It was École McIsaac School’s turn to present at the most recent Flin Flon School Division (FFSD) board of trustees meeting Jan. 14. The board had already heard from Hapnot Collegiate, Many Faces Education Centre and Ruth Betts Community School.
The teachers presenting emphasized their efforts in creating collaborative spaces for both students and teachers.
“Personally, mentorship is my passion,” École McIsaac principal Miranda Bowman said.
“The more teachers I see working together, the better. That's what I want. I think it's best for our students to have many minds.”
École McIsaac has many different student bodies in one school.
“Our early years team is strong, our middle years team is strong, junior high is strong and French Immersion is strong,” Bowman said.
“I just want to see those groups really coming together.”
Vice-principal Sylvie Dufour added the struggle is carving out time for them to work together.
“We see some groups trying to work together and we want to make sure that we want to give them more time together,” she said.
“So we just want to keep giving them time.”
Some efforts from École McIsaac to collaborate include reading and math walls any student can contribute and learn from, along with some of the around 30 extra-curricular activities the school offers.
“We are trying to try to ensure that we have a lot of activities for our students to help them find something to enhance experience at École McIsaac because it can provide some benefits,” Dufour said during their presentation.
McIsaac has also increased their efforts to communicate with parents. They’ve used Facebook as a way to connect with parents, posting on 82 per cent of school days during this school year. Two years ago, McIsaac was posting under 40 per cent of school days.
“We've also revamped our parent newsletter that goes home,” Bowman said.
“Adding photos to entice parents to leaf through it and informative items like the new stop signs, safety measures and upcoming dates.”
Bowman also said the school has increased engagement with parents through events like parent-teacher conference displays, board game nights and barbecues where parents are invited. The board game nights have been a big hit this year.
“Everything is ready for them in the library,” Bowman said.
“It helps us develop a rapport with parents and enables us to work as a team and we're really hoping that this will increase student engagement and build a sense of community.”
École McIsaac will be holding their winter concert Jan. 22.
Canoeing
Former board trustee Angela Simpson also presented to the board, advocating to start a voyageur canoe program.
Simpson said the timing was perfect – to celebrate Manitoba’s 150th birthday and help reinforce different subjects in school. Simpson said everything from history to math could be included in the program that would see students travel by canoe long distances.
“This presentation had been presented at one time before, but you didn’t have people within the school divisions supporting this with very little money,” she said.
“I always was the trustee or person that said, if it was going to cost a lot of money or create a lot of work for teachers or anybody else in the division, then it probably would fall on the wayside. I know there's a lot of change taking place within our division, but this for sure is next to nothing cost.”
Simpson said that she had already talked to volunteers willing to donate supplies and equipment to the program.
“We've got lots of people in this town that have those skills,” she said.
“If we're looking into tourism we are looking at our students being involved and we're looking at doing open area classrooms - this is definitely very European and global, [the students] are working outside.”
