure. The School Goals we set for Hanley Composite School in September have been a focus for our staff Professional Learning Communities and we’ll be reporting on those goals and our results in May. I’m pleased to see the results that show growth in our students in the areas of numeracy and literacy and student engagement. Thank-you to those of you who’ve shown interest in our work.

Congratulations to our Drama club on a great showing at Regionals on April 20th. They did an amazing job of their play “Just a Teenage Wasteland” and received many awards. They are planning on a repeat public performance May 7th at Hanley Composite School, and will attend provincial competition May 9-11th.

Junior Badminton playoffs were held last week with Steffen T and Emily C progressing to the second round of Conference Playoffs. Congratulations! The Senior Badminton team is in playoffs this week – their first day in Hanley on April 23rd, and then on April 25th and 27th. Good luck everyone!

I’m excited to let you know we have received some further grant funding from Western Economic Diversification Canada due to a partnership with the Town of Hanley, to make some further improvements to our outdoor court and surrounding area of our playground. The amount is just over ten thousand dollars and wouldn’t have been available without the help of Darice Carlson and the interest of the Town Office to support working with the school to improve an area for students to use year round. We’ll update you soon with how the funds are put to use.

Some upcoming items to remember are the following: Jump Rope for Heart April 30th, Senior Band Tour to Edmonton May 1-4th, Grade 10 Shekinah trip May 1-2nd, Dance Recital in the gym May 11th. A last professional development day for teachers is May 3rd so there will be no classes for students that day.

That’s all for now. As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office or give us a call. Talk to you soon.

From the Office

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Semester two started off with us hitting the ground reading…. I mean hitting the books running… Well, something like that. Courses are already two weeks into this half of the year and a busy semester again is before us. Parents of senior students – take some time to ask your student if they know how many credits they currently have completed? Do they know which math pathways they should be taking this semester and the next year or two if they have that time left in their high school education? If they plan on pursuing post-secondary education at the trades or university level, have they spent some time looking at what classes they should have completed by then and have they started the application process for further education? For example, the end of this week is the application deadline for a couple colleges. I ask you these questions so that you can keep involved and help your high school student be prepared for their further education.

We continue to have turbulent weather this winter and February has been no different, taking a toll on our highways and their conditions. Take it easy on the roads as you travel and remind our young drivers about the same.

Elementary report cards will be going out March 7th, and next month, the second set of interviews this year will take place on March 19th and 20th. The day in lieu of those TriConferences will be on March 18th, so that means no classes for students. The report cards for the Grade 6-12 students will follow the interviews in the next month, April.

The school year calendar for next year has been an item in the news as the Ministry of Education in Saskatchewan is creating some stricter guidelines for school divisions to follow. We will email our new calendar home to you as soon as we know anything further.

That’s all for now. As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office or give us a call.

Talk to you soon.

From the Office

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It appears that the cold weather finally caught up to us this winter – I sit here typing January’s, From the Office, on our first school day without buses running. We plowed ahead with our SRC’s Pancake Breakfast anyways, and I have to tell you those pancakes sure hit the spot this morning. The SRC plans to go ahead with another Pancake Breakfast fundraiser early in the next semester, so please look forward to that. While on the topic of cold weather, parents, please take a quick look at what your students are dressing up in to head off to school and help us make sure that they’re wearing warm clothing in this cold weather. This includes our bus students as well, who should have warm clothes along in case of mechanical troubles.

Next week will hold our final exams and any midterms for the Grade 10-12 Semester 1 classes. Any outstanding assignments should have been turned in a long time ago, unless there were arrangements made with the subject teacher. The best advice is to keep frequent conversations between student, teacher and parent to ensure that constant progress is being made in each subject area. I encourage you all to do just that.

I’ll take a chance to update you on our school Professional Learning Communities progress. We have a bulletin board in the office that holds some initial testing results in the areas of Numeracy, Literacy Intervention, and Student Engagement. Our staff, in those three areas, are working this year on three goals to show improvements in those same areas. Our Literacy team is focusing on providing supports to all of the

various reading levels at the earliest elementary levels and learning new ways to intervene and help them improve. Our Numeracy team is using benchmarks in knowledge of numeracy abilities to find gaps in learning and look at re- teaching opportunities to fill in those gaps. And our Student Engagement team is examining the adult supports for student learning and brainstorming ways to make/find improvements. I’d encourage you to find a staff member and ask them to tell you more about their team and its progress.

