From the Office

Posted on January 23, 2013 by

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

Posted on December 20, 2012 by

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