Blog Posts

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.