Here is the email that I received from the Principal:
Welcome aboard. Glad to hear you are excited to be joining us as we are excited to have you come over from the Citadel…I spent a couple years in your backyard as Principal of Hazel Tembath.
I see by Kathryn’s email below you have been briefly acquainted with Maillard, a great school. I am sure much of what we do here is similar to your experiences at Citadel as far as the middle school model goes.
I have been awaiting a few answers from HR before sending an email to staff updating on our staffing. This also delayed my response to you as I still needed to hear about a couple of leaves and placements to determine some best fits and be able to look at all possible scenarios. I will do my best to answer some of your questions and will likely have to provide some more detailed explanations by phone next week or in August when you return from Ontario.
We shook our teams up a bit last year creating teams of 5 that were all cross pollinated between our French and English classes.
We currently have two Gr 6/7 teams, Les Tornades and Les Rapides, and one Gr 8 Team, Les Flammes. (Our new names last year were somewhat elemental if you hadn’t noticed). Each team consists of 2 FRIM classes and 3 ENG classes.
The platooning varies from team to team. We are attempting to keep platooning to a minimum this year, especially in Gr 6/7. We want very strong connections with our core teachers, as with all of our teachers. All Grade 6/7 teachers are teaching math, and we have been known to split our 6s and 7s up. We may be trying a few weeks of straight core teacher to start the year. Those details are still being firmed up.
Our focus from last year is community building as we became a Community HUB school last year. (Those details I will share later, long story). We have also loosely held onto out several year long numeracy goal. This will be a constant moving forward as will some of our core academic competencies…all of which will be connected to our main goal of Social Emotional Learning. In particular our focus on self awareness and social awareness. Our big picture SEL goals will hopefully be connected directly to improved academic success. Lots of ideas percolating.
Technology. A big focus here at Maillard. They were part of the one to one laptop project about 6 years ago and we have kept some of that momentum up. As with any school we have staff at all ends of the spectrum when considering use of technology. Here are a few infrastructure and device info for starters.
1) we have two labs one just refurbished last year and used by our Teacher Librarian, Stan Yuen for technology Expo. Or downstairs lab’s computers are coming to end of life although we did get new monitors for both labs. Our downstairs lab will likely be repurposed as a learning lab hopefully with some mobile devices and one or two projection areas….this is a money item that may or Amy not happen this year.
2) our 1 to 1 laptops are also coming to end of life and I am considering purchasing a handful of new preowned laptops to keep this resource available on our cart. Again, big $$ ticket item.
3) we purchased 15 net books two years ago and they are used by classes daily on a sign out basis and occasionally for single students use to support learning adaptations or needs.
4) we purchased 18 IPads last year, 4 of which were designated specifically for student services. The others are signed out similar to our net books. The IPads have been agrewt resource for us, and we are waiting on new Admin policy (AP) info coming this Fall to determine whether we can move forward on a few more IPad purchases
5) All teachers have a laptop and an LCD projector (we have had a few break ins and thefts so we need to replenish a couple), even or expo teachers for the most part.
7) Sharepoint is another big focus for us and will likely be renewed next year with e support of our Community HUB LST, Shane Ford. W have set up some new structure and processes through Sharepoint as well as entering into BCeSIS for marks and attendance next year. Classroom pages and blogs or up to date Sharepoint sites will be strongly recommended even for our neophytes!
6) we have considered SMARTboards and have not purchased any as of yet. I had piloted them in our district several years ago at Anmore Elementary then Hazel Trembath. We may consider this technology for our learning lab if I can find some money to set it up.
Bottom line for Maillard is we embrace technology in all forms. We encourage students to bring in their own personal devices and we do allow cell phones/ IPhones and other PODs to be used for learning throughout the school day. With this privilege we attach responsibility and like anything any misuse or digital irresponsibility, comes with consequences. (More on that in September).
We will have a few new staff members with us this year and it may well be that we have an orientation for our newbies…we do meet regularly as staff and will be doing so early over the first few days. We have a late start Wednesday to allow for staff collab time. More on that later as well.