Easter Break!

I have to make a confession, much like the rest of you, I also forgot that I wrote a blog for the school. So this is actually my first blog post since December. I sincerely hope that I did not disappoint my three readers, with such a long hiatus.

When we return from break there will only be 41 student school days remaining. This means the students in Sr. High are going to have work really hard to ensure they complete everything to earn their credits. With Easter this late in the year, it will seem like the next two months will fly by, so it is really important that everyone comes to school each day, ready to learn.

This year as a staff we have done a lot of work redoing our school mission statement. We had many meetings and discussions about the skills we would like every student to develop while they are in our building.

Bjorkdale School Mission Statement: Growing independent, dynamic, diverse, young learners up to their potential.
We recognize that this is quite a mouthful, so we also came up with a mantra that could be easily repeated and would help drive the learning process in our school.
Our new mantra: GIDDY-UP.

Not only is this an acronym for our mission statement, but it fits well with our current school mascot and we think it encapsulates the concept of resilience that we want each of our students to develop. You will be seeing new signage appear inside the school over the next few months.

If you have a student in middle years or high-school, you may be aware that next year we are changing the way we deliver education. Our new model is called Flexible Learning. This means that our schedule is going to be more fluid and allow students to have choice about the subjects they are learning about each day. One of our main goals next year is to drastically improve our student’s independence and resilience. While we feel that we have many strong learners, we also understand that learning does not stop once you leave school and in order to continue that development you have to be self-motivated, and also able to adapt and bounce back if you are not initially successful.

The junior high students will also be working on cross-curricular learning. This means that we will be focusing on our core subjects: Math, ELA, Science, Social and incorporating the other course outcomes (Health, Art, PAA etc) into those core subject areas. This should provide the students with more meaningful studies.
If you are wondering why we are making these changes, it is very simple… we believe that this will benefit our students in the long term. We do not want compliant learners, we want independent learners who are driven by their own thirst for knowledge. We also know that our staffing numbers fluctuate and this new system will allow us to adapt to changes in staffing without affecting the quality of education that we provide to our students.

Below is the image of the schedule that we will be offering next year. If anyone has any comments or concerns about this schedule please contact me at the school.

I have also attached a video that I uploaded last year about changing educational paradigms by Sir Ken Robinson which I think helps us look at education differently.

The Bjorkdale Staff would like to wish you all a wonderful Easter Break, and I hope that everyone is able to relax and spend a little time with family and friends before the hectic time of the year begins.