"Your Best You!"

This morning we had two great assemblies...one for our girls and one for our boys on the theme of self-esteem, body image and being "Your Best You!" Teacher Virginia Gingras presented her story to girls in Grades 9-12, while World Guinness Book of Record Holder, Rapper Duane Gibson presented to our boys Geades 9-12. Duane's message focused on "Staying Driven" for success by practising hard, sacrificing and persevering to reach your goals. Virginia's message included a challenge to our girls to be the best they can be despite what others may think or say. She challenged our girls to be strong and look out for each other
and to love themselves for who they are. Both assemblies were well received by our students and the promotion of self-esteem and wellbeing resonated well with the respective student audiences. Special thanks to Kathryn Patterson who organized the assemblies with Virginia. Thanks also to COMMCO for supporting our assemblies with the usual excellence and precision. It was a great morning!

ASCD Virtual Conference

Some of you may not know that Iroquois Ridge is an Affiliate/Mentor Site for the Association for Supervision and Curriclum Development, based out of Alexandria, Virginia. The ASCD represents more than 160,000 educators from 148 countries and 60 affiliates. The organization includes superintendents, supervisors, principals, teachers, professors of education, and school board members. As a mentor site for ASCD we were asked to present at a "Virtual Conference" last Friday. The presentation focused on the origin, evolution and successes of our Parent Engagement Program. We were fortunate enough to get a first hand experience with Adobe Connect Pro in the delivery of our powerpoint and video presentation to educators from around the world. As a mentor site, all participants of the conference had access to our presentation, had an opportunity to ask questions and access resouces, as a follow-up. This opportunity to participate with Adobe was a great learning for our team who got a chance to hone their 21st Century Learning Skills. Congratulations to Sara Severin (Parent Engagement Co-ordinator), Nancy Anstett (Program Leader of Personal Career Counselling) and Mary Tabak (Public Health Nurse) for preparing and presenting our program for ASCD. Special thanks to Al Samsa for his technical support on the day of the conference. Thanks also to student-Alex Theodore for filming our parents and caregivers, who offered exellent testimonials on behalf of our program. We had a very positive response from our ASCD partners, of which we are very proud. We hope to continue to work on projects with ASCD such as this as an affiliate/mentor to share our learning with others in the world-wide professional learning community.Well done Ridge Team! We are very proud of you for your leadership and ambassadorship on behalf of our parents, students, staff and school!

Relay for Life

What do over 600 students, staff and members of our parent community and extended community do for a great cause on a Friday Night? They participate together in the "Relay for Life" to raise funds for cancer. Not only is this a Friday night event but the "Relay" extends all night into Saturday morning! Teams of students have put their energy, heart, souls and emotions into walking all night on behalf of those they love and others they know who have been afflicted by and perhaps succumbed to cancer. The evening began with a "Survivors' Reception" followed by speeches by our students who have lost someone to cancer. Although, the rain started to fall and the skies got stormy this did not dampen our young people's spirits as they moved inside and carried on the event with great enthusiasm. Students were inspired by their team mates as well as some all night entertainment by numerous rock bands and other fun filled activities in our theatre and "street." Tonight they are all camping out in our school while continuing to walk well into the wee hours. Many parents, caregivers and members of our community came out to assist as did our staff, for which we are truly thankful. The goal is to try and reach the $50,000 mark...which would be an outstanding achievement by our young people. It is moments like these where we can feel so proud of our kids and know that the future will be bright in their capable hands. We are proud of all of you for your committment and caring...you are all outstanding!