As far as some upcoming dates to inform you about, this is a reminder that February 1 will be the turn- around day between semesters and not a school day for students. That will lead up to a mid-year report card going home for Grades 6-12 on February 6th. You can also mark February 8th on your calendars as a fun day of learning for the elementary K-6 students. We’ll be hosting the Dundurn students that day in the morning for a cooperatively planned and run art project, and then complete the day with a Wide Open Theatre puppet show production based on the written books by the author, Robert Munsch. It sounds like a great day. Lastly, I’ll draw your attention to the Stand Up to Bullying Day on April 10th. Information was sent home a week ago to get you thinking about it and asking you to send $5 to school to cover the cost of a shirt that students and staff will wear to show they’re against bullying behaviours.

The winter break will follow including Family Day on February 18th. I hope you have the opportunity that day and that week to spend some with your students. Each of them is a wonderful student at Hanley School and we’re proud to teach them.

As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office. Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.

From the Office

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And then it was the last month of the year – calendar year that is. While December is one of our shortest school months of the school year, we contin- ue to cram as much into these three weeks as any other month. I’ll do my best to recap what’s been happening and give you a peek into the new year ahead.

We’ve been able to slow down on our staffing musical chairs game and I can tell you that the students are happily adjusting to their new arrange- ments. We wish Mrs. Koroll congratulations on her maternity leave as she is now the proud mom to their new daughter, Char- lotte Mary, born Dec 10th. Miss Martineau is doing a great job in the K/1 room since the start of December and Miss Stefanson also doing just as well in the Grade 2/3 room upstairs. Miss Adelman is also looking like she’s at home with our Grade 7 home- room. That leaves Mr. Woods-Fehr, Mrs. Pozniak and Mrs. Bishop- Moisan mentoring our new staff at that end of the school.

We’ll need to say farewell to our two interns, Mr. Howie and Mr. Bartsch, who’ve been with us since the start of the school year. Hanley Composite School will miss your contributions to our school, both in the classroom and out. Good luck in your educational futures and please keep in touch. Our teacher candidates from the U of S will return in the new year and see us every other Friday again and a full week of classes in spring.

Last week was the last four days of the first week of Work Experience for the Grade 12 students. Most reports were pretty good, regarding their time at work. There will be a second week at another placement March 11 -15, 2013.

I wanted to let you know what a nice success our Christmas Family Fun Night was last week. Thank you to everyone for making it such a wonderful success as it was very well attended and supported by so many families. The artwork and crafts and ice sculptures, cookie and house decorating, variety of musical contributions, picture opportunities and hot chocolate to boot, made it an evening of family, community, and Christmas cheer.

We hosted the Canadian Air Force Band Sunday af- ternoon to an intimate crowd as they put on a ninety minute perfor- mance of musical selections with a Christmas theme. If you missed them and have a chance to see them in the future, I’d suggest you do as they gave a fantastic performance. Thank you to Master Warrant Officer Gord Nichol for his work to ar- range the performance and to Colonsay School for lend- ing us their portable stages.

I try to keep you up to date about some of the purchases we make here to benefit the school and students. This week we’ll have a ceiling mounted projector installed in the gym for use in presentations as well as another set of speakers that will all tie into the audio system we installed last year. We hope to have it ready for the Christmas Dinner this Friday. Speaking of Christmas Dinner, it is a wonderful tradition we have in place to be able to sit down together as a whole school to enjoy a meal together, and I hope the students value it as much as we do. My thanks to all the hands that make it possible.

Our last day this week on Friday will go right to 3pm. Classes resume January 3, 2013. January 14 is a professional development day for staff and no classes for students. Semester 1 final exams will be held on January 28-31 with a semester turn around day on February 1 and no classes for students.

This will be my own family’s first Christmas with our six-month old son, Hayden, joining his brother Gavin at the tree on Christmas morning. From my wife, Kara, and I and our boys, and on behalf of Mr. Anderson and his family, and the rest of the staff as well, enjoy a safe holiday, filled with time for family and friends and we wish you all a very Merry Christmas. As always, Mr. Anderson and I would love to talk to you if you have time to drop by the office. Take care and I’ll talk to you soon.

Chris Tucker
Principal