Blog Posts

What better way to kick off a chilly fall season than with a hearty bowl of soup? At Chief Dan George Middle School, we have worked hard on our garden beds and greenhouse space this past spring and fall. Last May, our students planted a Three Sisters Garden - the traditional indigenous practice of planting maize, squash, and bean plants. Upon our return in September, the fruits of our labour were ready to be harvested.

At Colleen & Gordie Howe Middle School, we start the year with school-wide read-aloud. The goal for our read-aloud is to engage students in meaningful and relevant conversations and to foster a deeper sense of school community. This year, the staff selected “Count Me In” by Varsha Bajaj. The story follows two unlikely friends that are brought together, to both of their surprises. Unfortunately, a racially motivated assault happened to them and one of their grandparents.

Our school does a school wide read aloud at the beginning of the school year as a community builder.  Teachers do activities with the students about the book and we do school wide activities related to the story. This year, the staff and students at Howe Middle are reading "Count Me In" by Varsha Bajaj.  The story explores what happens when students come together to reject racism.  Throughout the story, students find their voice and realize the impact they can have when they support each other. 

I have recently had some conversations with youth in our schools regarding what matters to them in their education. They point to having adults who care about them, opportunities to engage in different kinds of activities, and social groups that they feel a part of. This seems to make sense and I would argue this is what we hope to achieve in our middle schools for all of our learners. Given our middle school vision of “joyful, inquiry-based approaches that create access to experience and opportunities to develop agency, identity, and belonging”, we are headed down the right path.

The Honourable Senator Murray Sinclair remarked in an impassioned plea that “we need to pursue reconciliation consistently and passionately. Education has gotten us into this mess, and education will get us out. We see this as our challenge and our hope.”

Passionate, innovative, dedicated - all describe Carissa Chapman. She is committed to continually developing opportunities for students to engage in meaningful experiences.  Whether she is out with our Green Team doing a community clean up or filming Captain Planet announcements or creating safe spaces in the school with the GSA, she’s got our students at the heart of everything she does.  

Traditions are important in our lives and in the culture of a school.  We create and continue traditions to provide a sense of belonging and connection.  Traditions also give us something to look forward to during the year.  Some traditions shift and evolve over time; they are the practices that reinforce our values and identity. When Howe Middle first opened, students and staff had access to the ice regularly at the MRC.  Often students and teachers would go over at lunch to skate and play hockey. During our first year, the Howe Hockey game

"Ideally, how do you want to feel at school? What are some actions that you could take to ensure you, and others feel this way?"

These are two of the many questions staff and students at Colleen and Gordie Howe Middle School are discussing in-depth as part of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence RULER program. RULER stands for recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating, and is a systemic approach to social-emotional learning designed to infuse emotional intelligence into the very core of K-12 education.